MUSIC REVIEW : Chamber Orchestra Performs Schumann, Bach

In the opening selection Sunday afternoon at the Orange campus of Loyola Marymount University, music director Micah Levy led his Orange County Chamber Orchestra in a sturdy, pulsating Third “Brandenburg” Concerto of Bach. First violinist Diana Halpern beautifully played a stylish cadenza in place of the missing middle movement.

The concert centerpiece, however, was Schumann’s 1840 song cycle “Dichterliebe,” sung by tenor Grayson Hirst to Levy’s string transcription. After 25 years of singing, Hirst’s still lovely voice gives the impression of being two different singers--relatively solid and secure at middle and bottom, throaty and constricted at the top.

Hirst poured on steam impressively at the beginning of “Ich grolle nicht” but dodged responsibility completely in its high tessitura climax. “Hor ich das Liedchen klingen” restricted him to the middle octave and a softer dynamic level, where all was beautiful. Hirst’s studied manner thwarted real communication, though, and despite constant reference to the score, he parted company with the ensemble several times.

Levy’s thoughtful collaboration solved none of the problems created by transcription. The opening, arching phrases were sour in intonation, a problem throughout in exposed unison passages. Disagreements cropped up where Schumann requires mere threads of intensity vibrating in the air from a single instrument.

Nothing beguiled where it should have. This was clearly the fault of the idea, not of the expert arrangement itself, which worked briefly: The eighth song profited from strings playing its muted, quick figures, and Hirst was buoyed, not struggling upstream. The last postlude summarized the problems--no magic, no breathtaking voice of a poet’s feelings--just some fine string players slogging to a final chord in an alien land.

Haydn’s quirky, charming 60th Symphony got a delightful, airy reading. The first movement featured a repeated shimmering pianissimo, with rare diminuendo, that was never vouchsafed Hirst in the Schumann. The finale, with its unexpected “Turkey in the Straw”-ish quote, passed in a flash, the whole over too soon. Mirth on and offstage proved Papa Haydn to be the day’s crowd and performer pleaser.