Vox Renaissance Consort"s "Angelus'

Valentin Radu applied a sure feel for the subtleties of pace and variety when he set up the program for "Angelus," this season's first concert— an indispensable talent when you present a concert entirely devoted to Renaissance religious music.

Renaissance composers didn't clobber their audiences with spectacular choruses, and they definitely didn't write music for concerts in which people listened to one piece after another. They created music for genuine religious services, attended by people who believed in the messages communicated by the texts. You have to take that into account when you present their music in a modern concert format.

Radu varied the program linguistically by including two pieces in English and two in German, as a relief from the ten Latin texts. The jumps from country to country added a stylistic diversity as well. You could hear the sturdy English Protestant tradition in William Byrd's setting of the Magnificat and the German emphasis on harmony and structure in Gallus Dressler's Ich Bin die Auferstehung ("I am the Resurrection and the life").

Exuberant leaps

Radu opened with Thomas Tallis's serene, limpidly beautiful "If ye love me, keep my commandments." The subdued grace of Tallis's setting introduced the program with a properly reverent curtain-raiser, but Radu cannily followed it with a Gloria Patri that included festive recorder music, choral writing that leaped exuberantly from section to section, and an unexpected series of alleluias after the amen.

He maintained that kind of pacing all through the program and broke up the vocal music with three brief instrumental interludes that added more variety.

The Vox Renaissance Consort forms the core of Radu's Vox Amadeus conglomerate, a collection of overlapping organizations that includes a chamber orchestra (the Camerata Ama Deus) and a full-size chorus and orchestra ensemble (the Ama Deus Ensemble). The Consort consists of 20 vocalists, who sing Renaissance music in ornately colored Renaissance gowns and robes.

For some concerts, the Renaissance costumes create a stage setting that surrounds the music with a period atmosphere. For this concert, the robes simply seemed appropriate, blending in with the music just as the period instruments blended with the vocal music.

Recorder masquerading as trumpet

Recorder virtuoso Rainer Beckman constituted the entire wind section in the instrumental ensemble. Beckman had to compete with five strings, a theorbo and a harpsichord, but he held his own and added a bright, fully audible thread to the instrumental texture. In one or two places, he even managed to create a suggestion of trumpet music.

The concert concluded with Pachelbel's German-language setting of "O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands." That would have ended the evening on a satisfyingly upbeat mood, but Radu added a twist that moved the finish to a higher level: He had the choir repeat the Thomas Tallis for its encore, and the concert ended, as it began, with a combination of words and text that created an island of total peace.