MUSIC REVIEW : Theatre of Voices in Enthralling Part Premiere

The delights of Chamber Music in Historic Sites are many, but major premieres are not what the series is mostly about. When one does come its way, however, it is done absolutely right, as with the U.S. premiere of Arvo Part’s “Berlin” Mass on Wednesday.

The Estonian composer, now living in Berlin, made himself abhorrent to the Soviet Establishment in the ‘60s with serial music, mostly sacred. Now he bemuses Western audiences with otherworldly minimalist music, mostly sacred.

Part’s “Berlin” Mass, written for the Catholic Days festival in Berlin last year, is a characteristically intense immersion in his “tintinnabuli” style, broken chords spinning ethereally in the apotheosis of the appoggiatura. This is spiritually centered music, paradoxically abstract in means but utterly personal in expression.

From mixed voices and organ Part garners an amazing range of color and texture, from the bright serenity of the Alleluia to the eerie mystery of the Sanctus, fluttering over a slow organ tremulant. Harmonically the work is often nearly static, because it is the voicing of the chords in soaring intervallic cartwheels rather than tonal movement that interests Part.

His results in the Mass are complex patterns of organically evolving sound, which project inner essences rather than obvious word-painting. He proceeds rather briskly, the permutations of the music carrying the text forward purposefully.

The Berlin premiere was entrusted to baritone Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices, and that ensemble had the honors again here. Soprano Pat Forbes, mezzo Mary Nichols, tenor Paul Agnew and Hillier gave it a radiant performance, accompanied by Christopher Bowers-Broadbent.

Their efforts had the very real benefit of the lush acoustic of St. Basil’s Church, a spare, implausibly high-ceilinged 1969 cavern of concrete, stained glass and teak on Wilshire Boulevard. The four voices hovered in the vast space, astonishingly immediate in presence yet cushioned with caressive reverberation.

In Berlin, the Theatre of Voices also gave the first performances of Part’s “Ich eile zu euch” (in church Slavonic despite the title) and “The Beatitudes” (Part’s only English setting), and those pieces appeared on the first half of the Wednesday concert. The style is the same, the effect individual--assured and aware in the later, plaintive in the former.

By way of contrast to these recent pieces, the singers also offered Part’s earlier “Summa.” It is a setting of the Credo as paired duets, in a kind of post-modern hocket, gracefully sung here in a vocally fused ensemble.

Bowers-Broadbent displayed his musicality and the capabilities of the resident Justin Cramer organ in balanced, integrated accompaniments, but also had two solo vehicles from 1980. “Pari Intervallo” is an austere piece in the mode of “Summa,” featuring the weird effect of the tremulant in this reverberant room. “Annum per annum” is an uncommonly active set of variations, culminating in an emphatic piling up of ranks of sound on a rhythmically goosed chord.