MUSIC REVIEWS : Cambridge Singers Offer ‘Music for a New World’

Any group that presents a “Novus Terra: Music for a New World” program the day before Columbus Day either isn’t flinching from the controversies surrounding the 500th commemoration of the Genoese mariner’s voyage or else isn’t aware of them.

Actually, with their finely honed line and sculptural sound, the Cambridge Singers and their new conductor, William Dehning, made an interesting case for cultural cross-fertilization when the programming took a disastrous turn Sunday in the unventilated First Congregational Church in Pasadena.

After period court-and-church music of Spain, a premiere and some wonderful samplings of California mission music, the program veered north in geography and plummeted south in veracity.

Even in translation, the text of the Nootka Paddle Song virtually leaps off the page with expressions of separation and fear soothed by the return of absent villagers: “It is my own people. Can it be? There, o there!” But what do these emotions have to do with the honeyed glossiness of Imant Ramish’s arrangement of the folk song?

A British Columbian composer, Ramish should come by his authenticity directly, but he prefers to smother his source materials in cloying sentimentality. At least Derek Healey’s versions of two Eskimo songs attempted with some success to preserve original idioms.

Refreshing in directness and personal sentiment, thus exemplifying the benefit of new world community on the art of the old, were two church pieces by California mission father Narciso Duran.

There may be more substance than sound to Thomas Benjamin’s “A Psalm Triptych,” winner of the group’s 1992 national competition, but on this occasion, dynamics and tempo seemed to take precedent over expressivity.

Perhaps the 40-member chorus is still getting acquainted with its new conductor. (Founder Alexander Ruggieri, who moved to Texas for professional reasons, retains the title of music director.) Hesitant ensemble and fading contrapuntal lines marred otherwise polished singing.

Accompanying the singers in the Spanish court pieces was the Winthrop Fleet--Lisette Rabinow, recorder; Scott Wilkinson, trombone; Carol Herman, viola da gamba; Michael Eagen, lute, and Marie Matson, percussion. Elsewhere, Edward Murray played organ or piano.