St George’s Cathedral was strung with microphones for the first of four concerts throughout the year which will be broadcast on ABC Classic FM. It’s a testament to director Joseph Nolan and the Cathedral Consort’s national reputation as a world class choir grounded in the crisp purity of the English choral tradition. The 21-piece Consort performed a programme of choral classics spanning the 16th to 21st centuries with Fauré’s Requiem as the centrepiece. The pews were reversed so the ensemble could perform from the Narthex on Friday night in close proximity to Stewart Smith in the organ loft.

Two 16th-century works opened the programme: Victoria’s Alma Redemptoris Mater with its intervals of open fourths and fifths so perfectly tuned the harmonics prickled my skin, and the dense polyphonic energy of Gibbons’ O Clap Your Hands. Nolan conducted with pulsing energy although the section entries were not as precisely in unison as usual.

Stewart Smith’s striking organ chords gave a Gothic darkness to the opening of Fauré’s Requiem and the work was rich with dramatic poise, notably the velveteen smoothness of the “Amen” concluding the Offertorium and the swell of sound to illuminate “et lux perpetua luceat eis” in the Agnus Dei.

But...