Chorale ably sings a Latin mixed bag

Conductor Grant Gershon and the Los Angeles Master Chorale offset the potential severity of an a cappella concert with works of popular, even easy-listening appeal Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The results in the Latin American-themed program were mixed.

From music heard at the Puebla Cathedral in 17th century Mexico, the audience was transported to what could have passed for Hollywood film studios of the ‘40s or ‘50s, then to tango clubs in Argentina. Always, the chorale, here at a core group of 32, sang with honeyed purity and accuracy.

Neither they nor the conductor were condescending or ironical toward the material. If anything, they were heartily committed to it. Still, a little bit of Piazzolla, for some of us, goes a long way.

Argentine composer and choral director Javier Zentner arranged four works of Piazzolla--three tangos and one milonga--under the rubric of “La Serie del Angel (The Angel Series).” They consist of vocalises rising above scat rhythms and--despite the chorale’s agility in singing them -- they go on for a long time.

The titles of each section, such as “Death of the Angel” and “Resurrection of the Angel,” suggest a seriousness that just isn’t there. Maybe the composer is being ironic.

Arrangements of folk and pop songs from Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil and Cuba evoked, for one listener, the kind of background divertissements in Hollywood films that used to use geography for local “color.” It was odd finding them in the foreground here. They’re pleasant enough, but it’s difficult to believe they represent the best of serious Latin American music.

Especially in comparison to the heavenly counterpoint of Padilla’s “Mirabilia Testimonia Tuo” from the 17th century, which opened the program, or contemporary Brazilian composer Ernani Aguiar’s gentle and direct “Ave Maria,” which immediately followed it.

Cuban-born, now U.S.-resident Tania Leon’s “Rezos (Prayers),” commissioned for the Chorale and receiving its world premiere, straddles both pop and serious worlds. It is a 12-minute setting in three continuous movements of impressionistic texts drawn from Jamaica Kincaid’s collection of stories, “At the Bottom of the River.”

The evocation of a sunrise in the third movement was gorgeous, but the first movement suffocated the text in overlapping musical lines, while the second sounded mostly like a simple holiday song.