SWEET SOUNDS OF L.A. PHIL, QUEBEC.

Byline: David Mermelstein Correspondent

For music lovers with overactive imaginations, Thursday's Los Angeles Philharmonic concert didn't occur at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, but rather in a small, neighborhood church.

Of course, the concert did take place at Disney Hall, with its blessedly ``live'' acoustics. But this all-Bach program, with Bernard Labadie leading his La Chapelle de Quebec choir as well as select members of the L.A. Philharmonic, sure didn't feel as though it was happening in a concert hall.

In part, that was because Labadie opened the evening with comments from the stage, homespun remarks placing the music in context along with ecumenical good wishes for the season. Then began Bach's solemn motet ``Jesu, meine Freude'' (``Jesus, My Joy''), with his chorus accompanied by basso continuo: a cello, double-bass and chamber organ.

Canadian beauty

This is magnificent, moving music under nearly any circumstances, but La Chapelle de Quebec -- the group has 32 regular members but augments its ranks as needed -- is more than just an assemblage of crack singers. Under Labadie's seemingly relaxed direction, they perform with uncanny precision, integration and mellifluousness.

How this sound is achieved remains a mystery, but the result is transporting.

Calling it angelic is too easy. Besides, there is something resolutely human, even striving, about this choir's alchemic timbre. These singers are believers, at least in music, if not more.

For Bach's ``Gloria in excelsis Deo,'' a substantial number of Philharmonic players arrived, including brass players and a timpanist. Two soloists also appeared, soprano Mary Wilson and tenor James Taylor. Though they made essential and attractive contributions, it was hard to pull one's attention from the chorus. In the rousing third and final portion of the piece, the voices were especially well-shaded, and the evident joy on the singers' faces proved inspiring in its own right. This work, by the way, was later augmented and became the B-minor Mass. (Ah, those Baroque composers, so good at recycling!)

For Bach's ``Magnificat,'' Labadie opted to perform the work in a hybrid form, keeping the piece in D, as it is generally given, but adding four Christmas interpolations from an earlier version, when the work was in E-flat. Such details hardly mattered, though -- except perhaps to musicologists -- for surely most listeners were too busy absorbing this heavenly, varied music, in which four soloists -- mezzo-soprano Marie-Nicole Lemieux and baritone Brett Polegato in addition to Wilson and Taylor -- joined the chorus and orchestra.

Gorgeous tones

The mixture of vocal textures -- solo chorus, solo baritone, tenor and mezzo, solo tenor, baritone and mezzo, etc. -- flooded the ear with gorgeous, and sometimes unexpected, sounds. One especially gripping section, ``Suscepit Israel,'' offered only La Chapelle's higher voices, nearly all women.

Polegato is a rising figure in opera, and his rich baritone did not disappoint here. But among the soloists, the real revelation was Lemieux, a Canadian whose dark, penetrating voice proved the only real rival to the sublime vocal sorcery offered by La Chapelle de Quebec.

BERNARD LABADIE CONDUCTS THE L.A. PHILHARMONIC, WITH LA CHAPELLE DE QUEBEC - Three and one half stars

What: Canadian conductor Bernard Labadie leads his own La Chapelle de Quebec choir and members of the Philharmonic in works by Bach.

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles.

When: 8 tonight and 2 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets: $15 to $135.

[phone] or www.laphil.com.

In a nutshell: A Christmas present everyone should embrace, Labadie's all-Bach program is both elevating and palpably beautiful.