A whole concert of music by Tavener raises several questions: not necessarily musical - for the music itself prompts depressingly few - but regarding the phenomenon of his popularity. Tavener is venerated like no other living British composer. On first hearing, his music is direct and at times very beautiful; many are moved by it. Yet scratch the surface and there's often not much underneath. Paradoxically, while drawing more heavily than anyone else on an outside culture, Tavener is writing some of the most narrow, inward-looking music of any composer today.

What we heard in this reverentially celebratory concert was a kind of greatest-hits selection taken from the past two decades or so. It included excerpts from two works that would need to be heard in full to have their proper, cumulative effect - the cello concerto The Protecting Veil, here with Natalie Clein as soloist, and The Veil of the Temple, his all-night vigil premiered last year.

Otherwise, we heard a succession of choral works including The Lamb, the tiny Blake setting that is still perhaps Tavener's most effective piece, and next to which his newest work, here given its unannounced premiere - Shunya, a cyclical 15-minute repetition of a Buddhist term for extinction - sounded decidedly insubstantial. Still, they did at least prove that Tavener understands how to use a choir to thrilling effect. And Elizabeth - Full of Grace, written for the Queen Mother's funeral, even offered a hint of the British choral tradition in its harmonies. Has Tavener perhaps realised that the "otherness" of Orthodox music won't sound so foreign to us for much longer?

Whatever the answer, the Byzantine domes of the darkened Temple Church provided the best possible setting, the church's own choir and the Holst Singers sounding wonderful in the glowing acoustic. And Stephen Layton held it all together efficiently. But he could probably conduct most of this in his sleep.