Master Chorale Harmonizes With Church Organs

A substantial literature of large-scale works for chorus and organ goes regularly unheard here, even in the colleges and churches where the appropriate resources are most available. In recent seasons, the Los Angeles Master Chorale has been whittling away at this repertory deficit by moving out of the organless Music Center into local churches, as it did Sunday afternoon with a smart, compelling program at a solidly packed First Congregational Church in Los Angeles.

Probably no 20th century composer contributed more to choral music than did Zoltan Kodaly, who wrote for every possible combination of voices, with and without instruments. His wartime Missa Brevis, with its climactic “Dona nobis pacem,” is a technical marvel, sung with passion and balance by the chorale under music director Paul Salamunovich and accompanied with vibrant color by organist Frederick Swann.

With First Congregational’s celebrated complex of organs at hand, Kodaly’s last completed work, “Laudes Organi,” was certainly pertinent. Swann had played the premiere of the piece in 1966 and he brought it to blazing life here, although the chorus also had ample opportunity to make its perfectly weighted presence appreciated.

To really pull out all the stops--almost literally--there was Louis Vierne’s Solemn Mass, for two organs and chorus. It was probably better balanced at the front of the long nave than farther back, but for risky gambits of texture and sonority this was a thrilling performance, firmly shaped, well sung and brilliantly accompanied by Swann and Philip Allen Smith.

Hubert Parry’s familiar coronation anthem, “I Was Glad,” sung with disciplined fervor, closed the program.