Music Reviews : Domingo Conducts Chamber Orchestra

In what was billed as his “United States Orchestral Conducting Debut,” to differentiate that activity from conducting opera, which the supertenor has done on numerous occasions locally and elsewhere, Placido Domingo led the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra on Thursday in Ambassador Auditorium. The program will be repeated there Sunday afternoon.

His feat was not unprecedented. In the waning days of their vocal careers, two Viennese tenor idols, Richard Tauber and Julius Patzak, took up the non-operatic baton regularly. And today there’s Peter Schreier, who more or less conducts and sings at the same time (don’t ask).

Which is hardly to suggest that Domingo’s singing days are numbered. He was, in fact, using time between performances as Don Jose in L.A. Music Center Opera’s “Carmen” for this excursion.

One has to be thankful that he did so. This was an evening of warmly communicative music-making, the product of an affectionate relationship between Domingo and the orchestra that has accompanied him many times in the Music Center Opera pit.

After a cursory nod to his Spanish heritage, the Overture to Arriaga’s “Los Esclavos Felices” (bottom-drawer Rossini), Domingo presented substantial works by Joseph Haydn, Tchaikovsky and Mozart.

If conducting opera is in large part the art of accommodating singers, then Domingo must have been comfortable with Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante in B-flat and its many solo passages, including the violin’s comic recitative and aria in the finale.

The performance exuded good cheer and Classical-era crispness.

Here as elsewhere, Domingo was profuse in his acknowledgment of the orchestra’s contribution to making him the star of the evening, an honor he accepted almost sheepishly. Every opportunity was taken to thank concertmaster Ralph Morrison for his and the ensemble’s efforts, and for Morrison’s spirited leadership of the Haydn solo quartet, which also included orchestra stalwarts Kimaree Gilad, oboe, Kenneth Munday, bassoon, and Douglas Davis, cello.

Restrained, pertinent physical motion--Domingo is not an arm-flapper--marked this Haydn and the peppy, fast-paced Mozart “Haffner” Symphony which concluded the program.

Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings brought sculpting-phrases-in-air time. Still, this was Tchaikovsky without slush, without rhythmic distortion: emotionally generous, full-toned but dynamically sensitive. Expressions one might use in describing the singing voice of Placido Domingo.