Music Reviews : Currie, Master Chorale Try Britten’s ‘War Requiem’

Pitfalls in abundance await the producers of any performance of Benjamin Britten’s 26-year-old “War Requiem,” a contemporary masterpiece acknowledged as such from its first performance.

The Los Angeles Master Chorale and its adjunct instrumental ensemble, Sinfonia of Los Angeles, braved the rigors, and the memories of many, in essaying the complex, multilayered work at its February concert, Saturday night in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center. In significant ways, the chorale, and its still-newish music director, John Currie, triumphed.

It was not a triumph of poignancy, or cumulative emotionalism--the kind of shattering performance this massive challenge has sometimes received. Yet Currie & Co. did meet all the challenges bravely, professionally and resourcefully. Under the Scottish conductor’s ministrations, this performance moved forward with dramatic momentum and reached its peaks with musical logic.

The kinds of resonant choral power and direct musical thrust that have seemed lacking in recent performances by the Master Chorale materialized in the important climaxes of this “War Requiem.” Vocal strength and choral force, fully potent but mellow, characterized these crucial points in the composer’s continuous and inexorable scenario. All that was missing was the fullest spectrum of soft singing--an area in which the chorale of yore (yore being the era of Roger Wagner) excelled.

Similarly, the playing of the two instrumental ensembles required by the work’s complexities displayed plangency and authority as well as transparency of detail. This orchestra has seldom performed so confidently.

Only in the choice of soloists was there disappointment. Soprano Karon Poston displayed an attractive Italianate voice and sufficient temperament for the Verdian outbursts, but otherwise touched no core of sympathy through her prosaic delivery and uneven intonation. Paul Johnson’s handsome singing sometimes achieved poignancy, in other moments remained earthbound; there are more opportunities here than the tenor grasped. And David Downing’s underpowered baritone failed to ring in this flattering hall; worse, he let few of those all-important words reach his listeners.