Segerstrom Hosts Polished Budapest Chamber Band

Now nearing the end of its third decade, the Budapest Chamber Orchestra has only been visiting Southern California since 1976--but to positive and admiring reactions. The ensemble’s reputation as a polished, stylish and accomplished band, tested again Sunday afternoon in Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa, still seems earned and justified.

Janos Rolla continues to serve as music director, leading the conductorless ensemble from his concertmaster’s chair. This arrangement does not always work in other organizations; with this 18-member group, it does.

Founded in 1962 and formerly called the Franz Liszt Orchestra of Budapest, the band has been touring this country since 1973. It seems to excel at the twin disciplines of self-regulation and self-listening. These virtues inform all its readings.

In the 3,000-seat Orange County Performing Arts Center, at the second of 30 events being sponsored this season by the Orange County Philharmonic Society, the ensemble from Hungary offered an afternoon of musically tight, mechanically splendid performances. Still, there were a few disappointments.

The program, for one--it was not constructed as a cumulative experience and, naturally enough, did not become such. The first half, consisting of multimovement works by Telemann, Handel and Mozart, gathered no momentum. Handsomely executed, slickly mobile and stylistically informed, these performances went along neatly, but offered few contrasts.

Telemann’s Suite in G (“La Bizarre”) and Handel’s B-flat Concerto Grosso, Opus 6, No. 7, can both serve the function of opening a program; together, they overachieve, and steal each other’s thunder.

And Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” in as bright and transparent a performance as one can imagine, still suffered from its own hyperfamiliarity.

The post-intermission half brought orchestra and audience together in a shared experience apparently pleasing to both.

In Gustav Mahler’s sensitive transcription, Schubert’s D-minor Quartet, “Death and the Maiden,” made all its musical and emotional points strongly and swept along in compelling forward motion. The lush sounds of the orchestra seemed, here at least, to be used for expressive purposes.

After that, there were two encores: the Presto from Mozart’s Divertimento in D, K. 136, and Bartok’s Rumanian Dances.

The orchestra plays different programs tonight in La Jolla, and Wednesday night at the South Bay Center for the Arts at El Camino College.