Maestro Grant Gershon dared, once in 2003 and again last weekend at the Walt Disney Concert Hall before a packed house. It seems the tag-team of Handel & Mozart are something of a draw. Choosing to perform the Mozart version entails making choices: does one really double the size of the orchestra playing modern instruments in this day of shrinking budgets? and if one makes that choice, one is compelled to employ a balancing number of singers. A viable alternative is an original Baroque performance by Handel with the stylish Musica Angelica band and chamber choir. But Maestro Gershon opted for the late-Classical and almost Romantic era Mozart version.

And there be land mines: do the soloists remain devoted to a 50-year evolution of Baroque performance practice and employ now "standard" ornamentation? What to do with dotted rhythms, often performed in double-dotted, hard-edged and pulsating phrases? How fast should the great variety of choruses be taken, given the au courant need for speed, or should one compromise and revert back in the direction of the dreary, slow (and therefore more "holy") tempi of the 1950s?

So how was the performance, you ask?

Magnificent. Moving. Almost convincing, and a quantum leap better than the 2003 performance heard in Royce Hall seven seasons ago. So why almost convincing? Those land mines rose up now and then to trip even the best of the best. Maestro Gershon, having chosen the gritty double-dotted option, occasionally imposed a decidedly un-Classical era rubato mid-phrase, resulting in double-dotted notes flying out of chorus and orchestra alike with an occasional awkward decoupling of sonorities, especially at cadences; but with other movement endings, he chose to zip them up at tempo, a la Classical style. It had to be confusing.

Fortunately, the Los Angeles Master Chorale was in all its most robust, collective glory, occupying the lowered choral benches to the last place and providing a totally solid and convincing performance. Past Master Chorale performances of “Messiah” in its more or less traditional style, would expose weaknesses in the sopranos due to the unrelentingly high tessitura, which by the Hallelujah Chorus would have worn them to something approximating frazzle. Maestro Gershon has populated every section with first-rate voices, and kept the average age in the sopranos to an adult minimum.

The soloists on this happy occasion, listed in order of appearance, were equal to their respective tasks: Jon Lee Keenan (tenor), Tracy Van Fleet (alto), Steve Pence (bass) and Deborah Mayhan (soprano) were perfection. One wishes these four individuals, who are never tasked by either Handel or Mozart to sing as a quartet in "Messiah" might have been the quartet in Mozart's Requiem that opened the season. The blend and balance would have been perfect. Maybe next time.
 

For tickets to other Los Angeles Master Chorale concerts, call (213) 972-7211 or visit www.lamc.org
 

Douglas Neslund is Classical Voice correspondent and a noted voice/choral teacher in Los Angeles.