MUCH of the thought that goes into a choir’s concert programme is to do with disposable resources.

A concert requiring no soloists and music that would normally be sung with meaningful orchestral accompaniment are possible with the understanding of the audience.

It was this imagination that conductor Roger Langford appealed to at the start of this Spring concert - and for works that one rarely hears amateur choirs singing, let alone minimising the difficulty of doing so.

The third of three settings from Schutz’s Psalms of David presented the further complication of unspecified instrumentation, but it was complicated enough vocally and the choir did well to negotiate its structural dizziness, their caution coming across as due reverence.

Instrumental sound was the responsibility of the St Mary’s organist, Judith Pendrous, who performed some little-heard music on her own, if the D major Praeludium of Buxtehude might be so described. Three of Nikolaus Hanff’s six Chorale Preludes were certainly that and quietly minimalist to boot.

I was astonished and gratified to hear such a forceful and example-led sound coming from the male members of the choir, particularly at the thinly-populated top of the range. It helped light the way in the Schutz works, inflamed the celebratory passages of Hummel’s Te Deum and contributed not a little to a magisterial performance of Mozart’s Mass in C (K 167). So hard did the choir work in the breathless Credo of the Mozart that Mr Langford gave it a well-earned rest before continuing.

The concert was dedicated to the memory of popular choir member Frank Holt, who died last December.