TO hear Durufle's Requiem is to be reminded of Raymond Postgate's dying wish: to have a bottle of Chateau d' Yquem siphoned into his mouth. But the large audience for Glasgow Chamber Choir's performance last week suggested he

wasn't the only one to equate death with something very sweet.

Composed more than half a century ago, it is still drawing the crowds. Yet even in the most sympathetic of performances, the music seems a very long swallow.

Encountering it so soon after Faure's Requiem in Perth was to a cruel reminder that there is nothing in Durufle's Requiem which Faure didn't do infinitely better. If Robert Marshall and his recently-formed chorus made it sound nothing if not ersatz, they at least did it in an agreeably undulating way, and made the most of its little moments of theatricality.

But the preceding group of Durufle motets were musically far more successful. Vaughan Williams's compact G minor Mass, too, could only profit from the context in which it was placed, and from such clear-toned, expressive singing.

Earlier in this somewhat straggling concert there had been samples of Taverner and Tallis, with a small masterstroke when Tallis's Why fum'th in sight led straight into Vaughan Williams's Tallis Fantasia for strings, employing the same melody as its inspiration.

The BT Scottish Ensemble, too small to convey the full contrasts of this work, played it with plenty of atmosphere. If their contribution to the Durufle was less impressive, they were hardly to blame.