MUSIC REVIEW : Brown Leads Group in Batonless Program

Iona Brown, the estimable music director, likes to fiddle while the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra plays.

She sits at the first violinist’s chair, bobs her head, sends subtle as well as not-so-subtle signals to her colleagues with her eyes and, when not otherwise occupied, waves her bow in the air. She is very resourceful.

It is amazing how well her system works. Without expending too much fuss or fury, she can keep the tempos propulsive, define dynamic contrasts, dispatch entrance and cut-off cues, reinforce accents.

There may be a certain loss in spontaneity. The real interpreting must take place, and get frozen, during rehearsals. Absolute precision, moreover, can be slighted in the democratic process. Still, the heightened spirit of communal concentration and cohesion is affecting.

It is especially affecting when the repertory legitimately accommodates this unusual approach to music-making. Unfortunately, the repertory wasn’t always all that accommodating Tuesday night at Ambassador Auditorium.

Only two pieces on the program, Purcell’s G-minor Chaconne and Albinoni’s D-minor Oboe Concerto, suggested that the attentions of a bona fide, undistracted, two-handed, up-front conductor with a baton were superfluous. The rest of the agenda, a UK/LA Festival survey of 20th-Century Britons, left the impression that a more active maestro or maestra could have made even better music.

Any decent orchestra can play decently without the benefit of a conventional leader. The NBC Symphony, it may be recalled, played a fine tribute to the late Arturo Toscanini with the podium symbolically empty.

On occasions such as this, the instrumentalists take special care to listen to each other. They begin together, stay together, end together. It is enough.

It isn’t necessarily enough, however, in music that requires subtle shifts of mood, balance and focus, in music where the textures can get thick and the lines can get tangled, in challenges where expressive thrust is really a vital consideration.

After a particularly stylish performance of the Purcell, replete with dotted rhythms and an ethereal pianissimo ending, Brown turned appreciatively if not very neatly to the lush indulgences of Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants of “Dives and Lazarus.” In Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, Opus 47, the mighty fugue got scrambled a bit on the way to an ultra-passionate final cadence. In Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, the contours of high drama were compromised by rough edges.

The problems were never severe. Still, one had to question the advantage of a basic-Baroque technique in music written after 1900.

Allan Vogel served as soloist in the charming Albinoni concerto, written ca. 1720. He exulted in sweet, poised, pliant tone, in artful phrases floated on endless breath. Brown and friends provided exceptionally elegant support. Everything was under control.