MUSIC REVIEW : Bulgarian Ensemble in Fullerton

The Sofia Chamber Orchestra, actually a 13-member, all-male string ensemble, made its way into Fullerton Wednesday night on the tail end of an extensive U.S. tour.

Under music director Plamen Djurov, the Bulgarian group offered an unadventurous program of works by Mendelssohn, Wolf, Bach and Tchaikovsky before a large audience at the First United Methodist Church--the season opening concert of the North Orange County Community Concerts Assn.

Now pushing 30 years of age, the Sofia Chamber Orchestra is certainly nothing sophisticated listeners need to get excited about-- it is no world-class ensemble languishing until recently behind the Iron Curtain-- although it is not without merit..

The ensemble doesn’t own the most luxurious of tones--it tends toward the bright and shallow--and its intonation is not always as it should be. But when the group gets going it plays neatly, expressively and with spirit.

In Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, one missed the plush textures and sweet tones many ensembles bring to the work. But the Sofians, who play standing in one long arch except for the seated cellos and bass, nicely avoided overstating the work’s sentimentality. No weepiness in this account, just forthright singing in the main theme and elsewhere, and a nimble, crisp feeling in the allegro movements.

Also satisfying on the whole, despite obvious blemishes, was the group’s performance of Bach’s Violin Concerto No. 2, BWV 1042, with Robert Chen as soloist. Here, the players provided dynamically sensitive support.

Chen, winner of the 1984 National Young Musician’s Foundation Debut Competition and a familiar soloist locally, offered an outgoing reading, clean and lighthearted in execution.

Mendelssohn’s youthful Sinfonia No. 10 served as opener, and Hugo Wolf’s “Italian” Serenade followed. Both were tidily, straightforwardly played, with suavity and scrappiness in roughly equal measure.

In encore, Djurov & Co. performed the “Aria Italiano” from Britten’s “Frank Bridge” Variations (in a bubbly account) and the Air from Bach’s Suite No. 3.