MUSIC REVIEW : Pacific Symphony, Chorale Add Another Uninspiring ‘Messiah’

Another holiday season . . . another dull, uninspiring performance of Handel’s “Messiah.”

This time it was Chattanooga Symphony music director Vakhtang Jordania conducting a much-reduced Pacific Symphony, Pacific Chorale and a quartet of uneven soloists Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Certain period stylistic considerations prevailed, although the work was offered with the usual time-dishonored cuts (perhaps a blessing in this case).

In the main, Jordania enforced stylishly brisk tempos and short-arched phrasing. He kept choral entries distinct, the delivery clean, the textures light and transparent.

He maintained reasonable balance between the orchestra of 26 and the chorus of 57 members.

For all that, his direction lacked rhythmic incisiveness and revealed little insight into the expressive values of the text. There was no joy, vitality, power or drama.

Jordania also indulged in certain mannerisms, such alternating from loud to soft and back again in repeated sequences in some of the choruses, and, most annoyingly, ending a chorus with a crescendo on the final note.

But he tended to begin the great choruses quietly--although not “Glory to God,” the one that Handel originally marked “as from a distance and rather softly.”

Following vocal practice in Handel’s time, the soloists to varying degrees all embellished their lines--especially on the repeats--with trills, figurations, interpolated notes and final cadenzas.

Of the soloists, bass Stephen Bryant was the most free and creative in this regard, delivering his lines with accuracy but also with bouncy body English.

Tenor Dennis McNeil sang with taste, strength and sympathetic intelligence.

Mezzo-soprano Bernice Brightbill may have been indisposed; she sounded hooded and hoarse.

Soprano Lyne Fortin was inconsistent. At times she sang with crystalline purity, at times her voice narrowed unpleasantly. Her English could be oddly accented.

The orchestra played with some dispirited, inarticulated rhythms that could be blamed on Jordania’s conducting, and some ensemble sloppiness that could not.

The Chorale generally made a rich, rounded sound but rarely was used with sufficient impact.