Vespers - Monteverdi's

Vespers of 1610 are probably the earliest great musical masterpiece you're likely to encounter with any frequency in concert. The music's special status was clearly acknowledged at St Patrick's Cathedral on Saturday night, when a full house turned out for a performance by the Guinness Choir, with a period instruments orchestra conducted by David Milne.

Monteverdi is rather off the beaten track for the Guinness Choir, and on Saturday it showed. Sharpness of rhythmic articulation and unfailing security of intonation are prerequisites for this music. You might think they are prerequisites for any music. And of course, aspirationally, they are. But the composers whose work the Guinness Choir are most comfortable with thought in terms of choral mass in a way that Monteverdi didn't.

And before you even get down to matters of musical style, it has to be said that the choir's singing sounded rhythmically sluggish, and frequently none too sweet in intonation.

It's a pity, but that's how it was. And it's all the greater pity, as some of the other elements in the evening were very fine indeed. A large-scale work of the 17th century has rarely been as well served as the Vespers were on this occasion by soprano Carys Lane, ably matched by her fellow soprano Olive Simpson, and the always rhetorically gripping tenor, John Elwes.

David Milne conducted with a vigour which was rarely reflected in the singing of his choir. And the balances he achieved between choir and orchestra rather devalued the care which had been taken in mounting a performance with period instruments. But St Patrick's is a venue which offers a wide range of acoustic experiences, and things may have sounded better in this regard in other parts of the cathedral.

What the performance clearly demonstrated was Dubliners' hunger for exposure to an area of repertoire that's highly rewarding, yet which, despite its boom worldwide, only rarely features in the concert life of this country.