A concert can be internally coherent, elegant even – yet dramatically inert. Devotion was exactly this kind of paradox.

Chorus master Hugh Lydon built his program around four textual pairings – Mawby/Byrd, Victoria/Lauridsen, Duruflé/Gjeilo, Schubert/Mendelssohn – flanking Duruflé’s organ Choral varié sur le “Veni Creator” at the centre, Holly Broadbent at the organ console, tenor Matthew Reardon soloing in the Schubert and Mendelssohn.

As Lydon’s own note had it, the aim was to show how “two different composers can look at the exact same passage of text from completely different angles, yet both create music that is emotionally rich and meaningful.”

It’s a sound premise. But Lydon’s spoken introductions before pairings, and the applause permitted between every item rather than between each pair, had the effect of breaking the program into eight isolated recital slots rather than four continuous acts of comparison.

Furthermore, the pairs themselves followed no liturgical or dramaturgical logic: Passion (Mawby/Byrd) to Nativity (Victoria/Lauridsen) to Pentecost (the Duruflé organ work) to Maundy Thursday (Duruflé/Gjeilo) to Annunciation (Schubert/Mendelssohn) is the Christian year run backwards, forwards, then backwards again.

Given Lydon’s emphasis on the centrality of text and meaning in sung...