Clever Program Gives ‘Madrigal’ Its Magic

Whatever “madrigal” has come to mean over the centuries--and those meanings are many and conflicting--it is by now an all-purpose word signifying not much more than a composition, short or long, for voices.

Yet, the “Madrigal Magic” program, given by Paul Salamunovich and the Los Angeles Master Chorale at an unlikely (for this group) Saturday matinee in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, was not entirely meaningless. The agenda covered many bases, all of them a cappella expressions, and there was a certain magic in the air.

The presence in the hall of living composers Libby Larsen and Morten Lauridsen-- attending performances of their own works--certainly provided a spark, but canny programming also explained the successful afternoon.

Larsen’s “Sea Change” is both an effective musical canvas and a multilevel emotional journey. At this premiere performance, its exteriors proved handsome, its poetic messages less clarified. Based on poetry by Martha Sherwood and John O’Donohue, the beauties in the eight-minute work can be immediately appreciated; the texts are more murky.

Singular moments in this engrossing afternoon, conducted sensitively and authoritatively by Salamunovich, came in Rautavaara’s gripping “The First Elegy,” to poetry of Rilke; in Lauridsen’s forceful but gentle romp, Six “Fire Poems”; in Schoenberg’s tightly wound “Friede auf Erden”; and in gems by Charles Villiers Sanford, Hugo Alfven and Henry David Leslie. Even when reduced to 47 singers--especially then--the L.A. Master Chorale keeps its style and class.