Music : Salamunovich in Farewell to Loyola

After 26 seasons, Paul Salamunovich bid an emotional farewell to Loyola Marymount University in the last of his spring chorale concerts, in Sacred Heart Chapel Saturday night. It was a night for the music director-designate of the Los Angeles Master Chorale to show off some formidable achievements at Loyola and elsewhere.

The Loyola choruses were sufficiently able to take on the first West Coast performance of Sergey Taneyev’s “John of Damascus,” a brooding, occasionally intriguing cantata that doesn’t sustain its dramatic punches.

Even more impressive was Salamunovich’s splendid Saint Charles Borromeo Choir, which offered a clear, warm, totally unified performance of the Faure Requiem.

Salamunovich’s conception was often refreshingly direct, without the usual ethereal floating, and he displayed tight control over a very good professional orchestra.

In a Mozart finale, the fused Loyola and St. Charles choirs produced a lush, expressive rendition of the Kyrie in D minor K. 341 and a vigorous Te Deum, K. 141.

And, as Salamunovich’s touching, parting gesture, a meltingly beautiful Ave Verum, K. 618, to close the evening.