Ceremony is an unforgiving art. Pomp without precision is mere noise, and the English ceremonial tradition, from Tallis to Rutter, depends on choirs able to make grandeur sound inevitable rather than inflated. Before a sold-out St George’s Cathedral, the St George’s Cathedral Consort did exactly that.

Dr Joseph Nolan knows this repertoire from the inside. Before arriving in Perth in 2008, he spent four years as organist of the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace, the institution Tallis served as a Gentleman and Handel as Composer of Musick.

Much of this program reads like that chapel’s working repertoire transplanted to the Swan River: Parry’s I Was Glad, written for Edward VII’s coronation in 1902; Handel’s Zadok the Priest, sung at every coronation since George II’s in 1727; Paul Mealor’s Ubi caritas, heard at the 2011 royal wedding. The effect was less nostalgia than proof of how thoroughly Nolan has built a comparable culture here.

Joseph Nolan. Photo supplied

The bookends were spine-tinglingly overwhelming in their, well, majesty. I Was Glad unleashed organ (Stewart Smith), trumpets (Jenna Smith and Pete Miller) and timpani (François Combemorel) into the cathedral’s often unforgiving acoustic, the Consort riding over them with blazing tone and crisp diction. Zadok closed the evening with the same force, its coiled introduction tightening until the choir’s entry broke over the nave, before the Amen from Messiah sealed proceedings with contrapuntal muscle.

Between these poles, the Consort’s quieter work was just as telling. Tallis’s If ye love me, sung a cappella, had the clean line and unforced transparency of a Holbein drawing. Parry’s Blest Pair of Sirens, his 1887 setting of Milton, had the breadth its long paragraphs demand; Elgar’s The Spirit of the Lord glowed. Samuel Sebastian Wesley’s Blessed be the God and Father and Mealor’s Ubi caritas revealed the Consort’s ability to maintain a sustained, inward pianissimo, and Rutter’s The Lord bless you and keep you was warm without lapsing into sentiment.

Sara Macliver brought her familiar purity and agility to Handel and Mozart. Eternal Source of Light Divine, with Jenna Smith’s trumpet obbligato, was poised and luminous; Let the Bright Seraphim gleamed; the Alleluia from Exsultate, jubilate sparkled. Smith gave Elgar’s Imperial March, written for Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, swagger and clarity in equal measure.

Then there was Widor. Nolan’s mastery of the French Romantic organ school is undisputed, and Widor is its centre. His complete Widor organ works for Signum, recorded on the Cavaillé-Coll instruments of Paris, Lyon and Toulouse, drew two Gramophone Critics’ Choice awards and remain a benchmark; in 2016 France made him a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for services to French music.

The Toccata from the Fifth Symphony carried all that authority: manual figuration clean and expressive despite the motoric demands, the pedal theme placed with architectural weight rather than flung out for effect. A warhorse, certainly, but one Nolan has made his own.

A full house is its own verdict. This was ceremonial music sung and played by people who understand exactly why it still matters. It is no exaggeration to say that St George’s Cathedral’s reputation as a cultural and spiritual institution in part rests on the shoulders of Nolan and his magnificent Consort.