Music Reviews : Brown Leads Chamber Orchestra at Ambassador

A mixed bag of performances greeted subscribers to the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s Wednesday night series event in Ambassador Auditorium this week.

Seated in the concertmaster’s chair, Iona Brown, the ensemble’s music director, presided over music by Handel, Bach, Lennox Berkeley and Mozart.

Most successful in these performances was the group’s realization of Handel’s Concerto Grosso in A minor, Opus 6, No. 4, wherein a sense of single-minded ensemble pervaded a stylish, pointed and very nearly immaculate reading.

The way of the future for this orchestra may well be this chamber-music approach; here was a handsome example of how it works. Leader Brown had obviously pointed the way in rehearsals: Contrasts, textures and balances emerged clear and unmistakable.

Berkeley’s cherishable and Stravinskyan Serenade for Strings (1939) also pleased, and for the same virtues of tight ensemble, clear details, neat mechanics and close self-listening.

More problematically, Mozart’s Symphony No. 29--despite a crisp Minuet and a bright and virtuosic reading of the finale--came out sounding featureless and uncharacterized through its length.

Tentativeness marked the opening movement, flabbiness of line the Andante. Given Brown’s insistence on leading from a sitting position, momentum is not often the problem, for it is one all parties seem to work to avoid. What seems to be missing is the presence, just above the players’ heads, of an ever-vigilant super-listener, one who can make instantaneous adjustments to the ongoing performance.

That wasn’t the problem in Bach’s Suite No. 2, in which principal flutist David Shostac took the solo spotlight. For some reason, Shostac seemed to do so with inappropriate self-effacement, more often than not blending into the sound-fabric rather than penetrating it.

As a result, the total performance became strangely homogenized, its dynamic edges blunted, its details dulled and its color-range shortened. One used to think of this piece as always irresistible; this time around, it emerged less than charming.