James MacMillan’s St Luke Passion had its first performance earlier this year in Amsterdam and has since been heard in the US, too, but it was the composer himself who conducted this UK premiere with the forces of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, one of several joint commissioners of the work.

MacMillan sets the Lucan gospel in the English of the Catholic version but, unusually, he dispenses with soloists and indeed with the role of the evangelist. Instead, he gives the words of the gospel to the full chorus, and the words of Christ to young voices, sung here by the remarkable CBSO youth chorus. Their freshness and purity of sound was symbolic both of the sacrificial lamb of God and of the hope of the Christian gospel.

The simplicity of the word-setting, sometimes just monodic, and the clarity of MacMillan’s choral writing, notably in the unaccompanied sections, ensured a touching directness of expression. The instrumentation – small orchestra with double wind – also realised some striking effects, notably in the brass and timpani, with their occasional resonances of Verdi and Britten, and the Messiaen-like organ outbursts. Duetting oboes also recalled Bach’s passions, as did the emerging strain of the chorale O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden towards the end.

Like their younger counterparts, the CBSO chorus sang out beautifully. However, they bore the brunt of the narrative – albeit often strikingly punctuated – and there were long passages where the tension inevitably sagged. And where MacMillan’s neat prefacing of the passion story with the annunciation had its counterpart in a postlude reflecting on Christ’s ascension as the ultimate fulfilment, the latter did not quite carry the sense of awe that the end of passion had achieved. It added to the suspicion that, rather than nearly 75 minutes, an hour would have been the more perfect length.