L.A. Master Chorale Offers a Fresh Take on the Movies

Though a traditional staple at the Hollywood Bowl, movie nights combining stars, stills and a classical music ensemble are rare at the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County. Rarer still is any acknowledgment of the use of choirs in films, making Paul Salamunovich’s season-closing Los Angeles Master Chorale program, Sunday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, a fresh and generally engaging take on a well-tested format.

If this 12-film survey is representative, we might conclude that composers reserve choral sequences almost exclusively for historical films and specifically spiritual, ceremonial or triumphal scenes. An interesting subplot was the use of Latin texts in contemporary settings as a history-bridging device and cathartic trigger.

For patriotic rejoicing, there was Patrick Doyle’s multi-referential “Non Nobis Nomine” from “Henry V,” swelling from the light, perfect unison of a few tenors into a collective flood. A more personal triumph of the spirit was made collectively manifest in John Williams’ “Exsultate Justi,” the magnificently brightened choral redemption of the prisoner-of-war camp in “Empire of the Sun.”

Salamunovich and the chorale carried off these pieces handsomely. They paid equal tribute to the darker side of the force in Jerry Goldsmith’s rumbling “Never Surrender,” which they had recorded for “First Knight.” Ennio Morricone’s score for “The Mission,” at once earthy and exalted, provided more opportunity to display supple balance and beautifully modulated sound across a huge dynamic spectrum.

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The chorale also premiered jazz stylist Gene Puerling’s coolly gleaming, unaccompanied arrangements of David Raksin’s “Laura” and “The Bad and the Beautiful,” with suave flair. Salamunovich guided rather blunt, over-weaning performances of portions of Mozart’s Requiem--from “Amadeus,” of course--and got fine work from the Sinfonia Orchestra, notably the woodwinds in a scene from Prokofiev’s “Alexander Nevsky” and Joel Timm’s rapt, expressive oboe solo in the Morricone score.

The low-tech slide projections offered washed-out images that often had no direct relation to the music. Actors ranging from Mickey Rooney to Brock Peters introduced each portion of the leisurely evening, hosted with booming bonhomie by John de Lancie.