Positively glowing after recent major restoration work, Exeter College Chapel was packed to capacity for this concert of Christmas choral music – Jubilate! obviously attracts a big following.

The first half was built around Tallis’s Missa Puer natus est nobis, with organ music between the sections. Jubilate! had a neat way of attracting attention, however – instead of going straight into the showpiece Tallis, they started with John Tavener’s O, do not move. In this very quiet piece, Tavener places a choral halo (well achieved here) around an introspective invocation by an Evangelist. The Tallis Missa showed that director Simon Whalley is keen on building textures of sound – perhaps more important in this seven-part setting than absolute clarity of words. The choir has a rounded, mellow tone, with balance between the four choral voices. In effective contrast to the Tallis, Clive Driskill-Smith, sub-organist of Christ Church Cathedral, inserted Bach’s Puer natus in Bethlehem (BWV 603), and Noël no 10 by Louis-Claude Daquin. Exeter’s French-toned organ is deceptive: with its daintily painted pipes, it look unassuming. But in fact it can pack a mighty punch. Driskill-Smith produced a splendidly spiky, dancing, rendition of the Daquin.

More organ music after the interval, with Driskill-Smith this time producing some deliciously quirky reeds, plus thundering pedal registrations, in Gigout’s Rhapsody on Christmas Themes. Meanwhile the choir embarked on a very varied second half, with composers ranging all the way from Palestrina (born c.1525) to Morten Lauridsen (born 1943). Director Simon Whalley’s ear for texture was again evident in music as different as Tavener’s God is with us, and Sweelinck’s Hodie Christus natus est. To really nitpick, I felt he could have released the choral brakes a little more at times – in Jacob Handl’s lively Resonet, for instance. But the concert ended with a magical performance of William Mathias’s A babe is born – loads of choral dynamics and a joyful organ accompaniment.