Clarity complicates Master Chorale sound

Conventional wisdom suggests that a choral music concert wouldn’t consist of Haydn and Rachmaninoff to the exclusion of anything else. But both composers made important, even brilliant contributions to the field -- and they made starkly contrasting companions at the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s season-opening concert Sunday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

In a blindfold test, you would never guess that Rachmaninoff -- creator of lusciously Romantic symphonies and piano concertos in a language that Hollywood pilfered gleefully -- was the composer of the “Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.”

FOR THE RECORD:
Chorale singer: A review in Tuesday’s Calendar section of the Los Angeles Master Chorale at Walt Disney Concert Hall misidentified the bass soloist in Haydn’s “Harmoniemesse” as Reid Burton. He was Gregory Geiger. —

It is a lengthy Eastern Orthodox service, in an ancient, austere a cappella style, that nevertheless exudes a unique air because of gorgeous textures that don’t behave in the prescribed olden ways (and make Rachmaninoff a neoclassicist of sorts just before that became fashionable). It isn’t as deep or absorbing as his “All-Night Vigil” -- written in the same style -- but it can transport you to another world.

Performing the whole piece might have been a bit much for a concert audience, so conductor Grant Gershon cherry-picked 11 choice passages adding up to about 32 minutes -- or less than half the total. Yet one felt a culture clash: the Master Chorale’s bright, clear American choral sound and the futuristic surroundings of Disney Hall in a piece that cries out for dark, Slavic-accented vocal colors in a vast old reverberant cathedral. The performance was very attractive in its way -- just not exactly made to order.

For Haydn, “Harmoniemesse” was the end of the line -- the last of his amazing total of 14 Masses and his last major composition of any kind. It doesn’t, however, feel like any more of a culmination than do his other late Masses, despite the expanded complement of winds. It looks backward to the Baroque and forward to where Beethoven was heading with cheerful vigor.

Gershon has made a solid point of programming underperformed choral Haydn over three seasons in time for next year’s bicentennial of Haydn’s death, and this time, the analytical clarity of Disney Hall was a good match for the material. Soprano Deborah Mayhan, mezzo-soprano Adriana Manfredi, tenor Daniel Chaney and bass Reid Burton formed the nicely blended vocal quartet, and the performance, though not the last word in precision or fervor, produced enough exultation to pass.