CLARINETIST: A NOTE OF PERFECTION

To open the 1985 season of the Monteverdi Chamber Orchestra, music director Leonard Ingrande was not too proud to borrow the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s first clarinetist, David Shifrin, as soloist in the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. The selection of Shifrin was shrewd, for it allowed Monday evening’s audience at the Old Globe Theatre a few precious moments of tonal and interpretive perfection in a musical milieu that was anything but faultless.

If there is a bel canto school of clarinet playing, Shifrin is among its finest exponents. In the Mozart, he etched a legato line of impeccably fluid grace and subtle inflection. Defying the clarinet’s congenital tendency to negotiate changes of register with distracting bleats, Shifrin traversed his instrument with uncanny skill. He made striking leaps from the lowest bass notes to pitches in his flutelike upper range, and he always maintained a silver timbre and purity.

Interestingly, Mozart’s gem of a concerto has survived only in faulty copies, a situation that has engendered seemingly endless speculation about the original instrumentation--some claim it was supposed to be played by the now obsolete basset horn--and notation of the concerto. Shifrin was aided in Monday’s performance by a specially designed instrument, one whose length and range was extended below that of the standard B-flat clarinet.

With several additional baritone notes at his command, Shifrin was able to execute the piece more closely to the way we now believe Mozart originally composed it. Even on first hearing, Shifrin’s solution proved satisfying and convincing. The whole concerto took on a new depth, and the expanded range for the solo instrument placed Mozart’s ideas in even bolder relief.

The Monteverdi players, however, brought nothing new to the work except several stretches of intonation and ensemble that the composer would have excoriated with one of his wonted epithets. This is only the orchestra’s second season, and its effort still exhibits a tentative, almost uneasy edge. Ingrande communicates an earnest precision that suffocates a more expansive or vibrant performance. No doubt his literalism aids his under-rehearsed players, but it remains an inhibiting factor from the listener’s perspective.

For the second half of his program, Ingrande complemented the Mozart with Beethoven’s First Symphony. While its final movements bristled with energy and confident direction, the first two movements remained earthbound. Ingrande only hinted at the special pleasures of textural clarity possible with such a chamber-sized realization of the symphony. The performance, however, was not without some signs of hope for future growth.

A straightforward--some might say wooden--reading of the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s incidental music to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” opened the program.