THE choral works of Scottish composer James MacMillan are infused with an intensity born out of his deep Catholic faith and encapsulated in his Seven Last Words from The Cross.

The Northern Sinfonia and Chorus, under the baton of Nicholas Collon, put their souls into its performance at The Sage Gateshead.

The first movement opened with strings and voices rising ethereally from the silence, before shifting layers unfolded into an unsettling dissonance, which accentuated a wrenching sense of torment.

The singing of Women Behold Thy Son exuded anguish, while the third movement featured a series of sterling duos, culminating in immaculate high Cs.

The dying moments of the final movement, Father Into Thy Hands I Commend my Spirit, were conveyed by strings playing gossamer lines that sounded like final breaths.

One couldn’t fail to be moved.

The mood brightened after the interval with a sprightly rendition of Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of the second movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony, What the Wild Flowers Tell Me.

Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony was expected by the Russian authorities to be the final phase of a trilogy of war symphonies, lauding the Motherland’s triumph.

But instead, the composer produced what was viewed by many as a two-fingered salute directed at Stalin – and a brave one at that.

The mischievous, and at times ambiguous, work was conveyed with a biting wit.

It was a programme that struck a perfect balance between the intense and the joyful.