Philharmonia Orchestra/Neil Ferris review: Both provide a colourful and ethereal ambience

The setting of Easter for Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs provided a stirring opening to this concert. But it is the three central numbers that probe George Herbert’s metaphysical verses most poignantly and Roderick Williams was a movingly introspective baritone soloist. Conductor Neil Ferris provided a ethereal ambience.

In the slow movement of Ravel’s G major Piano Concerto, Herbert’s sensual undercurrents rise to the surface. Martin James Bartlett was the expressive soloist.

Cecilia McDowall’s Da Vinci Requiem, given its world premiere by the impressive Wimbledon Choral Society, skilfully interweaves the text of the Mass for the Dead with various writings of or about the great Renaissance Man. The result is a powerfully communicative addition to the repertoire.

Not only is the choral writing vibrant but colourful use is made of the orchestra, most notably in the way singing lines are enhanced by harp, glockenspiel and vibraphone.

Williams was again an admirable soloist alongside Kate Royal, whose soprano soared eloquently above the choral plainchant in a neatly lamb-referencing fragment from Leonardo’s Bestiary in the Agnus Dei.

In the closing Lux Aeterna, the theological promise of eternal rest and a Leonardo-attributed aphorism on the joy of flight are fused in a upward-spiralling passage. It provided an apt return to the mystical imagery with which this imaginatively conceived programme began.