MUSIC REVIEW : Christof Perick Conducts the L.A. Chamber Orchestra

There were probably no real rustics in the Wiltern Theatre on Friday night, just plenty of pleasant musical bucolicism, when Christof Perick returned to the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra with a program exploring the German Romantic infatuation with the countryside in various stylized forms.

Central to the agenda, and the evening’s solo vehicles, were eight of Mahler’s “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” songs. Perick, a veteran opera conductor, urged them with an emphasis on color and drama.

His soloists applied themselves to the texts with equal conviction and sensitivity. Mezzo Christina Ascher has a dark, but by no means heavy, voice which brightens wonderfully at the top. She sang with a storyteller’s studied simplicity, coquettish and sad by turn, and sometimes flat.

Baritone William Parker brought a big, clarion voice and an actor’s exuberance to his assignments. Unlike Ascher, he used a score, which he seemed to need. Even with a muffed entrance, though, his “Revelge” was as powerfully sardonic and despairing as his “Lob des hohen Verstands” was zestfully comic.

Ascher and Parker combined effectively in two duets. Perick kept the accompaniment pliable, though he inclined to cover both singers in the softer, lower portions.

After intermission Perick turned to the pastoral brio of Mendelssohn’s “Scotch” Symphony (No. 3). He took a big, serious, well-connected view of the work, clearly valuing contrast and propulsion.

At the same time, he proved so finicky in detail that often the foreground faded from attention and momentum sagged. The final portions of the piece were nicely characterized, but there were times in the first movement when one despaired of ever hearing them.

The orchestra played for Perick zealously enough, though with less than perfect polish. The strings seemed subsidiary in his interests, playing with dignity and slender sound in benign neglect, and usually buried in the fuller sections.

The wind contingent accepted the burden with sturdy professionalism. Individual and sectional solos received neat, mellifluous treatment, with supple ensemble marred only by occasionally ruffled intonation.

All those virtues and faults were displayed at the very beginning, in Richard Strauss’ Serenade for Winds. Under Perick’s fastidious leadership, it made an agreeable, though hardly compelling, opening.