One of the York area’s best-kept secrets is the handsome Georgian church of St Helen in Wheldrake, finished in 1779. Alongside its ecclesiastical merits, its broad spaces and lack of pillars make it an excellent concert hall.

The Wheldrake Singers, under Robin Black, have been exploiting its advantages annually for 37 years. They repeated the trick on Saturday with a Mozart programme, offering the rare opportunity of music contemporaneous with the building.

Mozart’s strait-laced Vesperae Solennes, completed the year after the church, strings together six psalms, each with Gloria. But all is forgiven with its Laudate Dominum, one of his loveliest melodies, to which Clare Steele-King’s soprano did ample justice here.

The flute and harp concerto made an engaging divertissement, not least because Louise Evans and Georgina Wells were such well-balanced soloists, the one’s smooth line contrasting sweetly with the other’s winning clarity.

The fifty-odd singers and three dozen players were at their lustiest in the Requiem, which is anyway an often bombastic piece.

The men’s voices gave the choir an excellent foundation, while the sopranos hurled themselves gallantly into the fray. The altos did what altos normally do: self-effacing steadiness.

The Dies Irae was certainly forceful, but the Hostias boasted useful shadings, concluding with a bold fugue and quickly followed by a triumphant Osanna.

Not all the movements settled straight into their stride, though the Lacrimosa eventually achieved a pleasing lilt.

The four soloists came into their own in the Recordare. A worthy evening indeed.