Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Christ Church Baroque/Mark Duley

Messiah - Handel

The performances of Handel's Messiah at Christ Church Cathedral on Monday and Tuesday were the first in which Christ Church Baroque performed as a fully period-instruments ensemble. It was also, in most respects on Monday night, the best concert performance they've yet presented, although the details which niggled remained many and various.

Let's get the biggest out of the way at once. Mark Duley is not a conductor with the most reliably precise of beats, and CCB's leader, Therese Timoney, is exactly the opposite, a violinist whose forthright, definitively articulate style seems to shun precautionary upbeat signalling in favour of immediate action on the downbeat. Mediation between these two forces is not something the players have yet satisfactorily resolved.

But, given the ground-breaking nature of the occasion, the raggedness seemed a small price to pay for the lightness of touch which afforded both choir and soloists the opportunity to assert themselves without force or strain. The pair of oboes (seated on the extreme left of the platform in the bassoon-less orchestra) made little impression, though the baroque trumpets (not always tidy in delivery) managed to be brightly penetrating without becoming overpowering.

Duley's training of the Christ Church Cathedral Choir yielded, particularly in the Part One, some of the lightest, nimblest, clearest choral renditions of Messiah that it's been my pleasure to witness in Dublin. The long, noble phrases of the closing Amen, however, posed problems that they have yet to resolve satisfactorily.

Three of the soloists - counter tenor William Purefoy (sounding effortlessly clear and natural), tenor James Gilchrist and bass Philip O'Reilly - stayed mostly within the stylistic parameters of the evening as a whole. I say "mostly", because O'Reilly had a sort of apoplexy-inducing brainstorm which manifested itself in some thoroughly over-the-top embellishments in the repeat in "The trumpet shall sound". But soprano Louise Walsh tried to invest the work with the operatically emotional grandeur of another era, a phenomenon which, no matter how often it fails, seems to find someone else ready to try it again.