I went to this (plus excerpts from the Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil) in Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral last night. I hadn't booked for it, Tavener being absolutely Not My Thing, but a friend had a spare ticket, so I went. It was exactly what I expected - a mixture of the Requiem Mass with other texts apparently attempting to reconcile Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam through music, and resulting largely, as far as I was concerned, in muddle. There was plenty of dramatic noise - drums and brass coming from all angles high in the galleries of the echoing circular Cathedral, solo singers in one place, solo cello perched high on a seat above the orchestra, choir somewhere else again. That it was reasonably well co-ordinated, as far as I could tell, was a tribute to the conductors Vasily Petrenko, and Ian Tracey sub-conducting the choir, presumably with a TV monitor connecting him to Petrenko.

I think all performers acquitted themselves quite well - RLPO and Choir, Andrew Kennedy, Elin Manahan Thomas (whose soprano I didn't take to, but I was not in a good position for hearing her or Kennedy), Josephine Knight playing "ecstatic" (Tavener's word, not mine) solos on a 1709 Strad cello. My dislike of this kind of earnest, relentless, supposedly hypnotic spirituality, however, makes it difficult for me to judge the music easily. I'm sorry to say it reminded me of Karl Jenkins's Armed Man (another piece I would never have chosen to go to, but did to please a friend) though I concede Tavener's music is a bit better. I feel in trying to cover so much, he just confuses the issue. It's instructive to read Tavener's directions to performers: "With deepest sincerity", "Ecstatic, radiant" "With searing intensity", "Awesome, apocalytic" etc. It gets wearing.

The Rach excerpts were in the first half. An unaccompanied choir comes off better in the acoustic than large forces, and I couldn't help thinking that Rachmaninoff did spirituality a lot better.

Along the road, at the Philharmonic, Richard Dawkins was giving a lecture. Apparently there were demonstrators outside, presumably objecting to his anti-religious views. It did cross my mind that it might have been quite amusing if there had been demonstrators outside the Cathedral protesting against Tavener's pro-religious views. There weren't, though - but then Tavener hasn't been on the telly as much as Dawkins.

It's on Radio 3 at 7 pm Wednesday, March 5th, so you can judge for yourselves if you're interested, though I imagine it will sound very different from the way it sounded in the building. At least it might be possible to hear the solo singers' words on the radio.