MUSIC REVIEW : Brown and Imai With L.A. Chamber Orchestra

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra inevitably gives its best without a conductor, that is, when leader-music director Iona Brown is in charge, fiddle in hand, directing at her charges the occasional, sometimes inscrutable (to the audience, at any rate) wave of the bow.

And Tuesday at Ambassador Auditorium the ensemble approached perfection--not only in execution but in interpretive intensity.

The program was a stunner: Haydn’s F-minor Symphony (“La Passione”), Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony, and Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat, K. 364.

Shostakovich was not, however, the evening’s emotional or even histrionic core. This arrangement for string orchestra by conductor-violist Rudolf Barshai of the composer’s harrowing Eighth Quartet is an aural inflation rather than a dramatic intensification of the original; more lush showpiece than the sawtooth-jagged, cathartic experience provided by the original. Still, it’s a terrific showpiece in the right hands--LACO’s, which delivered it with thrilling richness of tone and faultless ensemble.

But then each of the evening’s components was set forth in a most attractive light. The shifting dynamics and harmonic shocks of the Haydn Symphony were boldly projected, in a performance that convincingly balanced moody lyricism and terse, angry rhythmicality, while Mozart’s magnificently deep Sinfonia Concertante emerged brilliantly faceted in the outer movements, sweetly, even painfully melancholy in its central Andante.

Brown’s soloists for the Mozart could not have been better-matched: herself the dashing, bright-toned violinist and a welcome guest, violist Nobuko Imai, offering technical security to match her partner’s and profound expressive warmth.

In both works, orchestral execution proved a model of subtlety, balance and precision.