CURRIE PUTS HIS STAMP ON L.A. CHORALE

John Currie, the new director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, waves goodby to an associate at the Music Center offices and jokes, while walking away, about how he intends to “electrify the Chorale associates.”

His words have the ring of laughing confidence. He seems oblivious to the cloud under which he joined the Master Chorale as its new leader--of the political battles that were fought last year in ousting Roger Wagner, the ensemble’s founder and musical mastermind for 22 years, and of the stir he’s caused by replacing roughly 60% of the singers themselves.

Obviously, the new chief is not afraid of controversy.

Take the matter of changing Chorale personnel, for example. Rather than going about it gradually, Currie this summer made reshaping the Chorale his first action. Specifically, he replaced 78 of the 125 singers who previously constituted the ensemble--an ensemble, incidentally, that received glowing notices throughout its history. (Management disputes this figure, however, with the claim that 28 members did not show up for auditions, four moved away and five refused an offer to perform as unpaid singers.)

Why the changes?

“I wanted to put my stamp on the Chorale,” says Currie, settling into a high-back leather chair at a downtown pub, “and to do that a certain revamping was necessary.

“I agreed to take the post on condition that I have absolute authority,” he continues. “I am aware of the heartbreak suffered by those who are left out, but I see professional criteria as the only thing that matters. Personnel changes were made for strictly vocal reasons.”

What those reasons were are known only to Currie, who refuses to discuss them publicly. He is particularly evasive about why he didn’t like the Chorale’s “old” sound, saying only, “As artistic arbiter I must live up to my obligations--do the job I was hired to do; provide the best product, according to what my ears tell me. At 52, I’m too secure to step timidly, but too wise to forget that my work is a privilege.”

As for the sound he wants for the future, Currie, who will make his debut with the Master Chorale Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, takes a cagey route: “A musician does not describe his sound in words, he demonstrates it. The public must come to hear the Chorale to know the John Currie sound as it will develop over the next five years.”

Currie, who has spent the last 17 years as director of the Scottish National Orchestra Chorus and every major choral organization in his native region, is nothing if not candid. His perception of the choral world--and of his place in it--is unflinchingly direct.

“At the risk of sounding overly grand,” he says, sipping a brandy, “I expected to be approached by the Master Chorale. . . . When word spread that the post would be open. We are a rather small family, those of us with names in the business. And it wouldn’t have been appropriate for the board here to overlook the most obvious candidates, people like myself and Robert Shaw.”

When the Master Chorale chose Currie, it got a realist.

“I’m not a choral nut or an academic who just loves the whole repertory,” he emphasizes. “I certainly wouldn’t jump in a taxi to hear Mendelssohn’s ‘Elijah,’ for instance. And I’m not a proselytizer by any means.

“Frankly, I understand why choral music is not great box office. Other than the three blockbusters--’Messiah,’ the Verdi Requiem (which he offers as his calling card Saturday) and ‘Carmina Burana,’ there’s little else to interest a mainstream audience. Only the great works attract me, and it’s on the basis of these that choral music must be sold.”

Currie’s arrival on the Los Angeles music scene has been noisy. In replacing two-thirds of the Chorale, he has overtly demonstrated that he is in charge.

Dennis Moss, a non-singer and the Chorale’s legal representative to the American Guild of Musical Artists, says what Currie has done may not not have been tactful, but it also was not illegal.

“The rights of the music director are explicit,” Moss says. “Contractually, he is allowed to make his own choices based on the subjective musical standards he upholds. Besides, singers here, as well as elsewhere, have never pressed for more security. In Currie’s case, there was also the need to judge voices for their usefulness as opera choruses (needed by the Music Center Opera).”

Indeed, Sheila Coyazo, who says she wasn’t informed of the auditions and therefore is no longer a Chorale member, says “Currie is looking for heavy, operatic voices, not the pure women’s sound Roger liked.” Basso Paul Hinshaw, who retains the same paid position now that he enjoyed under Wagner, feels that the new director “has strengthened the group by changing it. Roger kept some people out of loyalty. He valued musicianship over voices. Currie reverses that order. He has engaging musical ideas, but his obsessive note-taking approach is the opposite of Roger’s, which hinged on intense eye contact, verbal directions and shaping sound with his hands.”

From Currie’s viewpoint, however, the business at hand takes dominance over the why’s and wherefore’s of his moves.

“I must judge morale on the quality of rehearsals,” he says, “and what I hear tells me it is high. I’m not a revolutionary. And I’ve tried to retain a substantial body of continuity. But no one can know whether I’m fair or honest in a few weeks. Only I know that.”

While the issue of the Chorale roster seems to be crucial, it’s not the only controversy thus far in Currie’s tenure. The “absolute authority” he speaks of applies to all manner of things, “up to and including determining programs and deciding on guest conductors.”

While Cliff Miller, executive committee chairman, says Roger Wagner was supposed to “continue in some important capacity,” in truth the Chorale’s founder has been put aside.

“It doesn’t seem to me,” says Currie, “that an outgoing director would want to hang around during his successor’s first season and get in the fellow’s way. I know that when I left the Scottish National, I wanted to break the ties cleanly. When you go, go. But I did invite Wagner to do a program this season. The one in January, featuring opera choruses.”

As for his expansion plans, Currie says he is still negotiating. Whereas Wagner presented roughly five programs per season, some with repeat performances, the new director will increase that number.

“The board wouldn’t expect me to come here without fully utilizing what I have to offer,” he says. “As a matter of fact, the first time they sent word of their interest in me as a director, I didn’t follow up because I was just gaining my free-lancer’s stride. When the second offer came, two years later, I took a harder look. They made it right and came up with more specific proposals.”

One of the “important expansions” on his agenda for the 1987-88 season is a three-concert series under joint auspices with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, which he will conduct. As is the case with most choral directors, Currie would like to see his career include orchestral conducting. “We’re all egotists,” he says, “and are convinced of our multiple talents.”

Recently, this area has opened up for him and he has led several European ensembles of the second-rank category--the Jerusalem Symphony and Bournemouth Sinfonietta--as well as the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. He says he hopes to continue the pursuit right here, with Chamber Orchestra programs including straight instrumental music.

“At this stage of my life, I would not agree to being put in a choral box,” he says, explaining how the board was able to sweeten the career pie with these future conducting opportunities. He sees his new post “as a potentially big job” and plans to keep up the free-lance work as an adjunct.

So far, Currie indicates only a small involvement with the Music Center Opera, but he worked for eight years with the Scottish Opera in many different capacities--casting, planning, budgeting, conducting--and assisted Claudio Abbado in a production of “Carmen” with Mirella Freni and Placido Domingo. All he intends right now is “to train a first-class chorus master” who will be in charge for the upcoming Pavilion opera stagings.

Indeed, the reason Currie gave for abdicating the Scottish choral throne was a fear of artistic entrapment. “I felt in danger of becoming the grand old man of choral music in the land of splendid choral music,” he says. It was the “terror of that image, the chest covered with medals” that drove him to other climes, other musical explorations.”

But what he found, out in the free-lance world, was “just the illusion of freedom.” For all its “glamour and adventure,” Currie says he came to realize the importance of staying in one place “long enough to build something valuable.” He says he is “conscious that this is the honeymoon period”--notwithstanding the flap over personnel changes--but seizes the moment with full-blown optimism.

“What happened before I landed on the scene is none of my business,” Currie says. “These are things gossiped about at the village pump. More to the point, my opinions on how the Chorale board handled its decisions (paying off its founding director and naming a successor) are of no consequence.

“I don’t want to talk about Roger Wagner,” he says. “The future of the Master Chorale lies with John Currie.”