THE Durham Singers’ Passiontide recital featured their assistant musical director Francesca Massey taking control, accompanying and conducting two major pieces she selected for the choir.

The concert in St Cuthbert’s Chapel, at Ushaw College, placing the focus on absence, loss and the afterlife, opened with Lotti’s Crucifixus as a mood-setter.

The first large work was Domenico Scarlatti’s challenging setting of the poem Stabat Mater, with the choir’s musical director Professor Julian Wright conducting and Massey playing chamber organ and Hector Sequera on his theorbo.

The complex tapestry of the piece was laid out in all its glory with with superb singing by ten soloists overlapping and interlocking in elaborate and flowing polyphony. The four soprano soloists, Beth Bromley, Jane Noble, Lois Gill and Hester Higton sang with a ringing clarity, underpinned by the ravishing tones of altos Paivi Sisko-Eerola and Mary Tyers and earthy basses of Simon Tasker and Anthony Smith.

Among many highlights were tenor Colin Patterson and Jane Noble’s delivery of Inflammatus, and tenor David Harris and Lois Gill in the Amen.

Purcell’s Hear My Prayer, O Lord opened the second half of the recital, before Massey conducted Hubert Parry’s Songs of Farewell; a poignant reflection on the terrible losses of the First World War and on his own mortality.

Massey crafted an account of searing emotional intensity, with the choir singing with exultant passion and energy. Soaring sopranos, lilting cadences and warm harmonies underpinned by basses, and shot through with dashes colour from the altos and tenors made for a heady mix.

Massey gave a wonderful shape to My soul there is a country and drew a deep sense of deep yearning from I know my soul hath power, while contrapuntal detail of Never weather-beaten sail, washed over the audience in waves of sound.

The last movement Lord, let me know mine end had a luminous quality with a soothing delivery of the final moving lines Oh, spare me a little before I go hence and be no more seen.