Hall Master Chorale Takes Bold Approach to Mozart

Having ended its last season--and even spent part of the summer--singing Mahler, the William Hall Master Chorale began 1996-97 with a program devoted to a composer some consider even more difficult and challenging: Mozart.

At the opening night, Sunday in Segerstrom Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, conductor Hall and his large vocal ensemble--with the addition of the 32 Chapman University Singers making a total of 156 voices--offered the Kyrie, K. 341, the “Vesperae Solennes de Confessore,” K. 339, and the Mass in C minor, K. 427, in aggressive readings.

This was not too much Mozart, but it may have been too much--it did create a lot of loudness, some of which seemed superfluous.

In fact, Hall & Co.’s spirited singing failed to deliver the richness between the extreme dynamic levels. Mozartean transparency was cheated and crucial words emerged unclear. For a group that specializes in sound- and text-differentiation, the Master Chorale this time made musical gestures considerably more burly than expressive.

Still, there were thrilling moments, as in the chorale’s chilling singing of “Qui Tollis” in the “Great Mass” and in its tone-clarity in the opening Kyrie. The refined and virtuosic Master Chorale Orchestra played handsomely, though in some places burying the vocal soloists in heaviness.

Those principals proved competent if undistinguished. Soprano Patricia Prunty negotiated her rangy solos nicely; her colleagues were Catherine Stoltz, Bruce Johnson--deputizing for an indisposed Jonathan Mack--and Clay Roni.