What to sing? What to sing?

I have to pick an audition song for next Wednesday. Got a call the other day telling me I'd managed to make the first cut for the choirs of men and boys/men and girls at the Washington National Cathedral, and now I have to sing for the Director of Music/Choirmaster, who'll be making the final decisions. He's a Brit with a very distinguished rèsumé, and he's only been here a couple of years, so none of my friends know him. I've been contacting old choirmasters and rectors getting letters of reference all week. I'm a little nervous. This is one of—if not the—most prestigious paid choral positions in D.C., and there are a lot of excellent musicians here. Big time competition. I heard they are actually listening to six guys. Now, I just have to pick a song.

The Choirmaster wants to hear something from Messiah. I presume that means one of the bass solos from Messiah, since I'm auditioning for a baritone/bass position. Alas, I like a bunch of the alto solos. And, just to be different, I was considering doing "I know that my Redeemer liveth" from The Young Messiah (if you don't know it, that's the Christian contemporary version of the Handel, appropriately dumbed down for the Evangelical Christian set), It has two key modulations and ends on a huge high F. (Yes, I'm kidding.) Anyway, here are the serious options:

1) Behold I tell you a mystery & The trumpet shall sound—classic baritone song, everybody does it; The secret is "covering" on the held high Es, instead of singing them wide open and pushing them flat. Very long, if you do the middle section (about worms eating bodies). Needs a trumpet to sound right.

2) Why do the nations—interesting; has some virtuosic triplet melismas and a couple of contrasting duple/sixteenth note rhythms; a little long, though, and hard for the accompanist to play.

3) Thou art gone up on high—seldom done. These days, when it is actually sung, it's usually done by an alto or countertenor, even though the very first version Handel wrote was for bass (the second version was for soprano; the alto version is the third). Kinda boring.

4) For behold darkness shall cover & The people that walked in darkness—lots of weird intervals; probably much better for a low bass than for me (lyric baritone)

5) Thus saith the Lord & But who may abide—"Thus saith the Lord" is great. The problem is the well-known version of "But who may abide" is for alto/countertenor. It would be fun to do that version (the Schirmer edition has it marked for bass), but nobody does it with basses these days. I have Handel's original bass version (it's so rare, it's not even in the appendix to the Watkins Shaw/Novello edition), and it's a little odd. There's no prestissimo section. It does, however, have an interesting brief high F in it. It might also be fun to do something that possibly the other auditioners haven't done/heard. It just seems a little anticlimactic, since people are used to the alto version.

Right now, I'm leaning towards doing either number 2) or number 5). Anybody have any thoughts or suggestions?