MUSIC REVIEW : Ohyama and Staples Save Best for Last

Peaking late in a performance is a strategy in which some musicians specialize. Peaking after the program has ended may be carrying the strategy too far.

Heiichiro Ohyama, leading the December concert of his 12-year-old Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, saved the best for last. After his program proper, in historic Lobero Theatre, Tuesday night, Ohyama added a three-movement encore that surpassed in quality and elan everything that preceded it.

There was nothing terribly wrong with the actual, scheduled program--nothing, that is, that a richer mix of energy and attentiveness would not have made better. This 22-member orchestra, which Ohyama has led since 1983, meets a good standard of achievement, but inconsistently, judging from these performances.

The missing energy materialized in the “Winter” concerto from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” in which violinist Sheryl Staples--who earlier in the evening had played Haydn’s C-major Concerto in her official solo appearance--was the inspired, crackerjack soloist.

Whatever rehearsal time had gone into the preparation of this unannounced program addition--and one would guess a lot, given the tight results--it proved worthwhile, for the performance became characterful, stylish, perfectly balanced and nicely detailed.

The chamber orchestra’s concertmaster--at 21, she is still an undergraduate at USC--commands a virtuoso technique, a modicum of stylistic resources and, at least in this piece, strong musical opinions. Ohyama and his band assisted carefully and lovingly.

The scheduled part of the evening--a respectable, finally climactic agenda of music by Wagenseil, Haydn, Vaughan Williams and Wolf--occupied a lower plateau of excitement.

Its second half began convincingly with a dramatic run-through of Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis,” followed by a well-defined reading of Wolf’s “Italian Serenade.”

In both, Ohyama--outgoing at the end of this season as both associate conductor and principal viola of the L.A. Philharmonic--and his mixed, Santa Barbara string ensemble projected an abundant palette of humors, and achieved mechanical neatness in most moments.

The pre-intermission portion proved more sluggish. What was said to be the first live performance in 250 years of a Sinfonia in A by the Austrian composer Georg Christoph Wagenseil turned out pleasant but uneventful and low-voltage.

And Staples’ able, well-schooled playing of the Haydn concerto emerged competent but impersonal. Ohyama’s accompaniment proved friendly, if not exactly wide-awake.