No one but no one performs Handel's Messiah better every year than the choir Polyphony under the conductor Stephen Layton and the baroque orchestra Canzona. Their beautiful sound was intimate in the lofty ex-church. The gut strings were as pungent as a pheasant hung for a fortnight, while the oboes cut through keenly like a park-keeper's spike.
The squealing natural trumpeter played without a blemish. The continuo players accompanied the eccentric soloists with scholarly sensitivity. Tenor Mark Padmore looked as if he were the one needing comforting in Comfort Ye. Bah humbug, his poker face said. It suited Part II more when he sang the recitative Thy Rebuke. A trousered Emma Kirkby strained at the leash in Rejoice but rediscovered conviction and her old high tensile tonsils in Handel's epitaph aria, I Know that My Redeemer Liveth at the start of Part III. Counter-tenor James Bowman was as expressively idiosyncratic as ever, while baritone David Wilson-Johnson sang better than I have ever heard him.
Still, the stunning choir stole the show. Polyphony's polyphony ran like brightly coloured threads and they made Messiah sound as fresh as if it had never been performed before. Polyphony is nothing Mr Layton has not made it. Three stars are too few.