The music of Tomás Luis de Victoria can sound as dry as dust in the wrong hands. But Jubilate! conductor Simon Whalley believes in drawing plenty of colour from his singers, as he showed when building up Victoria’s rich harmonies.

Thus it was that Jubilate’s performance of Victoria’s Tenebrae Responsories, written for performance on Maundy Thursday, laid great emphasis on the word ‘vile’ as the text dealt with “Judas, the vile merchant”, and on ‘woe’ in the line “woe to him by whom I am betrayed”. In the final section, “with swords and clubs they went forth,” really rattled the stained glass windows as the sound soared to the lofty ceiling of The Queen’s College Chapel. In contrast, “I was like an innocent lamb” sounded suitably gentle and pure.

Victoria is remarkably succinct and to the point in this music, as conductor Whalley made clear — which is not to suggest that it is all correspondingly easy to sing. The Queen’s acoustic suits the Responsories well, but at the same time it mercilessly exposes any vocal deficiencies or difficulties. Victoria includes a short verse section in each Responsory to provide a contrast to the surrounding choral texture. Here these sections were allocated to three soloists per section, and if they sounded a touch tentative at times, that was very understandable.

The other major work was Victoria’s Officium Defunctorum, or Requiem Mass, composed for the funeral of the Dowager Empress Maria in 1603. Here Whalley brought out the architectural structure of the music, with its sturdy cantus firmus, built on the plainchant notes of the Requiem text. The score is in six vocal parts, with divided sopranos and tenors — particularly suitable for Jubilate! with its unusually strong tenor line-up. The work was sung with cohesion and confidence under Whalley’s clear direction.

To add further colour to this satisfying concert, organist Richard Dawson played three appropriately registered Bach Chorale Preludes