Except at Christmas time for Messiah, it has become a rarity to see the ASO venturing into St Peter’s Cathedral. More’s the pity. With its splendid acoustic and even more splendid organ, there are abundant possibilities for trying out something a little different.

The first of the ASO’s new Sacred & Profane concerts proved pleasingly different to any of its usual offerings: short, with no interval, and compered with a friendly touch by conductor Anthony Hunt, it explored interesting, lesser-heard corners of the repertoire that certainly do sound lovelier in the large, reverberant space that a cathedral provides.

Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis, written for double string orchestra for performance in Gloucester Cathedral in 1910, sounds even more ethereal in such a setting and the musicians are spaced separately as he intended. In this performance, a larger body of the ASO strings sat in the transept while a smaller group stood metres back at the altar. The effect was magical, adding a distant haze to the sound that augments this work’s deeply nostalgic character.

Keen observers would have seen how that smaller group at the altar played non-vibrato to enhance the echoing effect. So astute and effective. Hunt chose a wonderfully spreading tempo, bringing out all the sublimity of Vaughan Williams’ masterpiece. Its thick, divisi textures can be inclined to the heavy and syrupy if not handled with considerable care, and one could only admire the scrupulous purity of the ASO’s playing.

Hunt was on his home turf in this concert. As director of the Cathedral Choir (his other day job being State Opera’s music director), he is in his element in St Peter’s Cathedral. Bringing renowned Perth-based, British-born organist Joseph Nolan over for this ASO Magnificence concert seems to have been his initiative, and we can be especially thankful for that. Heard here once before in 2020, Nolan is an exceptional master of the instrument.

Fair to say, he was stunning in Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542. Along with a mountain of power that he is able to generate from the Cathedral’s 53-stop organ, he possesses an artistry that makes his playing totally satisfying. The big, stentorian chords that start the Fantasia bore wonderful heft and solidity, while the florid passages that lace them together, and especially the fugue that follows later, carried a surprising speed. How Nolan could dance his way so swiftly over the pedal notes with his feet was a sheer mystery.

One just hoped that all organ aficionados of Adelaide were present at this concert, because Nolan imparts a definitive stamp on whatever he plays.

Three six-part canzonas by Giovanni Gabrieli from the orchestra’s brass section provided additional variety, giving a taste of this Venetian polychoral composer from the late Renaissance and early Baroque. With a priority on smoothness and evenness, these little pieces sounded more modern than they really are – more Bruckner than Gabrieli – but the ASO brass acquitted themselves finely nonetheless.

That left one work, Poulenc’s Concerto for organ, strings and timpani – a real maverick of the concerto repertoire. It pokes fun at the organ, and perhaps at the audience as well, most notably in the ‘wrong’ chords that occur at the beginning and later on. Entirely deliberate, they of course have to be played with enough conviction to sound ‘right’, and Nolan executed them marvellously, applying special emphasis the second time round to make the point.

A single-movement work, this concerto disobeys the usual expectations in other ways too, jumbling up the standard three-movement format to trick the ear. Poulenc’s scoring is so thin that it all comes through with entertaining clarity, sounding almost like circus music by the end. No chance of it getting smudgy in the cathedral, but profane in the extreme, this was a vibrantly detailed performance to cap off a successful first venture in the ASO’s new series.

Another Sacred & Profane concert comes up later in the year, on October 26-27, again at St Peter’s Cathedral and with Hunt conducting. On the program is Fauré’s Requiem and Bach’s Violin Concerto in E, plus a new work by Jakub Jankowski.

Sacred & Profane: ASO Magnificence was performed at St Peter’s Cathedral on Thursday, April 13. The concert plays again on Friday, April 14, at 7.30.