MUSIC REVIEWS : Combined O.C. Chorales Prove Pessimists Wrong : Music: Saddleback Master and Bel Canto deliver technically respectable reading of Brahms’ ‘Deutsches’ Requiem in Laguna Hills church.

Take one masterwork the length and depth of Brahms’ “Deutsches” Requiem. Join two choirs that have trained under different directors. Limit practice time to a single, joint choral rehearsal before adding the orchestra, and back it all with an instrumental ensemble of free-lancers. The prognosis for the outcome would seem poor.

But pessimists would have received a welcome surprise Sunday afternoon at Lake Hills Community Church--a well-considered interpretation convincingly delivered by the combined Saddleback Master Chorale and Chorale Bel Canto.

Some of the expected flaws did surface--including occasional lapses in sectional balance and focus, and in coordination between chorus and orchestra. Moreover, a first attempt at the introduction to the fifth movement had to be aborted.

Still, conductor Alvin Brightbill--who normally heads the Saddleback Master Chorale, while the Chorale Bel Canto works under Stephen Gothold--led his forces in a technically respectable, attentive reading, sympathetic both to the meaning of the text and to the unfolding of a musical idea.

Soprano Mary Rawcliffe offered a clear, unaffected solo, true to the consoling nature of the fifth-movement passages from John, Ecclesiastes and Isaiah. However, bass-baritone Michel Warren Bell seemed to have less understanding of Brahms’ scriptural assignments, applying the same commanding declamatory style to both solos. As a result, his first role--taken from Psalm No. 39, “Lord teach me the measure of my days . . . “--missed a searching humility, while his second--from I Corinthians, “Behold, I tell you a secret, we shall not all die . . . “--emerged more threatening than hopeful.

Nina Hinson began the program with an engrossing performance of Brahms’ “Alto” Rhapsody, communicating, in turn, the agonizing self-searching and the reconciliatory faith of Goethe’s protagonist in “Winter Journey in the Harz Mountains.” Hinson permitted herself no extra-musical gestures, hardly even shifting her stance. She held sway through a full-bodied voice and an unquestionable musical authority.