The season of Lent is the perfect time to schedule Handel’s Messiah. The work is mainly concerned with crucifixion and resurrection, despite its popularity at Christmas. So Spectrum’s performance on Saturday under its founder-director Ben Horden was timely.

The Spectrum choir is truly a spin-off from the success of York University’s choral groups, its 23 members all being past or present members of its music department. Horden has done well to mine these talents: he is clearly a young man in a hurry.

That also applies to his conducting; he is not the first to believe that speed and excitement are synonymous. Chorally this was a relentlessly rapid Messiah.

You would not have believed that these sheep had gone astray, they were having such a jolly time.

More seriously, unalloyed speed, allied to a nearly unvarying forte, eroded the work’s magic and majesty, not to say mystery.

The soloists came from within the choir, five different singers, for example, sharing the soprano burden. But it was too much to expect one man – and he really a baritone – to shoulder all the bass arias.

There were notable contributions from soprano Anna Marshall and contralto Hannah Johnstone, though Laura Baldwin’s account of He Was Despised was the only number to make a deep emotional impact.

The 19 Sinfonia members played their hearts out, none more so than leader Sophie Simpson, cool under extreme pressure. Lent is certainly time for a fast. But not this fast.