Choral Groups Combine Well

For a first date, it was a rather harmonious encounter. The city’s two major choral groups, the San Diego Master Chorale and the La Jolla Symphony Chorus, joined forces to perform Ralph Vaughn Williams’ anti-war cantata “Dona Nobis Pacem” Saturday night on the La Jollans’ home turf, UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium. Their first date served as a practice run for the “shotgun marriage” arranged by the San Diego Symphony, which has scheduled the combined choirs for the first time in several concerts next season, including Robert Shaw’s performances of Mendelssohn’s oratorio “Elijah.”

La Jolla Symphony Chorus conductor David Chase led the cantata, supported by the La Jolla Symphony. The assembled 200 voices alternately swelled to a mighty forte or cradled a luxurious, velvet blend in hushed passages according to the composer’s prosaic formulas. Under Chase’s unambiguous baton, the two ensembles merged well, demonstrating a warm blend and a reasonable balance. Although Chase’s approach favored the grand gesture and tended to be overly generalized, the work’s lack of dramatic thrust was more an inherent problem of the score.

Written for a British choral society in 1936, “Dona Nobis Pacem” exudes that overstuffed Edwardian rhetoric that gives choral music a bad name. Although the Vaughan Williams was evidently attracted to Walt Whitman’s vivid poetry recounting the tragic carnage of war, he was able to translate little of the poet’s passion and imagery into his music. The cantata sounds not like a wrenching cry for peace, but like a bustling ode to progress or some grand cathedral ceremony. The composer was unable to resist the temptation to embellish every poetic allusion to drums and bugles with brassy fanfares and heroic march cadences.

Soprano soloist Sylvia Wen provided a welcome respite from the din with her exquisitely phrased, heartfelt invocations of the “Dona nobis pacem” (“give us peace”) litany that runs throughout the work. Her purity of sound and elegant vocal production clearly outclassed baritone Michel Warren Bell, whose monochromatic declamation and slightly nasal timbre failed to bring out the pathos and, later, the sense of assurance his part should convey.

The orchestra played the first half of Saturday’s concert, with music director Thomas Nee leading an unusual orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Russian pianist, and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy’s orchestration was clearly worth a hearing.

Less vividly colored and self-consciously transparent than Ravel’s familiar version, Ashkenazy’s approach stressed the darker side of the work with denser instrumentation that favored the bass end of the orchestra.

Although Ashkenazy did not eschew brass and woodwinds--Leopold Stokowski’s orchestration of “Pictures” relied almost exclusively on the strings--he used them sparingly. This new orchestration may not supplant the beloved Ravel model, but it makes its points cogently.

Nee opened the program with a peppy but well-paced reading of Dvorak’s familiar “Carnival” Overture.