AMID FISCAL DISTRESS : GUTIERREZ PLAYS RARE SCHUMAN

The modest audience at Royce Hall, UCLA, heard some nice things Thursday night, thanks to the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Gerard Schwarz, the ex-music-director-to-be, ventured two samplings of unfamiliar Americana, found unusual vehicles both for a stellar piano soloist and a resident violinist, and sent everyone home happy with a warm-hearted, elegant performance of Mozart’s Symphony No. 28.

Still, the program could not be regarded as unalloyed music to the ears. Before the initial downbeat, Robert J. Elias, executive director of the orchestra, made an ominous little speech. A warning that seconded the unsettling motions was inserted in the program magazine.

The Chamber Orchestra, it seems, is in trouble. “At this moment,” according to the official alarm, “the financial situation is severe enough to jeopardize plans for next season.”

Elias urged his flock to dig deeper into its collective pocket. The flock applauded enthusiastically.

The fragile Muse, as is customary in our all-American democracy, must go begging. After 16 years of general success and vicissitudinous growth, one of the world’s finest chamber ensembles faces an uncertain future. It gives one pause.

One must wonder if our artistic fortunes are being spread too thin. One must wonder if we have overestimated local artistic appetites. One must wonder if there can be such a thing as too much music in a governmental system that provides so little money.

And one must be thankful for the good concerts that survive against the odds. The concert in question could not be regarded as a revelation or as a source of constant uplift. Nevertheless, it did offer some valid stimulation, it did pose some interesting challenges, and it did confirm--as if confirmation were still necessary--that the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra remains an instrument of extraordinary suavity, versatility and finesse.

The obvious focal point was the Piano Concerto of William Schuman, written in 1942, first played (by Rosalyn Tureck) in 1943, and seldom heard in the interim. It is a bold, thorny, gutsy piece, fierce in its motor energy, halting in its lyricism, bloated in its thwarted attempts at orchestral majesty. Schuman, who received an honorary Pulitzer Prize this year on the occasion of his 75th birthday, stressed rigor and something close to gargantuan frenzy in this relatively old-fashioned keyboard challenge. He had little time for sentimental indulgence.

Horacio Gutierrez managed the piano bulldozing with careful point and heroic sweep. He imparted maximum clarity to the sometimes gnarled rhetoric, and relentless force and high-velocity to the propulsive rhythmic maneuvers. He brought brilliance to an often ungrateful challenge, for which Schwarz provided precise, fervent support.

The second soloist of the evening was Daniel Shindaryov, formerly concertmaster of the Bolshoi Ballet and now one of the first violins in the L.A. Chamber Orchestra. Confronting a rather vulgar Fantasia on themes from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Le Coq d’Or,” as arranged by Zinovy Gorokhovsky, he capitalized on deft bravura flourishes, ample character definition and opulent tone.

The program opened with the premiere of Serenade, Opus 68, by Frank Campo, a stalwart on the faculty at Cal State Northridge. It turned out to be neat, gentle and well-crafted--an amiable if rather innocuous essay in hand-me-down Impressionism.