We owe a debt to Mosaic - a choir founded in south Hertfordshire a few years ago - and their Director, Nicholas Robinson, for providing, for its first appearance in Watford on Saturday, October 17, an anthology of mainly 19th-Century French religious works, in the sympathetic surroundings of the church of St Michael and All Angels, West Watford.

The concert began and ended with works by Faure. In his Cantique de Jean Racine, it was obvious at once that this choir is highly accomplished. It achieves a consistently clean attack and well-judged phrasing. The middle parts are often the test of a choir, and Mosaic passed with flying colours.

The first half of the concert comprised shorter pieces. Space permits only passing mention of works by Durufle, Villette and Poulenc. The Tantum Ergo of Deodat de Severac and O Sacrum Convivium of Messiaen were unaccompanied. The choir was more comfortable with words in Latin than in French, which had something of the school of Stratford-atte-Bowe.

The best movements were perhaps the dynamic contrasts in the two choral pieces by Saint-Saens, also unaccompanied. The distinctive style of Debussy in his Trois Chansons de Charles d'Orleans was well rendered.

After the interval, the choir, with organ accompaniment, sang Faure's Requiem. This is so well known that any choir is brave to tackle it, but Mosaic sang with understanding and enthusiasm. The voices of the boy soprano James Leadbeater and the baritone David Smith were well up to the demands of their solo opportunities, though they did not bring tears to the eyes as one could wish.

But this Requiem was composed for orchestral accompaniment (though often, as here, the organ must suffice). There are passages - the closing In Paradisum, for instance - in which a triumphal note should be sounded.Of course, St Michael's cannot match the organ at St Alban's Abbey, which Tom Winpenny usually plays; but he used its resources so sparingly that one was left with a sense of disappointment.

Graham Mordue