MUSIC REVIEW : L.A. Mozart Orchestra in Season Finale at Wilshire Ebell

The Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra season ended Saturday with a typically focused, unhackneyed program at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. Music director David Keith led his well-disciplined ensemble in a convincing, zesty performance of a Sacchini-Mozart-Haydn agenda.

The centerpiece was Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G, K. 453, in a wonder of pertinent, pointed musicality from soloist Antoinette Perry. Her sound was controlled and expressive in all registers--occasionally flirting with inaudibility--richly detailed and always articulate.

Keith and his small band gave Perry ready, responsive partnership, easily accommodating her dynamic scale. The Andante, in particular, proved a marvel of interactive, committed music-making.

There was Mozart at the end as well, with Walter Matthau presiding over a much-anticipated encore, the finale from the Piano Concerto in A, K. 414. He introduced it with an anecdotal monologue, and then mimed the conductor’s role as Perry and concertmaster Frances Moore carried the movement safely and blithely home.

The Overture to “Oedipe a Colone,” by the nearly forgotten Antonio Sacchini, opened the evening with festive flair. At the end came Haydn’s Symphony No. 82, “The Bear,” in a clearly defined, sharply accented reading of purposeful energy.