Angeles Chorale Presents Brisk, No-Nonsense ‘Messiah’

The Glendale Symphony is back from the financial brink. But, like a recovering patient still nervous about going out in public, it began its three-concert 74th season Saturday night gingerly, without its new music director, Sidney Weiss, and presumably without a fair number of its musicians.

In fact, the Glendale Symphony on stage at the Alex Theatre was a chamber orchestra sharing a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” with the Angeles Chorale, a volunteer chorus in Northridge, and its conductor, Donald Neuen. The musicians are good freelancers and they played expertly. But it wasn’t their show nearly as much as the chorus’.

Neuen is an exacting conductor and an organization man. He lays down laws--no ornamentation, no double-dotting of rhythms. There are seven types of choruses in the “Messiah,” he states in the program notes, and he is determined that each is done in exactly the right category. No nonsense.

This approach works extremely well with the chorus. They are enthusiastic, hard-working singers. And with a baton technique that seems to bark out orders, Neuen keeps them in line. Many numbers were very fast and stirring, the chorus impressively loud or impressively soft, as called for. There was, however, less finesse for anything in between.

The result was a “Messiah” of fire and brimstone, which could not have made it particularly easy on the vocal soloists. Soprano Kerry O’Brien, alto Teresa Brown, tenor Randall Black and bass Wayne Shepperd sounded as tense as first-day Marine recruits. Each had good phrases and less secure ones. Shepperd’s “The trumpet shall sound” came off the best, because it best suited Neuen’s own oracular spirit. Timothy Divers played the solo trumpet part without flaw. But how much more ecstatic baritone and trumpet might have sounded if they hadn’t had to march quite so stiffly.

The orchestra, which henceforth devotes itself only to what it calls “timeless classics,” has its first concerts under Weiss in March and May.