Music Reviews : Bach Fest Ends With B-Minor Mass

The 1991 Los Angeles Bach Festival concluded on Sunday with an interpretation of the B-minor Mass that paid equal attention to the work’s devotional and theatrical elements.

Steering a course between Romantic grandeur and stylish compactness, conductor Thomas Somerville found willing associates in a notably accomplished instrumental ensemble, including, for the aria obbligatos, such stalwarts as oboist Allan Vogel, hornist Richard Todd and violinist Kathleen Lenski and, elsewhere, a trio of soaring trumpets led by Rob Roy McGregor and lively realizations of the keyboard continuo by organist Lloyd Holzgraf and harpsichordist Patricia Mabee.

Among a sextet of vocal soloists, particular pleasure was given by the small, sweet, perfectly tuned soprano of Holly Shaw Price and Michael Gallup’s burly basso.

Somerville’s principal challenge, as would be any conductor’s, given as large and monolithic a chorus as employed here, was not so much balance as tempos.

His temptation to accommodate the choral masses must have been great in such driving moments as “Cum Sancto Spiritu,” “Et resurrexit” and the two “Osannas.” But, happily, he opted for momentum and the energetic spirit of the music over moderate pacing and optimum clarity.

Somerville’s very slow, dynamically restrained reading of the dark “Et incarnatus est” and “Crucifixus” sections proved particularly evocative, eliciting the evening’s most refined choral work.

But the all-stops-out “Dona nobis pacem” reasserted the festive aspect of the Mass, ending the evening, and the Festival, in appropriately heaven-storming fashion.