MUSIC REVIEW : 74-Voice St. Olaf Choir at Chandler Pavilion

What a study in contrasts! Just 10 days after the Sistine Chapel Choir presented a narrowly focused and idiosyncratically sung program at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the St. Olaf Choir arrived Thursday to offer a characteristically eclectic, American alternative.

Directed by Kenneth Jennings, the 74-voice choir from the Minnesota college produced smooth,soprano-dominated sound of clean finish. Little occurred to ruffle the efforts, as the well-drilled chorus always sang within itself.

Which is not to say that it avoided challenges. Jennings’ charges delivered the vocal gymnastics of Bach’s “Singet dem Herrn” motet zestily and clarified its complex textures. They could also rise to moments of shattering power, as in the climaxes of their founder F. Melius Christiansen’s choral song, “Love in Grief.”

Jennings’ ministrations were not overly concerned with stylistic nuances, taking liberties great and small, being more involved with sheer sound and making emotional and spiritual connections. He broke “Singet dem Herrn” off after the first section, and even inserted Mozart’s late “Ave Verum Corpus” funeral motet into the Missa Brevis in B-flat--an arresting, if incongruous, effect.

The chronologically arranged classics that opened the program, moments of vivid Bach and affectionate Mozart notwithstanding, often seemed bland, generic in interpretation and execution. They also included short pieces by Palestrina and Schutz.

The second half, however, was a bounty of generously sung, vigorously inflected, unhackneyed motets and choral songs. Big works in every sense from Distler--the artful, evocative “It’s a Saying Surely True”--and Berger--a wonderfully wide-eared, awe-filled setting of St. Francis’ “Canticle of the Sun”--led the pack.

All were marvelously sung--clean in articulation, sure in intonation, and well-blended over a broad dynamic range. Charles Gray supplied the rich, lyrical viola obbligatos for the “Canticle.”

For Mozart, St. Olaf mustered a small, effective string ensemble and a quartet of evenly matched, light-voiced soloists drawn from the choir. Predictable but not unearned audience adulation elicited three encores, ending with Christiansen’s arrangement of “Beautiful Saviour,” a piece that has symbolized the St. Olaf Choir for generations of college and church choristers.