Candelabras ringed the stage for British choir Tenebrae’s Masterworks of the Renaissance program, the slow consumption of their candles charting the passage of time and eerily punctuating the cathedral-like mood the ensemble set with the crackle of wax stalagmites falling to shatter on the stage. It was the a cappella sound of the choir itself, though – led by director Nigel Short – that struck the audience, the pure bell-like sopranos and silver sheen of the tenors direct and engaging in the opening Versa est in luctum by Alonso Lobo, written at the end of the 16th century in memory of Philip II of Spain.

Nigel Short and Tenebrae. Photo © Yaya Stempler

The choir’s sound took on a brighter gleam in selections from Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Responsories, bringing to the Spanish polyphony a blazing passion that quietened into the hush of the final Sepulto Domino. The singers split across City Recital Hall’s choir stalls and organ loft to bring an added spatial depth to Gregorio Allegri’s setting of the Miserere mei, Deus (Psalm 51) – the once closely guarded work that, according to legend, a young Mozart transcribed...