MUSIC REVIEW : Norrington’s Beethoven Fest Explores the Missa Solemnis : Festival: The conductor led the San Francisco Symphony in a didactic yet exultant celebration of the difficult masterwork.

The intersection of art and education is a notoriously accident-prone crossroads. The almost inevitable crash between the extremes of popularizing platitudes and intuitive mysteries is seldom pretty to witness.

Given the inherent perils, the Beethoven Discovery Weekend that closed the 12th annual Beethoven Festival in San Francisco this year proved a surprisingly enlivening and enlightening event. Little pedantry, much wit and even some inspired music-making were invested in an exploration of the grandeur and subtlety of the Missa Solemnis, a.k.a. the Mass in D.

The festival leader was Roger Norrington. In the last few years, the 56-year-old English conductor has graduated from the relative obscurity of Kent Opera to unlikely eminence atop the period-practice school, with a major in Beethoven and a minor in proselytizing.

In 1985, Norrington and his London Classical Players presented a “Haydn Experience,” followed by weekends devoted to Beethoven and Berlioz. Last summer, they took the Beethoven show--centered on the Ninth Symphony--to Summerfare in New York.

Norrington’s weekend-long “experiences” are baptisms by total immersion into the historical and artistic context of a major work, extending the typical pre-concert lecture to a point just short of an undergraduate course in music appreciation.

The pillars of the San Francisco weekend were under the direct guidance of Norrington--a concert of Missa Solemnis antecedents Friday, an open rehearsal of the Mass Saturday, and the culminating performance Sunday. In between were three miniconcerts and four lectures, all in Davies Symphony Hall.

The sessions got off to a soft start, didactically at least. The excerpts by composers ranging from Palestrina to Cherubini were left largely to acquire significance by association, as Norrington’s remarks Friday were seldom specific or memorably stated.

But the performances included some gems, with the heroes the obviously well-drilled and enthusiastic San Francisco Symphony Chorus. The singers launched the evening with bright-toned and finely spun lyricism in the Kyrie from Beethoven’s own, earlier Mass in C.

The orchestra had overtures by Beethoven and Mozart to itself, revealing generally crisp, balanced and energized playing, though the finale to the “Pastoral” Symphony sounded skittish. Norrington kept the singers and orchestra firmly pointed forward, seldom giving the attention to releases that he gave to entrances.

Norrington also showed a stubbornly 19th-Century interpretation of the Kyrie from Palestrina’s Missa “Assumpta est Maria,” keeping it square and metrically insensitive.

Baritone John Cheek contributed a rich “For behold, darkness shall cover the earth” and soprano Amanda Halgrimson a radiant “Come unto Him,” in German and in Mozart’s arrangements, which is how Beethoven knew “Messiah.”

In the Saturday rehearsal, Norrington nurtured his audience with pertinent and engaging remarks. He seemed much more relaxed, and gave easily understood demonstrations of specific points in the score.

He also elicited strong cooperation from his musicians in the bits-and-pieces approach. Mezzo Janice Taylor and tenor John Aler joined Halgrimson and Cheek as a reasonably unified, but remote-sounding, solo quartet.

Earlier in the day, Halgrimson gave a limpid, textually connected account of Beethoven’s “Gellert” Lieder--minus some verses--though their relevance for the Missa was never made clear.

Her sensitive accompanist was Helene Wickett. The pianist made a clear, understated case for the poignant power of Beethoven’s A-flat Sonata, Opus 110--which does connect with the Mass.

Susan Kagan of Hunter College introduced the social circumstances surrounding the creation of the Missa Solemnis with a dry lecture on Beethoven and his patron the Archduke Rudolph. Michael Steinberg, the versatile program annotator for the San Francisco Symphony, provided a wise and funny guide to points of musical interest in the work itself.

Sunday morning came the final contextual elements. Art historian Patrick Werkner gave a fascinating look at the iconography of the myth of Beethoven. The Aurora String Quartet--all members of the orchestra--probed the Opus 132 Quartet with utmost refinement and seriousness, and Steinberg provided an emotional summation.

These preliminaries left a large, though far from capacity, audience primed for the emotionally exhausting, sublime complexities of the Missa. Sunday afternoon, Norrington satisfied the demand he helped create with a limber, dramatic, exultant account of the notoriously difficult masterwork.

This was Norrington’s first “experience” without the London Classical Players. But however much he might prefer period instruments and practices in the orchestra, on the podium he is another Leonard Bernstein, dancing and miming in the grand manner little relevant to the way this music was originally performed.

Fronting the San Francisco Symphony--slightly reduced in strings--and the large chorus, his extroverted display did not seem as incongruous as it might at the helm of a period-instrument band. In any case, at the end of a 19-day festival with the San Franciscans, he had them playing with much of the taut clarity associated with antiquarian orchestras.

Norrington’s Missa Solemnis retains all of the majesty and mystery of a work still more honored in textbooks than performances. (Both Norrington and the Missa will be with us next season, though not together: the English conductor will lead his orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in concerts at the Music Center and the Orange County Performing Arts Center, while the Missa Solemnis opens the Los Angeles Master Chorale season.)

The propulsive, always musically motivated pace for which Norrington’s Beethoven is noted was a constant, conspicuous factor. Less expected was the devoted tenderness and lyric simplicity that he revealed in the Sanctus and Benedictus, and the sheer revelry of the Dona nobis pacem, powerfully contrasted with the harrowing intimations of war.

Norrington drew an impressive lot of focused, balanced sound from the eager choristers. They delivered maximal clarity in the great fugues, where Norrington tellingly stressed dance rhythms rather than polyphonic pontification.

The orchestra gave good weight in the hushed sections, and rushed along lithely when launched on the meteoric openings of the Gloria and Credo. Concertmaster Raymond Kobler soared eloquently in the Benedictus, heading the list of assured orchestral soloists.

The solo quartet sounded better in concert than in the pseudo-rehearsal. They proved strong enough to emerge with operatic pathos in the war-torn parts of the Agnus Dei, and sensitive enough to keep their essential but often self-effacing parts well integrated into the overall texture.