Master Chorale at Another Crossroads : Music: As the chorus opens its 27th season, the search narrows for a replacement for music director John Currie.

The 27th season of the Los Angeles Master Chorale opens tonight with Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. A challenging monument to hope and transcendence, shot through with fears and intimations of war, Beethoven’s Mass will be sung tonight in a world on the brink of battle--and by a chorus at a crossroads.

The season will be John Currie’s last as music director. The beleaguered Scot gives every indication of departing without explaining his abrupt decision last year not to seek renewal of his five-year term.

But if past developments remain opaque, sources close to the Chorale have cast some light on the future. The search, they say, for Currie’s replacement is now focused on four men: locally based William Hall and Paul Salamunovich, the familiar Helmuth Rilling and a relatively unfamiliar Simon Halsey.

Of the reputed short list, Halsey, the 32-year-old chorus master for the City of Birmingham Symphony, is probably the most unexpected name.

“He comes with the strong recommendation of Simon Rattle,” reports John Binkley from Halsey’s London management, confirming that Halsey is a prospective music director. “I think it was on Rattle’s recommendation that they (the Master Chorale) investigated him.”

In addition to his work with Rattle’s City of Birmingham Symphony, the Cambridge-trained Halsey is also chorus master for the much-recorded Academy of Ancient Music, and artistic director of the annual Salisbury Festival. Son of well-known choral director Louis Halsey and a composer, he is also the founder and director of the City of Birmingham Touring Opera, with which he is currently rehearsing a two-night reduction of the “Ring” cycle.

Rilling, the music director of the Gaechinger Kantorei in Stuttgart and artistic director of the Oregon Bach Festival, is thoroughly familiar to Los Angeles audiences and has conducted the Master Chorale before. It seems unlikely that either Rilling or Halsey would be willing to abandon their established enterprises for the full-time residence here that has been at least the nominal norm, but Marshall Rutter, president of the Master Chorale board, suggests that solutions to the difficulty could be found.

None of that would be a problem for Hall or Salamunovich, logical choices for consideration whose prominent and wide-ranging careers are locally based. Salamunovich is music director at St. Charles Borromeo in North Hollywood and a professor at Loyola Marymount University; Hall is the music director of the Master Chorale of Orange County and professor at Chapman College.

Rutter also said the music director search would be different this time: no guest stints/auditions. Currie’s unexpected ascension to the post in 1985 came in the midst of a relatively public screening. It involved potential candidates--including Hall and Salamunovich, but not Currie--in a series of guest conductor/audition performances. Although similar processes have served local orchestras such as the Long Beach Symphony well--generating tremendous audience interest in the ensemble--the Master Chorale directors decided against such an approach this time around.

“We considered whether that (the Long Beach Symphony search) would be a good model for us,” Rutter said. “But if you have prominent people, it’s kind of demeaning to them, and we are also eager to work as quickly as possible.”

Rutter hopes that they will have somebody installed by next season, but does not regard that as a deadline.

“We have good candidates and we’re pleased with the progress,” he said, declining to confirm or deny any potential candidates. “It would be premature to say anything further.” The lesson from the previous search, with the late and unforeseen introduction of Currie, is that the process is never closed.

The search for new artistic leadership takes place as the Chorale enters the first season in a long-range plan, developed and presented to the Music Center over a year ago. As projected, the season has expanded slightly, from eight to nine performances in the Chorale’s own series, with the addition of another subscription concert. Subscription sales, however, are down, where the plan is predicated on growth.

“We’re down in our subscriptions a little bit this year,” Rutter said. “I don’t know how to account for that. . . . They’re definitely below our long-range plan.”

The organization seems fiscally healthy, however. For the 1988-89 season, it posted an $86,000 surplus, which slashed the accumulated deficit by half.

Its musical health will be quickly established tonight, in the performance of sublime hurdles of the Missa Solemnis. It has already been applauded this season in Music Center Opera performances of “Fidelio” and “Idomeneo.”

The other operas this season, “Nixon in China” and “Orfeo ed Euridice,” employed a Los Angeles Music Center Opera Chorus, separately contracted through the opera company. The name may have been changed, but many of the faces were familiar, as the new chorus relied heavily on Master Chorale singers.

“Because of scheduling conflicts in the rehearsal period, the Opera Assn. felt it wasn’t possible for us to provide the chorus for all the productions,” Rutter explained.

The solo quartet tonight is headed by soprano Carolann Page, Pat Nixon from “Nixon in China.” The other soloists are Scottish mezzo Christine Cairns, a frequent guest with the Master Chorale and Los Angeles Philharmonic; tenor Agostino Castagnola, a member of the Chorale for the last four seasons, and baritone Anthony Michaels-Moore, a Covent Garden singer making his West Coast debut.

The Master Chorale’s own season in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion--in addition to performances with Music Center Opera and the Philharmonic--consists of a Scottish program with Jean Redpath, Nov. 18; a Christmas program alternating with “Messiah” sing-alongs Dec. 8, 9, 15, 16; a Haydn-Britten pairing Feb. 2; the West Coast premiere of Stephen Paulus’ “Voices” on a March 2 program at which the Chorale will collect canned goods for the disadvantaged, and a Mozart program April 21.

BACKGROUND

One year ago the Master Chorale placed a want ad for a music director. The move was ordered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service as part of the labor-certification process to enable Scottish music director John Currie, then starting his fourth year with the organization, to obtain permanent resident status and keep his job. A month later, Currie made a surprise announcement that he would not seek renewal of his five-year contract. The search for his replacement has been on since.