A new symphonic oratorio is good news to lovers of choral music because this large-scale musical animal is an endangered species. Since it calls for full orchestra, large chorus, and vocal soloists, only a new opera is more demanding of resources and intensive rehearsal preparation. Although the last thirty years have seen an explosion of new choral music, nearly all of it has been written for a cappella chorus or for liturgical functions that employ rather modest instrumental accompaniment.

On Friday (April 25) the San Diego Symphony and San Diego Master Chorale gave the world premeire of Daniel Kellogg’s Biblical oratorio “The Fiery Furnace” at Copley Hall, a work of no small aspirations. Kellogg selected the miraculous story in the Hebrew Bible--recounted in the Book of Daniel--of the three young men whose faith was tested by the despotic King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. After these faithful Jews refuse to bow before the king's golden idol, he throws them into the fiery furnace, where the angel of the Lord protects them from destruction. Following this divine rescue, the king frees the young men and yields to the authority of the God of Israel.

Kellogg followed the conventions of dramatic oratorio, assigning the chorus several roles: the Israelites, the people of Babylon, and the court astrologers. British bass-baritone Stephen Richardson took the role of King Nebuchadnezzar, and the young American tenor Nicholas Phan sang Shadrach, who voiced the thoughts and pieties of all three young men. The oratorio's strength resides in the sumptuous, broadly conceived choruses, written in a sophisticated but unabashedly tonal idiom whose chord structures may challenge volunteer choral singers, but would be commonplace to any jazz sideman. This is the current choral idiom of choice, found in the compositions of Morten Lauridsen, John Tavener, and Eric Whitacre, and Kellogg handles it with finesse, a trait that also applies to the Master Chorale's robust and disciplined performance on opening night.

I noted the musical differentiation of the choruses, especially those assigned to the Babylonian faithful. They were forceful, but in a dullish, foursquare way, and even some of the word accent was deliberately weighted on the wrong syllable to show how false their cause was. This called to mind the way Felix Mendelssohn depicted the desperate cries of the priests of Baal in "Elijah," arguably the greatest dramatic oratorio of the 19th century.

For the pompous Babylonian monarch, the composer crafted reams of aptly opaque lyrical hyperbole, which Richardson infused with great rhetorical flare, although I found his upper range strained and a bit hollow. Phan's tenor, on the other hand, was winning in every way, well-focused, richly colored, and supple, and his phrasing and eloquent articulation made the supertitles superfluous when he was singing. This is a tenor career to watch!

It is, however, Kellogg's orchestral writing that prevents "Fiery Furnace" from achieving its lofty goals. Much of the time, the orchestra is reduced to light and not very inventive accompaniment, and where the orchestra could have soared it remained earthbound. The orchestra's depiction of the great, life-threatening conflagration never rose above an "orange" alert, although it offered the only moments of dissonant counterpoint in the oratorio. It just was not dramatic or bold enough to hold the center of the work. The Book of Daniel describes the king's musical summons to bow to his great idol as a raucous clatter of every kind of instrument know in that ancient time, surely an opportunity for some vivid percussion thrashing and brass wailing, but Kellogg missed an auspicious cue written into the ancient text.

At the opening of the concert, Kellogg addressed the Copley Hall audience and opined that his was a highly "operatic" work. It is more accurate to say that this was a Biblical pageant rather than operatic drama. Kellogg imbued no dramatic tension in his oratorio, the defining factor of a successful opera. From the outset, it was clear who the guys in the white hats were. Shadrach was portrayed as an ernest, over-confident choirboy, who stepped into the fiery furnace doubt-free and came out unflustered. The King was a fool from the outset. This is a Sunday School teacher's approach to these Bible stories, but a look at the great dramatic oratorios--"Judas Maccabaeus," "Elijah," "King David"--shows that eventual victory comes only through struggle.

Music Director Jahja Ling chose his own Suite from Edvard Grieg's incidental music to "Peer Gynt" to complement the new oratorio, a prudent use of the chorus, whose role in this work is purely decorative. They sweated the first half of the concert; they deserved a reprieve in the second half. Perhaps it was because the orchestra was under-used in the Kellogg oratorio that it produced a torrent of beautiful, lush sonorities in the Grieg Suite. Even those segments worn out by overuse in cartoons (the sticky-sweet morning theme and the troll-happy "Hall of the Mountain King") blossomed with a fresh, almost opulent glow. Ling's meticulous attention to detail could not be missed in the Suite, although he appears at times to belabor some simple sections that his players would offer up with even more sensitivity if he were not so "in their faces" with his massive motions. I think of "Aase's Death," as a case in point: simple, straight-forward phrases that quietly sink into oblivion. Perhaps the conducting style should be as pure as the music itself for the best result.

Guest soprano Nicole Cabell brought unusual strength to the "Peer Gynt" vocal solos, sung in the original Norwegian. If the richness of her voice and beautifully-arched phrasing called to mind Richard Strauss's "Four Last Songs," I gladly forgive lavishing such vocal allure on lesser musical vehicles.