BBC Symphony Chorus, Stephen Jackson, Royal Albert Hall

Every year there are a couple of Proms that have a haphazard look about them, as if a fire had suddenly broken out in the BBC archives, and the programming committee grabbed whatever came to hand – a piano quartet, a couple of choral odes and a concerto for mandolin – and made for freedom. Though there had evidently once been a clear architecture to Sunday’s concert by the BBC Symphony Chorus and friends, in practice things were somewhat confused; endless personnel shiftings and a stuffed-to-bursting programme blunted the impact of music which demanded altogether simpler treatment.

Bookending the afternoon were two masterworks of French 20th- and 21st-century music – Poulenc’s Figure humaine and Daniel-Lesur’s Le cantique des cantiques – the macabre intensity of one counterbalancing the sensory meditation of the other. There are few amateur choirs of this size who could stand up to the exposure of such complex a capella writing, and still fewer (amateur or professional) who could field a soprano section capable of hitting the top E that provides the astonishing close to the Poulenc. I doff my cap to the collected members of the Symphony Chorus.

Within less than 20 minutes of music, Figure humaine somehow encompasses the entire emotional breadth of World War Two. Despair and hope bleed freely into one another in Paul Eluard’s extraordinary poems, matched for complexity by the harmonic scope of Poulenc’s music. In convincingly enunciated French, the choir gamely tackled this miniature giant, demonstrating themselves most at home in the smooth four-square homophony of Poulenc’s motet style; "Aussi bas que le silence" and "Le jour m’etonne" (with their tantalising anticipation of Dialogues des Carmelites) delivered a beautifully blended sound. Less organic however were the ebbing and unmoored shiftings of "Toi ma patiente", where the experimental harmonic language never quite achieved full conviction or rhythmic flexibility.

There is an urgency, a violence that is the emotional core of Figure humaine. It was this desperate need to testify, to bear witness to hidden suffering that was lacking on Sunday. Accurate, and for the most part well tuned, there was a carefulness about the delivery that suggested an ensemble who understood the enormous demands made of them, but were not yet quite capable of fulfilling them – an honourable defeat, all things considered.

Daniel-Lesur’s Le cantique des cantiques has become something of a contemporary classic, making this, its first Proms appearance, something of an event. If any piece could be worth sacrificing the tonal precision of a chamber choir for the massed forces of a symphony chorus, it is this one. Luxuriantly textured, the 12-part scoring begs for a perfectly balanced delivery to expose the full spectrum of its vocal colours.

Sitting high in the register, it was the sopranos and tenors who were once again most exposed. Tenors – both choral, and soloists from Trinity College of Music – were a welcome delight, but sopranos fared less well; their hesitant tone was muffled by a layer of breathiness – as if you were listening with silk scarves stuffed in your ears.

Framed on either side by fanfares from London Brass by Takemitsu – typically French-influenced in their expansive harmonies – was the concert’s centrepiece, a new commission from American composer Stephen Montague. Described by the composer as his “revenge” on a childhood of religious services, Wilful Chants’ rag-bag of Latin texts included everything from psalms to football club mottos, jostling alongside each other in an aggressively anti-religion, anti-coherent, postmodern sort of way. If Christopher Hitchens had taken it into his head to write a piece of choral music, Wilful Chants would be a fair approximation of the result.

To place such a piece alongside Figure Humaine was a disservice to both composers, but one from which Montague emerged infinitely less well. A score laden with vocal “special effects” that lurched between pseudo-primitive incantatory yellings and a ponderous chorale had more business in a Ridley Scott movie than on a concert platform, its playfulness coming off as cheap against the painful sincerity of the Poulenc. Montague’s is a joke pulled off previously and more memorably by Carmina Burana, and I’m not sure it’s one that merits repetition.

• Read theartsdesk's recommendations for the 2010 BBC Proms
• Full listings for the 2010 BBC Proms
  
• Listen to this concert on BBC iPlayer for the next six days