Music Reviews : William Hall Chorale at Pasadena Civic Auditorium

Why the Dvorak Requiem is virtually unknown outside the composer’s native Czech borders remained a puzzle after its performance by William Hall and his dauntless Chorale, who opened their ‘88-’89 season with this lengthy, occasionally labored but ultimately deeply moving work on Sunday afternoon before a woefully small audience in Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

Among the work’s striking moments are the Gradual, intoned by the unaccompanied solo soprano--the gesture is Verdian, the melody is not; a chillingly martial choral “Dies irae”; and the exquisitely benign solo quartet setting of the “Recordare,” the melody of which would not have been out of place in one of Dvorak’s roughly contemporaneous late string quartets.

The William Hall Chorale proved admirably flexible, its large numbers notwithstanding, projecting the pity and the terror with equal aplomb, while the solo quartet--soprano Katya Roemer, mezzo Catherine Stoltz, tenor William Davis and, most impressively, bass Louis Lebherz--was up to the score’s considerable demands of amplitude and range. The orchestral strings were, however, several rehearsals short of unanimity.