Master Chorale Gives Enlightening Concert

“Mystical Chant,” the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s latest program in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, looked to fall cannily between extremes: blind faith in the benign benefits of the so-called Age of Aquarius and cynical alignment with what one critic has called “the current boom in all things musico-mystical.”

Moving from pristine and unembellished Gregorian chant through 16th and 20th century composers inspired by chant and finally to Anton Bruckner’s florid 19th century Mass in E minor, this engaging program proved fluid and apprehensible. As conducted Sunday night by music director Paul Salamunovich, it also became joyously enlightening.

The evening’s main event, accompanied rather too loudly by a wind band of 15, Bruckner’s 1866 work emerged sometimes unbalanced in combining voices and instruments and only infrequently text-driven. Still, this often handsomely sung performance made its musical points strongly. Perhaps rehearsal time had been a limiting factor.

Of a haunting but substantial beauty, Morten Lauridsen’s recent “Les Chansons des Roses,” to five poems in French by Rainer Maria Rilke, constituted the climactic moment in this event.

Diatonic to a fault and deceptively uncomplicated in line and melody, these songs hold the listener in a mystical grip from beginning to end. Salamunovich’s 48 gifted singers, who later (in Bruckner) experienced problems of stridence in the sopranos and weakness in the basses, performed these gems exquisitely, delivering both words and feelings without misstep.

Building up to this high point, the Master Chorale predictably distinguished itself in varied music by Jacob Handl, Morales, Palestrina, Durufle and Barne Slogedal.