Music and Dance Reviews : Mass Closes Bach Fest in Long Beach

If Bach’s B-minor Mass is the Mt. Everest of Western sacred choral music, conductor David Wilson tried to make the ascent at a trot on Sunday, to close the 18th annual Long Beach Bach Festival at Covenant Presbyterian Church. He got about as far as the first base camp.

In nods to current notions of authentic performance practices, Wilson favored brisk tempos and short, disjunctive phrasings not only for the orchestra but also for the chorus. No long, floating lines or massive architectural structures here.

Still, Wilson served essentially as a spongy time-beater and beyond that, somehow also managed to allow downbeats to drift, to the apparent discomfort of bass soloist Norman Goss and to the detriment of Margaret Michael’s sustaining of line in the “Agnus Dei” aria.

The chorus sang with careful enunciation, unsustained energy and seeming incomprehension of the meaning of the text.

The chamber-sized orchestra accompanied strongly, although the obbligato soloists varied in success.

The vocal soloists also included soprano Sun Young Kim, bright and secure, and tenor Bill Allen George, pale and cautious.