Music : Baroque Group in Christmas Program

A nice mix of familiar pleasures and joyful discoveries marked the Christmas offering of the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra this weekend in stylish performances that struck an equally fine balance between the soothing and the stimulating, as heard Friday at the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica.

Adding greatly to the delights was Catherine McCord Larsen’s clear soprano. The program climaxed in the Christmas Cantata of Alessandro Scarlatti, a fresh and sweetly ebullient work well matched with the purity and agility of Larsen’s voice.

Concertmaster-director Gregory Maldonado led his period instrument band in supple support. Conductorless, the continuo team staggered in the recitatives, but otherwise the instrumental frame suited the graceful vocal picture.

The soprano also sang three of the Intermedia from Heinrich Schutz’s Christmas Oratorio, interspersed through the rest of the agenda. Again, she provided lyric finesse and interpretive point, accompanied by Maldonado, principal second violin Jolianne von Einem and continuo.

Maldonado and Von Einem also had the modest, fluently realized, solo duties in three Italian Christmas Concertos. The Corelli Concerto Grosso in G minor--probably inevitable in this context--received a redeemingly taut and serious performance. The ensemble gave similar works by Torelli and Manfredini similar care, seductive in sound and spirit.

The Concerto Pastorale by one Johann Christoph Pez proved something of a stylistic loner here, though it gave the quietly virtuosic recorder duo of Lisette Rabinow and Aaron Lewis grateful opportunities for tunefulness and display.