Music Review : Mixed Program by Cambridge Singers in Pasadena

The music world hasn’t exactly been going out of its way to celebrate the centenary of Swiss composer Frank Martin (1890-1974).

Too bad. Sunday afternoon at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, the Cambridge Singers performed Martin’s Mass for Double Chorus (1929) in a manner to remind every listener of the profound substance of the composer’s output, and to do the group itself and its conductor, Alexander Ruggieri, proud.

The potpourri program, which also included Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb,” Barber’s “Reincarnations” and Irving Fine’s choral arrangements of three of Copland’s American folk song settings, was anything but giddy . High degrees of musical polish and vocal excellence prevailed, with, apparently, a tad less intense concentration available by the time Copland rolled around.

Martin’s a cappella Mass, inward and understated, offers opportunities for the demonstration of nearly every choral virtue, all of which were accepted. The tapered dynamics on phrase endings, clean articulation of melismatic passages and perfect pitch in harmonically complicated ones, maintenance of both rhythm and pitch in complex canonic sections, all were accomplished with no vestige of the mechanical or pragmatic. The music making matched the direct spirituality of the music itself.

Thomas M. Hodgman led the Britten capably, the chorus produced the quiet opening unison hypnotically and the soloists--alto Ellen Raberner, tenor Jodi Golightly, baritone Edward Levy and treble Sarah Harkins--were vocally and artistically well above average.