MUSIC REVIEW : ‘King David’ Performed at Cal State Fullerton

Arthur Honegger’s complex, episodic “King David” doesn’t possess a natural flow of its own. But the French composer’s 1921 “dramatic psalm” got a performance Wednesday night in the Little Theatre at Cal State Fullerton that cushioned the bumpy ride into which this work often turns.

Credit conductor David Thorsen and the “CSU Festival Choir” (the combined choruses of Cal States Fresno, Fullerton and Northridge).

Thorsen led with unobtrusive mastery of the score’s myriad quirks, and the responsive student singers produced clear, solid sound at all dynamic levels. Their soft singing didn’t lose body, their unisons were perfectly tuned, and their rhythmic alacrity was stupendous.

In this showy piece, everyone in the Cal State Fullerton Orchestra ranked as soloist, but oboist Lawrance Timm took pride of place.

Perennially youthful Marni Nixon easily carried off vocal and musical honors. The soprano, who turns 60 in February, may not float her voice with quite the ease of yore--her pianissimo is awfully dry now--and she may have occasional trouble with pitch, but the compensations are many.

Apart from a somewhat fragile, rusty lower register, the actual sound she produces is remarkably fresh and round, with a blossoming flare of power at the top. Moreover, her musicianship and expressivity are still all they have been for the past 35 years. She conveyed joy and sorrow while her colleagues merely sang notes.

Su Harmon, active as a soprano for almost as long as Nixon, performed the Witch of Endor’s incantation--which she spoke over the narrator’s microphone--impressively. Electronically unaided, her voice proved too weak in the mezzo solos to carry over the ensemble, and she lacked requisite artistic authority in the Handmaid’s song.

Lawrence McCorkle’s fledgling tenor passed for young David the shepherd but didn’t cut the mustard as the mature king lamenting in the desert.

Thurl Ravenscroft, since 1950 the voice of Tony the Tiger for Kellogg’s, lent to the ubiquitous narration the pizazz of an old-time radio announcer’s over-modulated delivery, sometimes to unplanned comic effect. The calling up of the ghost of Samuel shouldn’t provoke chuckles. Still, Ravenscroft’s is one speaking voice in a million.