Music Reviews : Hege Leads Mozart Orchestra at Ebell

Except for those rare occasions when making music results in spiritual fulfillment, the most fun an orchestra can have with its clothes on may be looking for a music director.

The 15-year-old Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, having recently lost its founder-conductor to retirement, anticipates that kind of fun this season. Saturday night in the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, the ensemble began that series playing under the first of three candidates for the position.

Daniel Hege, 26, who holds secondary posts with both the Pacific and South Coast Symphonies in Orange County, led a Mozart program consisting of the Divertimento in D, K. 251, the Oboe Concerto and the Symphony No. 33.

The musician from Utah is the picture of confidence in front of an orchestra. He moves expressively, without dancing. He enforces stylistic restraints without effort. He inspires attentiveness.

The band of 27 instrumentalists performed neatly, most pointedly at the end of the Divertimento and at the beginning of the Symphony. Raggednesses and scrappy playing emerged at other points but did not seriously threaten Mozart’s seraphic music.

All one missed in the Divertimento were contrasts of feeling and the musical details that make each part different from its adjacent movements. Without this inner life, much of Mozart can be bland.

The Symphony No. 33 suffered from the same lack of distinction, though the orchestra--as of November, 1991, a strong collection of players--performed tidily.