Chorale Keeps Home Fires Burning

Local light or international celebrity, each of the five composers represented on the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s latest program was--in one case, is--a prolific writer of music composed in Southern California. Hence the title: “Made in L.A.”

Conducted by Paul Salamunovich, who contributed a delightful running commentary, this agenda featured works and parts of works written right here:

Stravinsky’s Mass (1948), the “De Profundis” (1950) of Arnold Schoenberg, two movements from the 1960s Requiem by Elinor Remick Warren, Halsey Stevens’ “The Ballad of William Sycamore” (1955), Morten Lauridsen’s “O Magnum Mysterium” (1994), William Grant Still’s “A Psalm for the Living” (1965) and Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Passover Psalm (1941).

As performed skillfully by the L.A. Master Chorale, either a cappella or accompanied by the Sinfonia Orchestra--or, in the case of the Mass, by a dectet of winds--these are not second-rank pieces.

Heard Friday night in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, each makes a statement, illuminates the text and holds its own in the catalog of its composer. Each has an importance unconnected to the fact that it was written in this city.

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Yet, except for the Stevens and Lauridsen items, these compositions are not notably familiar today. More’s the pity, especially given the Chorale’s handsome advocacy of every one on this occasion.

Because it came last, and turned out purposefully to be the loudest, Korngold’s splashy, cinematic Passover Psalm sticks in the mind. It is a charming, nay, irresistible work in a Richard Strauss style. The Chorale sang it splendidly, and soprano soloist Susan Mills contributed an abundance of Straussian thrills--that is to say, gleaming high notes.

Still’s “A Psalm for the Living” may seem simplistic to some; for others, it resonates touchingly on the spirit. As do the Sanctus and Benedictus movements from Warren’s crafty and neo-Romantic Requiem, which was first introduced by the L.A. Master Chorale on this very stage, in 1966. The able soloists at this revival were mezzo-soprano Leslie Sabedra and baritone Stephen Grimm.

The complexities of Schoenberg’s “De Profundis” did not faze the chorus, yet the singers regularly failed to deliver the text clearly. The same lack characterized the Stravinsky work, which also suffered from the singers’ timidity.

Words disappeared, too, in Halsey Stevens’ wonderful “Ballad of William Sycamore,” in which several instrumental soloists shone, particularly the Sinfonia Orchestra’s concertmaster, Barry Socher.