What would Anton Bruckner think of the Mass in Blue? This question occurred to me during the Hertfordshire Chorus’s concert on Sunday afternoon, when Will Todd’s work received its twentieth anniversary performance in the Cadogan Hall, paired with Bruckner’s Mass in E minor. It may seem an odd pairing, though both set the same text and are accompanied largely by wind ensembles. Bruckner would probably be baffled if not appalled by the Mass in Blue’s jazz idiom, but it’s anything but a frivolous work, engaging with the text as fully as Bruckner does, and obviously the product of a faith as real, if less conventional, that that of the Austrian master.

We began with the older work, written to be performed in the cathedral square in Vienna, and perhaps not entirely at home in the comfortable surroundings of the Cadogan Hall. With his eyes set firmly on God, Bruckner makes no allowance for human frailty, routinely sending all four (sometimes eight) voices to the extremes of their range in the Mass and demanding great feats of sustaining power. The wind band functions almost as a separate choir, providing minimal support to the singers and frequently leaving them on their own for extended passages. This and the chromatic choral writing would leave any choir with intonation problems horribly exposed, but the Hertfordshire Chorus is not such a choir, and apart from one slightly eyebrow-raising moment near the beginning, singers and instruments remained in concord. The choir’s transparent sound, mercifully free of “wobble” in all parts, made for clarity, though a little more resonance might have given extra edge to Bruckner’s often dissonant writing. They were otherwise fully equal to the composer’s demands, negotiating the tricky counterpoint in the Amen of the Gloria with practised ease.

The Chorus under their enterprising conductor David Temple gave the first performance of the Mass in Blue in Cambridge in 2003, and (rather to its composer’s surprise) it has since become one of the most frequently performed of modern choral works. Sunday’s rendition benefited not only from the original chorus and conductor, but also the Will Todd Ensemble, who must know the work inside out by now, and the composer himself on piano. Soprano Hilary Cronin has won prizes for her Handel singing (what would Handel think of the Mass in Blue? – now there’s a thought) but demonstrated that if the early music work dries up she should be able to make a very good living as a nightclub or gospel singer. Again I wished for more presence from the choir, who couldn’t always hold their own with the band, and found myself wondering if some discreet amplification, surely not out of the question in a work of this kind, might have helped. Nonetheless the singers’ rhythmic responsiveness and natural tone was a great asset and they brought all the warmth and precision which the music required. The ending had a real sense of elation and the warm reception from a sadly less-than-capacity audience suggested that the Mass in Blue will be with us for at least another twenty years.

William Hale