The final concert of this year's Cheltenham festival celebrated the 900th anniversary of the first Benedictine community at Tewkesbury Abbey with a John Tavener commission. Set for soprano and bass, strings, bells and alto flute, Life Eternal is a meditation on the Greek words zoee eonios and is based on the gospel narrative of the raising of Lazarus, itself a precursor to the resurrection of Christ.

Tavener, while primarily rooted in the Orthodox faith, believes that in mystical form all religions are one. This new score extends further his search for a universality in music with symbolic Hindu and Buddhist references. In contrast to the simple contrapuntal lines of the recurring meditations on zoee and eonios, the words of Christ (sung by the bass Stephen Richardson) had a strange complexity, apparently relating to the rhythmic language of Hindu chant used for intoning the Rig Veda. Throughout the work, modal inflections suggested Indian ragas as much as they did plainchant. Along with the wooden and Greek bells there was a large Tibetan temple bowl, producing a gong-like shudder. The jubilant clamour of bowl, bells and strings at the revelation of Lazarus raised from the dead provided the piece's most arresting moments.

Tavener dedicated Life Eternal to the memory of the father of Patricia Rozario, the ethereal soprano he calls "my singer". The emotion was audible and her duets with Richardson hypnotic, yet the work as a whole seemed self-conscious and insubstantial.

The BBC National Chorus and Orchestra of Wales gave a rich, earthy performance of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. Stravinsky used the Latin texts to create a work of ritual praise that expressed in a deeply instinctive way his Orthodox background. In emphasising the insistent pulse of the final movement, conductor Richard Hickox seemed to point up its very Russian heartbeat.

But the most spontaneous jubilation of the evening was in Poulenc's Gloria, all quirky word-setting and unselfconscious exuberance. Poulenc was once described as having "something of the monk and something of the rascal". The remark seemed particularly apt here.