Tabernacle Choir's concert resonates in cathedral

MADELEINE FESTIVAL, MORMON TABERNACLE CHOIR, Cathedral of the Madeleine, April 18

This year marks the centennial of the Cathedral of the Madeleine's dedication.

To commemorate the event, the cathedral invited the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square to open the 2009 Madeleine Festival of the Arts and Humanities Saturday evening. Also joining them were the three Tabernacle organists Richard Elliott, Clay Christiansen and Andrew Unsworth, who alternated playing the cathedral pipe organ.

The program choir director Mack Wilberg chose for this concert spotlighted the diverse and rich tradition of sacred music — from old German hymns to African-American spirituals.

The 90-minute concert, performed without intermission, opened with Wilberg's arrangements of three German hymns. As it turned out, this was the least satisfying segment of the concert, since Wilberg's orchestrations, which tend to be heavy on brass, overpowered the choir. And in the lively acoustics of the cathedral, the resulting blend of voices and instruments was turned into an indistinguishable blur.

Fortunately, that wasn't the case for the rest of the evening. For the remainder of the concert, one could enjoy the choir, and the qualities that make this choir so wonderful — diction, clarity of tone, intonation and clean and well articulated phrasings — were present.

All this was evident in one of the most haunting pieces on the program, Russian composer Pavel Chesnokov's lovely a cappella "O Lord God," op. 15, no. 11, which the choir sang with feeling, bringing to the work emotional depth and eloquence.

A set of three psalm settings by Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams was also a highpoint of the evening, especially Holst's Psalm 86 ("To My Humble Supplication"), which featured Madeleine Choir School students Deron Parcell and Jonathan Savastano.

Parcell was also soloist in the traditional Caribbbean hymn "Halle, Halle, Halle."

The program ended with a set of American hymn tunes, several of which are on the choir's newest CD.

Among these selections, "His Voice as the Sound" and "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" were particularly well sung and resonant.

E-mail: ereichel@desnews.com