MUSIC REVIEW : Currie Leads Paulus Work

John Currie may be on his way out as music director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale but that didn’t stop him from putting together an ambitious program for his penultimate concert Saturday night at the Music Center.

Seldom-encountered works by Kodaly and Bruckner and the West Coast premiere of a new work by Stephen Paulus made up his adventurous agenda. Currie’s reward: a more-than-usual amount of empty seats in the auditorium.

Paulus’ “Voices” is a 35-minute setting of Rilke texts for large orchestra, soprano, tenor and chorus. Direct and dramatic expression of the words seems to be the composer’s main goal. Thus, the choir avoids counterpoint and even lyricism and instead declaims the texts, set in English, in richly harmonized, foursquare rhythms.

In keeping with the poetry’s dark moods, Paulus effectively exploits the lower timbres of the orchestra. Driving rhythms, muscular brass interjections, big, thumping, on-the-beat orchestral chords punctuate the texts. Plaintive, lugubrious and hopeful contrasts dot the score. “Voices,” on initial acquaintance, is a serious, involving work, which, despite its conservative, even populist idiom, doesn’t pander to the listener.

Currie & Co. offered a mostly energetic and gutsy, sometimes labored account. Soprano Susan Montgomery and tenor John Mitchinson sang their brief solos ably.

After intermission, Currie led a forthright reading of Bruckner’s Te Deum. Fortississimos were fortississimos. Ostinatos rang out insistently, firmly. The choir shouted heftily. The vocal quartet--Montgomery, Mitchinson, mezzo-soprano Paula Rasmussen and bass Kevin Bell--belted out their contributions with balanced precision and strength.

Kodaly’s cherishable “Psalmus Hungaricus” opened the concert, with Mitchinson as the dramatic, weighty soloist, the Chorale singing solidly, and the orchestra, though generally lush, overtaxed at times in the complex accompaniment.