Music Reviews : Seasonal Baroque Orchestra Treat

Gregory Maldonado, presiding over a bright, pleasureful holiday offering by his Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra over the weekend, avoided the usual Christmas mishmash of the safe and hackneyed. At a time of year when clever programming cannot be taken for granted, Maldonado put together a handsome and seasonally resonant agenda.

The climax of this program, heard Friday night in First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica--and scheduled to be repeated Saturday and Sunday in Long Beach and Pasadena--came in Marc-Antoine’s “Pastorale sur la Naissance de N.S. Jesu Christ,” a tight and wondrous retelling of the Christmas story from around 1686, when the composer was working at the Jesuit Church of St. Louis in Paris.

With fewer than 20 singers and players--the prescribed number, no doubt--Maldonado & Co. outlined the work’s narrative thrust and delivered its beauteous detailing.

In the flattering acoustic of the sanctuary at First Presbyterian Church, authentic (or reconstructed) instruments of the period made felicitous but unstrident clangors. The solo singers were Kris Gould, Kerry O’Brien, Agnieszka Lejman, Temmo Korisheli and Mel Whitehead. Maldonado is a vigorous, worrying kind of conductor; nevertheless, the total performance seemed effortless.

The first half of the program served as an elegant prelude, through Telemann’s Festive Suite, Giuseppe Valentini’s Sinfonia, “per il Santissimo Natale” and, particularly, Gaetano Maria Schiassi’s joyous “Sinfonia Pastoral per il Santissimo Natale di Nostro Jesu,” a work of pungent expressions.

Not all the pleasures of this evening were aural; Howard Posner’s witty, informative and irrepressible program notes added much to the experience.