MUSIC REVIEWS : Pro Musica Offers Pinkham Works

One cannot describe much new music these days as modest and functional. So, in that sense at least, the three works by American composer Daniel Pinkham, presented by Pasadena Pro Musica Sunday afternoon at the First Congregational Church, were truly extraordinary.

Written for a choir of middling means, with simple organ-and-string-orchestra accompaniment, Pinkham’s “Small” Requiem, heard in its West Coast premiere, is eminently useful music. The musical lines gently flow, lightly sprinkled with passing dissonances. The words, the Vatican II-approved Requiem text, comfort. Extremes of range and color are studiously avoided. Its 13 minutes would inspire neither awe in a heathen nor fear in a believer, but are pleasant enough.

Likewise, Pinkham’s five-minute “If God Be for Us,” for choir, small orchestra and organ (in its West Coast premiere), and the seven-minute Adagietto for Organ and Strings (in its world premiere) prove idiomatic, unassuming, rather plain in style--utilitarian to be sure, yet a cut above a great deal of practical church music written nowadays.

Pinkham led all three works in a low-key fashion and the Pro Musica choir sang solidly. Baritone William Adams offered a rich and pliant account of the “Pie Jesu” in the Requiem. Organist Andrew Paul Holman provided fluency in the Adagietto.

After intermission, artistic director Edward Low and the Pro Musica, now in its 29th season, took on Handel’s Chandos Anthem No. 9, “O praise the Lord with one consent,” and found it plenty challenging. But though the effort showed, they managed a fair representation of this inventive and vibrant work.