MUSIC REVIEW : Levy Leads Chamber Orchestra in 3 Works

No one locally hopscotches through the repertory like Orange County Chamber Orchestra conductor Micah Levy. Sunday at Loyola Marymount University in Orange, Levy led off the program with a Haydn concerto, vaulted to the late 1950s with Toru Takemitsu’s best-known work, then veered back to the 18th Century with a suite by Telemann.

It was a bit dizzying and yet unduly cautious--there’s little need for framing Takemitsu’s accessible, by now almost-conservative modern work with pillars of the classical tradition. But it did allow Levy to capitalize on his strengths, rather than succumb to his weaknesses.

Los Angeles Philharmonic principal cellist Ronald Leonard was a patrician soloist in Haydn’s Concerto in D. Light and songful, nimble in execution, even in strength and color throughout the range, Leonard was capable of sounding plaintive in the heights and robust in the depths.

Levy accompanied attentively, and the ensemble, after a wobbly beginning, played with strength.

For an encore, Leonard gave a rolling account of the Prelude to Bach’s Suite in C.

After intermission, Levy offered a respectable account of Takemitsu’s Requiem for strings, a work that in about 9 minutes evokes restrained grief and buried protest through closely layered textures, melodic fragments, occasional astringent harmonies and some splendid spectral and prismatic harmonic highlights.

If it begins by reminding the listener of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, it quickly offers greater challenges--without making too many demands on one’s tolerance for abrasiveness.

The orchestra proved attentive and hard-working.

Telemann’s Suite in F is actually a hybrid--part violin concerto, part partita--but full of ingenious scoring, juxtaposing winds or horns and the string ensemble or the violin soloist in felicitous, fresh combinations.

Concertmistress Diana Halprin played the solos with sweetness, warmth and virtuosic ease. The orchestra, particularly the prominent winds, horns and harpsichordist Jannine Livingston, played with exuberance and security.

Levy’s conducting was at its best here--straightforward in maintaining momentum, strong rhythms and forceful attacks. Minimized were his liabilities--lack of interpretive imagination and personal imprint.