Music and Dance Reviews : Standard Program by L.A. Chamber Orchestra

Most critics and some of the public thrive on premiere performances and new music, but programs without novelty make sense, too. From our local musical Establishment, one that probably provides its share of premieres, the occasional standard-fare program can be tonic.

For their penultimate offering--given three times over the weekend--of the 1988-89 subscription season, Iona Brown and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra put together such a program, then played it splendidly. Heard Saturday night at Ambassador Auditorium, this agenda of Rossini’s Overture to “L’Italiana in Algeri,” Beethoven’s G-major Piano Concerto and Schubert’s Third Symphony proved refreshing indeed.

The stature of the music is the reason, of course, when combined with hearty, probing and detail-rich performances.

In the Fourth Concerto, which he has played in this hall before, Jeffrey Kahane produced a noble and persuasive Beethovenian statement within a context of strictly stylish and highly polished technical means. The familiar contours of the work seemed to excite Kahane’s interpretive resources; each phrase, upon its arrival, spoke spontaneously and appropriately to its place in the overall scheme.

And neither the pianist nor his alert colleagues allowed that scheme to dawdle or relax. This performance thus became both riveting and awesome. At 32, Kahane has attained a special plateau among his peers.

Brown’s oddball conducting continues to elicit wonderment. The musical results she achieves are first-rate--her Schubert Third had depth as well as ebullience, and the Rossini overture caused consistent joy and admiration--but they are produced at the cost of strange visual pictures.

The chamber orchestra’s music director--whose good looks and handsome bearing cannot be ignored--stands before her colleagues, holding her violin and beating time with her long bow, in a way which looks wild, undisciplined and undignified. Close your eyes and hear Schubert; open them and be mystified.