MUSIC REVIEWS : Adept Cape Cod Chorus Sings at St. James

Gloriae Dei Cantores, 37-strong and conducted by Elizabeth Patterson, visited Los Angeles on Wednesday night as part of a “North American Gateway Concert Tour.”

Performing in St. James Episcopal Church in the mid-Wilshire area, the professional a cappella chorus from Cape Cod sang a program of Gregorian chant and works by Palestrina, Josef Rheinberger, Rachmaninoff and Gerald Near with seamless ensemble, seductive phrasing and surprising dynamic range.

Although they sounded hard and nasal in three Palestrina motets and four Gregorian chants, the singers soon adjusted to the church’s acoustics; by the Rheinberger Mass, Opus 109, that followed, they were producing a sound of great physical beauty limited only by slight difficulties in their highest and lowest registers.

And if their certain sameness of sound was appropriate for most of the program--particularly Gerald Near’s pleasant if anonymous 12-minute “Resurrexi,” composed in 1989 on a commission from the chorus, those familiar with Russian performances of Rachmaninoff’s dark and brooding “Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom” and his Vespers, Opus 37, might find Gloriae Dei Cantores’ performance of excerpts from the two works well-meaning but lacking in weight and an authentically Slavic sound.

To cleanse the palate, like cheese at a wine-tasting, a brass ensemble from the chorus, positioned at opposite ends of the church, made a remarkable and wonderful noise with music by Giovanni Gabrieli before the Rheinberger and after the Rachmaninoff.