MUSIC / Rousing singalong: Robert Maycock on Passion & Resurrection in Canterbury Cathedral

Community action may be in vogue, but you still don't expect to join in and sing at a Contemporary Music Network concert. Jonathan Harvey's Passion and Resurrection - which sent a good- sized Canterbury audience home on Saturday night with spirits high and lungs well exercised - belongs to an altogether older tradition.

There's Britten's St Nicolas with its hymns for the congregation, and then the Bach Passions, which placed their familiar chorales at those points in the drama where the tension needed a shared release: exactly what Harvey echoes when he punctuates the story with plainsong hymns. Beyond that lies the memory of medieval passion plays, one of which supplies the words that Michael Wadsworth translated for the main part of Harvey's 'church opera'.

Passion and Resurrection was written a decade ago for Winchester Cathedral, and staged by the then Bishop, John Taylor. The present tour, going to six big churches, uses a professionalised concert version, partly dramatised under Taylor's advice. In Canterbury, building and music were at one in their austerity and grace.

Singers arrive in procession, and the drama grows out of the liturgy as the music moves from unison chant into its own idiom - a tough-minded contemporary one, though the gestures within it are simple and direct. Lyrical lines for the singers are lightly but distinctively accompanied: the harmonics of a cello for Caiaphas, a Messiaen-like haze of quiet violins around the voice of Jesus. Interludes use growling trombones and percussion and give an unsettling modern edge to the story's timeless violence.

Around the hymns floats a brilliant cloud of sustained organ tone, giving the singing a real lift. A loud, obliterating cluster marks the crucifixion. Harvey takes the story on to Mary Magdalene's scene of recognition. The musical colours lighten, and the violence evaporates.

So, alas, does the drama; this long scene is too bland and static to match what has gone before. Some spectacular trumpeting and a glowing choral climax come too late, although Harvey delivers a final coup as the musicians divide and wander into the depths of the chancel to the sound of deep brass and a bell, more like Buddhist ritual music than Christian, setting out again into a wider and more uncertain world.

A stylised meditation rather than a theatre work, Passion and Resurrection loses little from the lack of a staging except in the instrumental interludes, where you have to check the synopsis to see what would have been acted out.

Its least convincing moment has Judas rushing off to the apse to groan dementedly (never mind whether people can groan while they hang themselves). This made a few orchestral straight faces slip, but in general the touring performance is polished and patient, with Martin Neary conducting the Docklands Sinfonietta and a strong group of singers - soloists all, or alternatively none, since they emerge from and return to the group that forms a chorus. They include Michael George's solemn, warm-toned Jesus and a notably intense Paul Agnew taking Pilate's high-risk melismas to the brink of wildness.

Tours to Sheffield Cathedral tonight (0742 769922); Llandaff Cathedral Thurs (0222 371236); Bath (St Mary's, Bathwick) 24 March (0225 826777)