When does one ever get a chance to judge works like these, in such a rewarding context? Focal to the evening’s audacious programming and palpable success was the BBC Concert Orchestra under Barry Wordsworth. Each time the music seems about to resolve, to find rest in a final cadence, the spirit moves it onward. In effect, it doesn’t stop with the double barline.The Biblical Songs, for baritone and organ (Stephen Varcoe and Ian Watson), are positively austere by comparison: Bible readings with the added imperative of song. “A Song of Peace” alludes to “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”, aspiring to be operatic with the final word of the final line: “And his rest shall be glorious” A timely welter of organ sound is the promise fulfilled. As is Stanford’s brief setting of the Te Deum.Sometimes Chandos recordings of uncharted repertoire (for which much thanks) sound like a couple of extra rehearsals might not have gone amiss Not so in this instance.

Almost as inspirational as the Virgin’s great hymn to Our Lord which constitutes the finale.There’s nothing remotely Protestant about Stanford’s beneficent view of Heaven. The exalted “Mary” theme returns, paving a path to infinity with the words “Paradisi gloria”. A truculent allegro e feroce suggests bloodlust and brutality; a burgeoning second subject places the Blessed Virgin at the foot of the cross. We are in the exalted (and highly theatrical) world of Anglican Oratorio.
Stanford’s memorable motifs ring with the appropriate conviction.

The stanza beginning “O quam tristis” brings forth the finest of them, and its return in the coda of this first movement (clarinet and then oboe floated over muted strings and harp) is inspirational. The substantial orchestral prelude concedes to Gerontius and explains the subtitle “Symphonic Cantata”. It’s easy to place this music. Never mind that the composer was an Irish Protestant, it’s English to the last well-groomed semi-quaver, it’s late 19th- / early 20th-century, it’s grand in keeping with an age of municipal pride, an age of architectural and musical edifices, of bigger is better and religious is best of all.

Charles Villiers Stanford’s setting of the Stabat Mater is from the school of Parry and Elgar and would not shame either It’s a find. He might have recollected how, in the previous war, Debussy had the wicked wit to turn “Ein feste Burg” into a menacing march.Honegger: final programme 12noon today Series repeated 11.30pm Mon-Fri next week. Still, when the Nazis occupied Paris in 1941, he produced in his Second Symphony, heard in yesterday’s programme, a statement that was concise, brave and sincere, with a particularly powerful slow movement. Perhaps it was irony, or perhaps it was mere inadvertence, that allowed him to indicate optimism at the end of the finale by breaking into a chorale in Lutheran style. The first was commissioned for the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1930, and the opening movement, heard on Wednesday, confirmed the impression of Honegger as a grim neo-classicist, with a taste for self-flagellation in the form of grey harmony and hectoring rhythms. Honegger greatly admired Albert Roussel, who, in the same year, for the same orchestra, wrote his Third Symphony – unimpeachably concise and exquisitely crafted – which, owing to many broadcasts by the BBC, has become a classic in this country.

Although Honegger was 23 years Roussel’s junior, he hardly added much to his mentor’s musical language, and showed less wit and less sensitivity. By accident, he was associated with Les Six, though he disliked the music of their artistic godfather, Satie, who, in turn, heard little he liked in Honegger’s music. Honegger said he was more concerned to make good individual works than to cultivate an image or even a personal style, but excerpts from his operas Le roi David and Judith suggested that he spread himself pretty thin in trying to supply the musical equivalents of large public murals.Outside this country, Honegger’s five symphonies are played quite regularly. If musicians think Xenakis’s music unmusical, so much the worse for them. Forty-odd years after it was written, his first orchestral piece, Metastasis, still sounds like a real breakthrough.One of the teachers Xenakis tried in Paris was Arthur Honegger.