The Finale Concert of the American Guild of Organists National Convention, held Thursday night at the Cathedral of St. Paul, was a feast of modern music for organ and choir, the guild's twin emphases. The program, conducted by Philip Brunelle, involved massive forces, including orchestra, seven soloists and four choirs: VocalEssence, Magnum Chorum, the National Lutheran Choir and the Minnesota Boychoir. It spoke well to the organization's commitment to furthering the art forms.

The centerpiece was the U.S. premiere of German composer Siegfried Matthus' 70-minute "Te Deum." Premiered in 2005 in conjunction with the reconsecration of the Dresden Frauenkirche, a Lutheran cathedral destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II, it is an intense journey from violent destruction to celebration.

This is a dramatic oratorio, full of extreme musical gestures. The opening section created a dense wall of orchestral and vocal sound, making clear that this is not a subtle work, but a monumental one.

The most extended movement, titled "Inferno," included effective settings of Friedrich Schiller's prose description of the carnage of the Thirty Years War, a poem of Rainer Maria Rilke, movements from the Latin Requiem, a passage from Virgil's "Aeneid" and an eyewitness account of the cathedral's destruction.

The solo writing was not always grateful to the voice, but the soloists -- sopranos Maria Jette and Sonja Tengblad, mezzo-soprano Angela Young Smucker, alto Lisa Drew, tenor Dan Dressen and bass Kevin Deas -- handled their difficult assignments fearlessly.

The first half was a sequence of short pieces. The works commissioned for the guild's conference were disappointing. Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi's organ solo "And Hit a World, at Every Plunge" initially enchanted, especially for its delicate, almost impressionistic figures. Organist John Scott played with jaunty wit. But the overlong work ran out of ideas and settled for bombast.

Handout, Star Tribune
Sonja Tengblad

Aaron Jay Kernis' "The Love of God," set to a poem by Dante, was likewise bombastic, a progression of complex chords that did little to illuminate the ecstasy in the text.

Stephen Paulus, the guild's 2008 Composer of the Year, was represented by "Pilgrims' Hymn" from his opera "The Three Hermits." The massed choirs performed a cappella from the four corners of the space, creating the effect of the deeply moving plea swirling around the sanctuary and rising up to God.

The cathedral acoustic was often unforgiving, sound rolling around the space. But Brunelle held the forces together admirably, presenting well thought out and deeply felt performances.