Derek Jole reviews the Singers' 25th anniversary concert

An ever-so-tactful wigging from the Pro-Musica's conductor, Michael Smedley, delivered to a crowded University Church last week, expressed the hope that we would henceforth support not just this, the choir's 25th anniversary concert, with its Handel and Purcell, but follow future concerts likewise, through thick and thin. The 'thin,' it was explained, amounted to Schoenberg, or Schnittke; the 'thick' - more Handel perhaps.

Helpfully, the choir were keen to demonstrate they are worth following anywhere. Smedley tolerates no crumbling edges and, assisted on this occasion by the Charivari Agreable Simfonie, whose continuo were in especially unctious form, and whose trumpets, wind and drums lit the scene like lightning, the conductor led us nobly through the Coronation Anthems by Handel. It was a mission, this, funded by a happy fusion of strict discipline and cart-wheeling, expressive confidence. Particularly in My heart is inditing, Handel's mobile, in-depth textures, and his power to invest terse motifs with 'affective' charm, were hauntingly laid bare.

Thereafter, something rather more 'thin' was needed than Gabriel Jackson's engaging Cecilia Virgo. Jackson's work has its difficulties - some tricky exposed entries for instance - along with beauties like the overlapping scalic descents which start the work. But it is, harmonically, non-violent and quite short. Sung in medias res, it exposed the evening to a virtual takeover by baroque idioms, engineered by two composers who, seen from afar, share much common ground.

Proof enough lies in Hail! Bright Cecilia where Purcell emerges with Italian influence fully absorbed. Morover, in its range, and instrumental daring, the work augurs Handelian oratorio, with solo-singers fronting the choir. A pity that two singers here, Jerome Finnis, tenor and Daniel Robson, baritone, proved to be young artists, still in search of comprehensive purity of tone. More accomplished was the counter-tenor Alexandre L'Estrange whose treatment of the spectacular 'Tis Nature's Voice was notable, hardly deferring, indeed, to the consistently high quality of Nicy Roberts - a soprano exact but fulsome in her intonation, and always in command.