Birmingham has had a love affair with Mendelssohn ever since his first visit to the Town Hall in 1837. And, judging by the weekend's sold-out performance of Elijah, that love has not grown cold. The choir Ex Cathedra was celebrating its 40th anniversary by joining forces with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for a first UK performance of Mendelssohn's original thoughts on his oratorio, as performed in Birmingham in 1846. The audience was much as Mendelssohn had found it - “impressionable, kindly, hushed and enthusiastic” - and the orchestra, complete with that all-but extinct brass instrument, the contra bass ophicleide, played now, as then, with “the utmost fire and spirit”.

Elijah fans will doubtless have missed the famous unaccompaned trio for two sopranos and alto, Lift thine eyes: instead we had Mendelssohn's original accompanied duet for soprano and alto, and very prettily did Grace Davidson and Lucy Ballard sing it. The grandiose finale was absent too. But Ex Cathedra gave their all to the slow-burn crescendo of stately solemnity that characterised Mendelssohn's original chorus, Unto him that is abundantly able to exceed all.

Other meticulously researched details of the original edition will have been less immediately noticeable, especially in the light of the dramatic vigour and momentum Jeffrey Skidmore drew from his players and singers. From the Prologue and Overture, depicting a land cursed by drought, the OAE's period wind and brass instruments made the darkness still more profound. And as James Rutherford, in sombrely focused and minutely sensitive voice as Elijah, appeared high in the organ loft, the voice of the prophet was pierced by clarinet and horn playing of penetrating eloquence.

The cast seemed to have been hand-picked to epitomise a particular type of quintessential English vocal eloquence. Mark Padmore's tenor arias were plangently expressive; Diana Moore, a true English contralto, conjured the spectre of Kathleen Ferrier as Angel and Queen. And the soprano Julia Doyle tuned her voice to that of the oboe as the stricken Widow and, later, as an aptly boyish Youth.

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