MUSIC REVIEW : SEASON-END CONCERT BY CAMERATA

When Ami Porat and his Mozart Camerata offered their season-closing concert Saturday at Santa Ana High School, there were hints that this was more than just another pleasant assortment of tuneful pieces for string orchestra.

The season brochure had promised this to be an evening of “Opera Masters Chamber Music”--which might, with a bit of stretching, explain the presence of Mozart, Donizetti and Tchaikovsky on the post-intermission agenda. But that didn’t explain why the first half was devoted to music by Corelli, Vivaldi and Haydn. A minor point.

More intriguing was the inclusion of a Sinfonia by Donizetti, hinted in the season roundup to be an American premiere. Yet nowhere in Porat’s brief program note was this confirmed. Another minor point.

Apart from these curiosities, there was little in the concert to stir the imagination. The Donizetti turned out to be a light, melodic four-movement work written when the composer was 28. While sonorities are handled in a similar fashion to Rossini’s six airy string sonatas, published around the same time, the Donizetti shows little of the wit, charm and melodic hooks that characterized those works by his contemporary. Despite a sympathetic reading from the Camerata, the Sinfonia’s 19 minutes went by without leaving much of a lasting impression.

The same can be said of the two solo vehicles offered on Saturday--unimportant works for cello and orchestra by Vivaldi and Haydn. Principal cellist David Speltz revealed a sure technical command of his instrument and a warm, if not expansive, tone in a Vivaldi concerto and a Haydn divertimento (the latter originally written for the baryton, a cousin of the cello). Porat accompanied sympathetically, despite a few rushed moments that momentarily turned the allegro movements in each work into unwelcome cat-and-mouse games.

Perhaps the most satisfying playing of the evening came in music by the ensemble’s namesake, in the form of an Adagio, K. 287, by Mozart. The treacherous flights into the stratosphere by the violins were handled with confidence. Under Porat’s careful guidance, the music exhibited its wonted tenderness without becoming maudlin.

Porat also managed to coax a lush sound from the strings in Tchaikovsky’s Andante Cantabile (from “Souvenir of Florence”), which served as a somber program--and season--closer.

A suite by Corelli opened the program.