IT is remarkable how often more difficult, modern pieces bring out the best in choirs. The Micklegate Singers, now numbering 33 voices under Nicholas Carter, proved the point in their recent outing entitled Of Light and Angels.

A Palestrina motet, Christe Qui Lux Es (Christ who art light), paved the way for another to the same words by the Elizabethan Robert White. A trick was missed here: we needed to hear at least one of the two settings of the same words by Byrd, who took his inspiration from White.

But in between these shafts of light the angels got a look-in, through James Macmillan’s Tremunt Videntes Angeli (Angels tremble at the sight), written in 2002. Far more difficult, it got a much more intense performance, stunningly ethereal.

William Harris’s familiar Faire is the Heaven, to Spenser’s poetry, was more matter-of-fact, the swelling ranks of angels and archangels dramatic enough, but the succeeding climax rough at the edges: the Chapter House acoustic should never be forced. Even so, Will Todd’s Angel Song II paled by comparison, the beating of angel wings sounding like bees in a hive and its odd scraps of melody rather banal.

Rutter’s Hymn to the Creator Of Light promised more in its early “flame of fire” than it went on to deliver. It was Francis Pott’s O Lord, Support Us that revealed a more gripping, less sentimental, modernity, keeping good company with Wood’s Hail, Gladdening Light, which was thrilling.