MUSIC REVIEW : ‘VALENTINES’ FROM SALAMUNOVICH

Stepping before the Los Angeles Master Chorale for the first time in 11 years, Paul Salamunovich seemed every bit a long-lost musical friend Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

And like a seldom-seen colleague, he was able to extract from his charges the whole variety of approaches needed in an imaginative, something-for-everyone program he called “Valentines.”

But no matter how one might admire his resourcefulness in finding four disparate works dealing with the holiday theme--Dominick Argento’s song cycle “I Hate and I Love” (1982), Brahms’ “Liebeslieder Waltzes” and setting of Schiller’s poem “Nanie,” Nielsen’s “Hymnus Amoris”--it was the first offering that earned the former associate conductor kudos.

Argento is a Pulitzer Prize winner whose music hardly has the public forum it deserves. Frederica von Stade sang his “Casa Guidi” two years ago at UCLA and now, thanks to Salamunovich, his setting of Catullus’ poem “Odi et Amo” received a positively spell-binding performance.

The mixed chorus of 24 and two uncredited percussionists, who matched their vocal counterparts in this ultra-sensitive reading, gave not only the last particle of concentration to their task but did so with great love, stellar technique and beauty of sound; they illuminated Argento’s exquisitely stretched harmonies, a reflection of the delicate balances in human bonding that the text spells out.

The same two dozen singers, with piano accompaniment by Michael Zearott and Albert Dominguez, next generalized their way unimpressively through the “Liebeslieder.” After intermission came the full Master Chorale complement and Sinfonia Orchestra for the brief solemnities of “Nanie,” followed by the sweet, optimistic outpourings of Nielsen with women of the St. Charles Choir stationed in the Founders’ Circle.