MUSIC REVIEW : Uncanny Finese of Moscow Virtuosi Provides Fine Sound

There is something almost flippant about a Moscow Virtuosi performance. This elite cadre plays with such uncanny unanimity and finesse, while conductor Vladimir Spivakov leads with exaggerated, puckish motions that suggest his presence is more ornamental than requisite. If they did not produce such a gorgeous, warm sound, this ensemble might be dismissed as a mere mechanical wonder.

Spivakov’s sparkling chamber orchestra continued the Southern California leg of its North American tour with a concert Friday night at Civic Theatre. For an ensemble of fewer than 30 players, they filled the 3,000-seat auditorium with a surprisingly generous amount of sound.

With the exception of Dmitri Shostakovich’s brooding Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a, the program kept to surface emotions. Rossini’s Sonata No. 3 for Strings and three slick encores--including the finale from Mozart’s Symphony No. 24--epitomized Moscow Virtuosi’s elegant approach that bordered on parody. They emphasized secondary details of style with the intensity of a Tosca delivering her “Vissi d’arte” aria.

The Vivaldi D Minor Concerto for Two Oboes flaunted two virtuoso soloists, Alexei Utkin and Mikhail Yevstigneev, who demonstrated a more personal approach to phrasing and articulation than did their monolithic string-playing colleagues. Utkin savored his sinuous, floating themes in the slow middle movement with an uncommon blend of sensuous and subtle definition.

The Shostakovich was the evening’s piece de resistance, and the Moscow Virtuosi played this orchestral transcription of the composer’s Eighth String Quartet with telling insight. From the same period as his E-flat Cello Concerto (heard last month at Symphony Hall), this work mingles quotations from several of Shostakovich’s major works and surrounds them with little fugues on his own four-note motto theme. The players lavished on this personal testimony the disciplined fervor it deserved.

The concert opened with J. S. Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins, which was reviewed last week in The Times.