Soloists, RTÉ Philharmonic Choir, RTÉ NSO/Halls

St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin

Bach – Christmas Oratorio

It’s the great also-ran baroque Christmas choral work in Dublin where Handel’s Messiah reigns supreme.

Bach's Christmas Oratorio– while a more authentically Christmas work than Messiah – is not in English, has no historic connection with Dublin, and is that little bit too long to fit comfortably into a single concert. Especially compared with the annual onslaught of Messiahs, it is rarely performed in Ireland – the most recent complete performance reviewed in this newspaper was 20 years ago.

Those acquainted with it love it, which helps account for the huge audiences that crowded into St Patrick’s Cathedral for the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra’s very fine performance given over two consecutive nights. It was an adventure in stylistic diversity for the NSO which pared back its string sections and gave the podium to Matthew Halls, a young conductor well versed in baroque performance.

Under his precise and energetic direction the reduced orchestra gave a highly persuasive demonstration of that valuable and pragmatic hybrid: modern instruments but period-aware performance. Strings were light, clean and thin (in a good way), allowing woodwind colours to stand out from the texture. There was an excellent cello and chamber organ continuo section both for recitatives and for arias, the latter featuring much beautiful solo obbligato playing. Most notable here were oboist Adrian Wilson (also on oboe d’amore) and trumpeter Graham Hastings, exhilaratingly bright and true in the first bass aria as well as in the jubilant first and last choruses.

The singers of the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir, too, were highly responsive to Halls. The men, more particularly the tenors, sometimes seemed under-powered in lines where otherwise the forces were evenly matched.

This, however, may have been partly due to positioning issues – St Patrick’s remains resistant to attempts at taming its big acoustic. That said, the choir were always in tune, mostly clean and lively to text, and comfortable with Halls’s energetic tempos.

Exceeding all these good things, however, was the quartet of soloists.

All brought stylishly clear, non-tremulous voice quality to their lines, above all specialists bass Peter Harvey and soprano Julia Doyle. Tenor Mark Padmore was expressive and agile in both his narrative recitatives and in the work’s most demanding arias, while the emerging Irish mezzo Paula Murrihy demonstrated both how much she has grown since departing for studies in the US and how she has retained the natural talent and expressive animation which got her there.