Though parcelled up as part of their Christmas season – along with two programmes of carols and festive pop standards back in December – the tinsel had decidedly been taken down for this year’s instalment of Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s annual Messiah, led by their 2024/25 artist in residence Benjamin Appl.

Better known as a baritone – indeed the remainder of his residency will be as a vocal soloist – Appl was making his conducting debut here; and while the intensity of his earnest pre-concert introduction and focused, slightly nervy presence on stage may not quite have translated into a fully realised interpretation of Handel’s oratorio, the warm welcome he received from a sold-out Philharmonic audience will no doubt have bolstered him for future forays.

In a rather lean, spare reading, dramatic colour came chiefly from the four soloists: soprano Anna Devin in particular brought pizzazz and limpid sheen to her arias, and there was pleasing bite and dramatic tension from tenor James Way, especially in his incisive “Thou shalt break them”. Silke Gäng’s light-hued mezzo was at its best in moments of calm transcendence – “He was despised” was delicately wrought – if occasionally subsumed by the orchestra during more fiery passages, while bass Alex Rosen sang with appealing fluidity and a touch of the operatic stage.

A late protege of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Appl has likewise made a name for himself as an interpreter of Lieder, so it was perhaps no surprise that scrupulous word-painting seemed to take priority here too. To an extent this lent the orchestra’s playing a welcome sense of transparency and intimacy, but at times it came at the cost of dynamism and variety of colour, with both the ecstasy and the agony of Christ’s Passion painted in muted miniature, and those grand, surely foolproof, choruses – delivered, it should be said, with exemplary diction by the RLPO Choir – not always packing quite the wallop they ought.