NCH, Dublin. Sibelius — The Captive Queen. Walton — Belshazzar’s Feast. Nielsen — Symphony No 4.

It's been a busy three months for the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir. Just six weeks after a solid performance of Bach's Mass in B minor, the hard-working singers – or at least the majority of them – were back at the National Concert Hall, weathering the rowdy intricacies of Walton's oratorio Belshazzar's Feast.

And that’s not all: in late October a detachment of sopranos and altos had provided the wordless chorus for Debussy’s Nocturnes, while on December 14th the choir rejoins the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in a seasonal lunchtime programme.

All this would be quite enough for an entire season of voluntary choral activity, and judging by the Philharmonic’s showing last Friday, the schedule had taken a certain toll on both numbers and responsiveness.

Conductor Hannu Lintu occasionally allowed flamboyance to get the better of clarity in his communication with the chorus, as witnessed by a noticeably stray moment near the beginning of Sibelius's unassuming choral ballad The Captive Queenand some slightly frayed chording in Belshazzar's Feast.

At some cost to the darkly lyrical sections, Lintu’s fearless reading emphasised the colder orchestral colourings and neo-Stravinskyan energies in Walton’s score, making the rich gravitas of baritone soloist Ashley Holland all the more welcome.

Happily for this, his first appearance as principal guest conductor of the RTÉ NSO, Lintu revealingly objectified the orchestra’s taut playing in a highly distinctive treatment of Nielsen’s Symphony No 4 that sometimes seemed fit to burst with exalted intentions.

Concentrated atmosphere, delicacy of woodwind articulation, flurries of fierce activity in the strings, and a sure sense of the subtlest variations in tempo all contributed to a compelling realisation of the composer’s design of expressing the inextinguishable.