Music Reviews : Mozart Program From Salzburg Orchestra

There are pitfalls in masterpieces as well as in lesser works. The opening Allegro of Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony, for instance, can lure an unsuspecting--even a suspecting--conductor into a perfunctory or sterile performance. Its perfection lulls the inalert.

Hans Graf, leading his Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg in its first performance at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, fell into this trap Monday night after intermission. Regularity spawned routine.

But the Austrian conductor immediately redeemed himself and his gifted ensemble with one of the most polished and touching performances of the great slow movement one can imagine.

Mechanical glitches, recurring problems of balance and intonational discrepancies--small but bothersome details that had marred the earlier part of this program--suddenly disappeared. Musical pertinence and transparent textures characterized not only this stoic but heartfelt reading of the Andante but the closing movements as well.

The 47-member ensemble operated on a more mundane level earlier in the evening. His reading of the Symphony No. 34 found most of the jauntiness in the opening, many of the deeper joys in the slow movement, and all of the exuberance in the finale. But it remained a warm-up kind of performance.

At mid-program, Ernst Kovacic, another native Austrian, was soloist in the A-major Violin Concerto, K. 219. He filled this role nicely, with easy virtuosity and a full, sweet tone produced on a handsome Guadagnini instrument. But his command of intonation sometimes faltered, and he fell short of genuine authority in those places where the soloist ought to lead. Graf and the orchestra gave commendable support.