MUSIC REVIEWS : Taverner Consort in L.A. Debut

Context is a major element in Andrew Parrott’s ideas about programming. So when the much-recorded and celebrated Taverner Consort made its belated Los Angeles debut, Tuesday for Chamber Music in Historic Sites, it was with music from Monteverdi’s “Selva morale e spirituale” couched in a mock vesper service.

The surrounding plainchant, and the flattering acoustic of the Wilshire Christian Church, refreshed the ear and provided the kind of setting in which Monteverdi’s expressive, early Baroque gems could shine brightly.

But in practice the effect of ritual reduced to a concert abstraction proved distancing and even didactic. Essentially monochromatic performances of this highly colored repertory also did little to advance the cause.

The Taverner Consort is yet another early music group which sings choral music one on a part, a quite fashionable approach that cynics might suggest has as much to do with economics as with musico-historical aims. The clarity achieved is cherishable, but the loss in contrasts in mass and texture is not, and simply singing louder is no solution.

Having everything sung by soloists certainly missed the concerted points of the Dixit Dominus and Magnificat, which are as much about sonority and contrast as about linear note patterns. It also undercut Monteverdi’s pictorial text-setting at many points.

Parrott’s eight singers displayed a wonderful, balanced variety of vocal types, a mixed bag of flutes and reeds with a few trombones thrown in, and handled often florid work with effortless breath control and firm projection. In pieces like the five-part, madrigalesque Laudate Pueri, or the operatic Salve Regina which closed the concert--with sopranos Emily Van Evera and Judith Malafronte sustaining crushing, chromatic remorse with power and grace--the efforts reached a rare level of chamber music purity.

The chant was fluently sung--with Parrott himself intoning the Oratio--but again a true chorus was missed.

The small accompanying period-instrument ensemble, with Parrott leading from his post at a portative organ, performed flexibly in support of the singers. Violinist John Holloway got a choice solo opportunity in the form of a ripe, virtuosic Sonata by Dario Castello, which he delivered with considerable flair and stylistic authority.