MUSIC REVIEW : Salamunovich Leads L.A. Master Chorale

Like years, traditions accumulate as institutions survive. But worthwhile traditions have to be tended, shaped and watched--vigilantly. Otherwise, like weeds in one’s garden, slatternly and haphazard patterns take over.

In its 29-year existence--its debut concert took place in January, 1965--the Los Angeles Master Chorale has not been unlike a garden, expanding and thriving in some seasons, parching in others. Now in its 30th season as a resident company of the Music Center, it seems at this moment to be consolidating its strengths.

Sunday night in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Paul Salamunovich, the Chorale’s third and current music director, led a Classical-period program displaying that consolidation-in-progress. It was an agenda of masterpieces by Mozart and Haydn, the “Vesperae Solennes de Confessore” in C, K. 339, and “Ave Verum Corpus,” K. 618, surrounding the “Nelson” Mass.

One will not find three more exposing works in the repertory. The joy of these performances lay in the ease, stylishness and variety of the singing and playing, by the resourceful Chorale and by the crackerjack, 34-member Sinfonia Orchestra. High standards can again be taken for granted in these organizations.

Inspiration is another matter. Though sung handsomely, the concluding “Ave Verum” lacked most of its magic and a deal of its spirituality. The Solemn Vespers moved briskly, in a few moments--as in the detailing of feeling of “Laudate, pueri”--touchingly, but without regularly ascending to a plateau of musical intensity from which to survey the emotional landscape.

The conductor and his forces achieved better integration in Haydn’s “Missa in angustiis.” Here, the Chorale showed its virtuosic ensemble and purity of tone beautifully, yet without masking words, and the orchestra played crisply but with finesse.

The most challenging solo duties went to the strongest of the five featured soloists, soprano Elissa Johnston, who made the complications of the Haydn Mass seem easy.

Though clearly suffering a cold, basso Michael Gallup sang with his customary authority. The others, all members of the Chorale, were soprano Lesley Leighton, contralto Kathryn Stewart and tenor John Klacka.