MUSIC REVIEW : CHAMBER-SIZE LONG BEACH SYMPHONY

In the risk-heavy business of symphonic production, the demands are for newer and more efficient strategies to draw, hold and expand audiences.

But the Long Beach Symphony and its music director, Murry Sidlin, reverted to tried-and-true methods of pleasing its subscribers at its February concert Thursday in Terrace Theater at the Long Beach Convention Center. Sidlin reduced the 75-member band to a chamber orchestra of 37 players, offered a reassuring program devoted to music by Handel, Mozart and Haydn, then conducted it all most stylishly.

As a program maker, Sidlin still avoids the hackneyed as if his reputation depended on such avoidance. (It does.) This agenda, comprising Handel’s Concerto Grosso in F, Opus 3, No. 4, Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp, and Haydn’s Symphony No. 45 (“Farewell”), maintained the difficult balance between familiarity and novelty, neither frightening the timid nor offending the cognoscenti.

More important, Sidlin and his alert instrumentalists gave performances that put all three works in their best light, performances informed in style, authoritative in tempo and thrust, and at all times appropriately gauged in matters of dynamics, contrast and inner voicings.

Buoyancy and sobriety coexisted neatly in Sidlin’s characterful reading of Handel’s F-major Concerto Grosso, at the beginning of the evening. At the other end of the program, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony elicited orchestral playing of strong contrasts and well-considered details, a performance in the overall earnest, poignant and stoic. Among other splendid soloists here were, in particular, hornists Calvin Smith and Diane Muller.

In the Mozart concerto, the orchestral principals taking the solo spotlight were flutist John Heitmann and harpist JoAnn Turovsky; they operated effortlessly as a duo, virtuosically as individuals. This C-major Concerto has often been denigrated as second-level Mozart, but its charms on this occasion needed no apologies. Sidlin & Co. provided warm-toned, attentive and clarified orchestral support.