Wexford Festival Opera Chorus, Wexford Festival Singers, NSO/Roberto Polastri

{TABLE} Christus Part I ........ Liszt Te Deum ................ Dvorak {/TABLE} TISZT'S large scale oratorio Christus occupied the composer for nearly 20 years. A full performance takes around three hours, and Sunday's closing choral concert of this year's festival, adventurous as if was, did not extend to the full work, just to the first of its three major parts, a "Christmas Oratorio". The complete work was not heard until 1873, but the "Christmas Oratorio" was premiered in Rome in 1867 under Sgambati (a man now best remembered for his piano transcriptions) and was later heard in Vienna, when the great Anton Rubinstein conducted, and Bruckner played the important organ part.

Not much is heard of Christus or even its five movement Christmas Oratorio these days, and the Wexford performance under Roberto Polastri made clear why. The compositional manner, heavily influenced by plainchant, is indulgent and dilatory, with a propensity for repetition that I'm sure some academic will sooner or later posit as protominimalist. Liszt had Berlioz L'Enfance du Christ, in particular, in mind as model, but the sharpness of character of the older French composer quite eluded him.

Roberto Polastri didn't always manage to move the orchestral sections along at a convincing pace, though he was aware enough of the dangerous longueurs to engage in some cuts. Of the two vocal soloists, the tenor David Watkin Holmes was the more agreeable (soprano Alexandrina Pendatchanska's approach was too strongly declamatory); the chorus, however, sang attractively.

Dvorak's Te Deum, which followed without an interval, was an altogether shorter and more ant affair. The piece was written in advance of the composer's American sojourn and the music fairly brims with joyous energy.

Pendatbhanska (still fracturing some of her melodic lines) and the baritone Roberto de Candia made an ardent pair of soloists, and Polastri here secured an energetic choral response and much better disciplined orchestral playing from the NSO.