MUSIC REVIEW : L.A. Chamber Winds Appear at Founders Hall in Costa Mesa

Maybe it’s better, after all, that musicians don’t talk to the audience before they play.

In introductory remarks for a program Sunday by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Winds at Founders Hall in Costa Mesa, oboist Allan Vogel got Janacek’s age wrong (by a decade) at the time he wrote “Mladi” (Youth).

Janacek was 70, which was miracle enough, not 80, as Vogel said.

In his remarks before Mozart’s Serenade in E-flat, bassoonist John Steinmetz thanked the audience for its frequent applause between movements of every preceding work--despite its mood-shattering effect. The musicians, Steinmetz said glibly, were “happy to receive any applause at any time.” Somehow, a few of the 148 members of the audience subsequently managed to resist the pitch.

Steinmetz also described the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Founders Hall as one of the Southland’s best rooms for chamber music. Ironically, he said this before the piece that tested the bearable upper dynamic limits of the resonant room or, as likely, the capacity of the ensemble for well-judged light and shade.

Mozart’s evergreen Serenade received a surprisingly cool interpretation. Clarinetist Gary Gray offered focused, pale, but characterless playing in the ethereal Adagio. His colleagues skirted over Mozart’s endless inventiveness, charm and high spirits. They did not take the repeat in the first movement.

Gounod’s “Petite Symphonie” revealed the nine-member group’s most attractive qualities: warmth, precision and sympathetic response to one another. Flutist David Shostac and oboist Vogel were models in this regard.

It took two movements for the musicians to bring Janacek’s abrupt, fragmentary style into focus. But then the sextet--Shostac, Vogel, Gray, bass clarinetist Scott Anderson, bassoonist Kenneth Munday and horn player Steven Becknell--found merriment and innocence in the Vivace; nostalgia, regret and, especially, impetuous optimism in the finale.

Debussy’s “Syrinx” flute solo began life as a death-poem for the god Pan. Perhaps to evoke a mood of mystery and sadness, or as a tour de force for the flutist, the house lights were kept off during the piece. Shostac played the 2 1/2-minute solo with steady, luminous tone, but took a rather lively tempo that compromised the origins of the piece.