Temporarily displaced: as reported in last week's Oxford Times, the Sheldonian Theatre has closed until November, so Oxford Harmonic Society needed a new concert venue. Keble College Chapel was the brave choice. Brave? Keble's multi-coloured brickwork certainly looks glorious in evening sunlight, but indoors the chapel has a tricky, wallowing acoustic, which you might otherwise find only in a giant's bathroom. A couple of choir members confessed to me that morale had sunk low during the afternoon rehearsal.

But you'd never have guessed it. Quite the reverse, it seemed as if the challenge of Keble Chapel had inspired OHS, and conductor Robert Secret, to new heights. An appropriate choice of two religious works, masses by Schubert and Dvorak, produced clear diction, confident singing, well-disciplined entries, and expressive dynamics. The concert began with Schubert's Mass No 2 in G, D167, composed when he was 18 for his local church in suburban Vienna. It's a simple but - needless to say - melodious setting, with lots of changes of mood. The Gloria, for instance, has a lyrical central section, framed by music of considerable force. The Credo is the other way round, with its powerful Crucifixus in the middle. All this was well expressed by the choir, but perhaps the most effective part of this performance was the closing Agnus Dei, which brings the work to a quiet, gentle conclusion.

Dvorak's Mass in D is a more complex work, with its opening Kyrie building straight into a fugue. First scored for organ and voices, the original version of the Mass performed in this concert remained unpublished until 1970. Dvorak makes much use of the contrast between choral and solo voices - here Georgia Ginsberg, Natalia Brzezinska, Alex Sprague, and Callum Thorpe, all of whom sung powerfully and confidently. Miraculously, the choir still managed to produce a transparent sound in this denser work, aided by expertly judged organ accompaniment from David Langdon.