Commissioned under the auspices of the Cheltenham music festival to mark the centenary of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, Richard Blackford's 55-minute oratorio was given its first performance on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, rather than during the summer festival itself, because of its subject matter. Performed by the chorus with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gavin Carr, Not in Our Time is about, says Blackford, "the universal theme of how religion is used as a pretext or justification for war".

George W Bush's incitements to holy war in the period following the collapse of the Twin Towers provide its starting point, while the closing section uses Barack Obama's words from his speech of reconciliation to Cairo University students in 2009. Within the 21st-century frame there's a selection of texts and hymns from the time of the first crusade, with Pope Urban II's call to holy war in 1095 mirrored by that of Mohammed Ben Zeky after the recapture of Jerusalem 90 years later.

Blackford's choice of texts is even-handed – neither Christians nor Muslims had a monopoly on fanaticism and slaughter, and religion has always been the disease, never the cure. A solo tenor (Paul Nilon) sings the Christian exhortations, a baritone (Stephen Gadd) the Islamic ones, with the soloists joining forces for the setting of Obama's words. The choral writing stems from the 20th-century British tradition, echoing Walton, Tippett and Britten, with just occasional hints of something more recent – the spare setting of Esquire journalist Tom Junod's description of the man falling from the World Trade Centre recalls Adams's Death of Klinghoffer. In the end, though, that mainstream efficiency rather dilutes Blackford's message, packaging it too easily into brassy choral commonplaces, and it's really too important for that.