Biber in the Festival

I’m not going to very many concerts in the Bath Festival this year – I don’t have many free evenings, and also this is another year when the Bath Festival Chorus is not performing.
I usually get to a concert in the Abbey; this venue often sells out or nearly so despite its size. Last year it was a performance of ‘Dido and Aeneas’ which I remember largely for a rarely-heard guitar interlude (though having heard it I could see why it was usually left out) and an extraordinary spoken postlude in which the only word I could clearly make out was ‘Protestant’. (The postlude was dropped when the performance was repeated at the Proms).
This time it was Biber’s Missa Christi Resurgentis, receiving its first modern performance in Europe from the English Concert. (My knowledge is a bit incomplete because the programmes had sold out by the time I arrived). The concert got a five-star-rated review in the Guardian. When I hear choral music unfamiliar to me, I usually end up thinking what it would be like to perform it. In this case, the music was pleasant enough to listen to, but I don’t think I’d find it so interesting to sing, at least if I were in the second choir. Although the choral writing was far from dull, I had the impression that the composer was often really interested in the orchestral parts rather than the vocal lines. I should qualify this by saying that I was sitting in a side aisle where the orchestra came over more strongly than the choir. The Mass was interspersed with instrumental pieces, topped and tailed by plainchant sung by the choir (and some of the orchestra!) as they processed in and out, and the whole concert finished with the humorous ‘nightwatchman’s serenade’. It was short – only just over an hour of music without an interval – and will go out on Radio 3 next week.