MUSIC REVIEWS : Brown Makes Conducting Debut With LACO

The second program of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra season had a tight and compelling agenda, and a significant debut--all things that had been missing from its odd opening rerun. Friday at Royce Hall, Iona Brown made her very much unheralded U.S. conducting debut.

Looking more than a little nervous, the veteran violinist--who for years has been directing, but not officially conducting, from her first-violinist’s position--wielded the baton pertinently, if not as precisely as she and her orchestra probably wished. Brown has always had ideas, and this was a brave and auspicious step towards communicating them in new repertory.

She certainly did not evade difficulty. Rhythmic cohesion and deft balances figure high in the sophisticated challenges of Britten’s Serenade, and though tentative in the opening songs, Brown developed the dark middle pair with controlled intensity.

Her soloists supplied eminently clear and stylish work. Tenor Neil Mackie could sound strained--particularly in the lower range--but he projected both texts and tunes with purity and urgency. Richard Todd, the Chamber’s principal horn, played his deceptively tough parts with amazing security and interactive eloquence.

Brown also conducted Arvo Part’s magically evolving “Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten,” with an emphasis on mechanical order and intensity. The Chamber Orchestra strings shorted the ideal dynamic range and glassy sustained sound, but nonetheless delivered a powerful account of this moving score.

Mozart provided the concert frame, with his “Lucio Silla” Overture and G-minor Symphony, K. 550. From her familiar post in the concertmaster’s chair, Brown led quick and vigorous mainstream interpretations, featuring crisply defined strings and some seductive interplay from the woodwinds.

Even in this amenable repertory, however, some of the liabilities of a seated and fiddling leader could be heard, in the thick wind blanket Brown allowed to cover the violins in the Overture opening, and the weak, scrambled attack of the first violins initiating the Symphony finale.