MUSIC REVIEW : SCHULLER LEADS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Invite a routinier to the podium and you are likely to get neat but bland performances of the standard repertory. Invite an adventurer, say, Gunther Schuller, and come prepared for surprises, even revelations.

Those, at any rate, are what the versatile New Englander delivered Friday night when he took charge of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra at its downtown location, the Embassy Theatre.

For Schuller’s first appearance before the ensemble, he chose an inspired program, the kind that catches the mind as well as the ears. And he elicited first-rate playing from the ensemble, the kind that lends credence to his authority as a conductor.

To start, Schuller offered an explanation of a curiosity called “Capriccio Stravagante.” Edited by Schuller, and written by one Carlo Farina, an obscure, 17th-Century composer, the piece is a small marvel.

Schuller’s spoken notes turned out to be expedient, not the usual palaver that gregarious maestros often mouth. It was important, for instance, to be warned about the string work’s subtle dissonances--lest one mistake them for moments of sagging pitch.

But it’s doubtful any would think that, since Schuller drew fine-tuned alertness from the players throughout.

No one, however, needed prodding to detect the cat-fight imitation or the sound-alike hurdy-gurdy in what the conductor called an “anything goes” piece. His clue to a John Cage silence--through which he beat time-- was necessary.

If nothing else quite matched this sensational Farina discovery, the other items on the program were just as entertaining and provocative.

Ginastera’s Harp Concerto (1965), with Heidi Lehwalder doing the solo honors honorably, emerged with all its splintered delicacy and eerie post-impressionism intact. Thus Schuller made a brilliant case for contrasting the 17th and 20th Centuries--with the former as soft, rounded or syncopated and the latter as an exercise in splashy instrumentation, aggressive tone and spikey rhythms.

The fun didn’t end here. After intermission he took up an especially expressive Haydn symphony, No. 55 (‘The Schoolmaster”) and proved himself an astute purveyor of the classical period as well.

Whether the orchestra was projecting both the geniality and feistiness of Haydn or the whiz-bang tomfoolery of Ibert’s Divertissement, Schuller made one thing abundantly clear: With podium imagination of this order, the LACO can do nothing but thrive.