MUSIC REVIEWS : Mozart: The Next Generation : The main interest in the Camerata program in Newport Beach lies in piano concerto by Wolfgang Amadeus’ son.

Saturday night’s Mozart Camerata program at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church looked a lot like the last one--a rarity followed by a Mozart violin concerto and then a Mozart symphony. The main interest, then, lay in an E-flat Piano Concerto by one of history’s most tantalizing footnotes, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart.

It’s hard to think of a more intolerable burden than to be a son of the fabled Wolfgang Amadeus--and a musician at that. Even today, on the rare occasion when someone programs one of the son’s works, we turn our mental radar sets onto high power, searching deeply for any signals of genius that may have been transmitted through the genes.

Without a doubt, Franz Xaver knew his father’s classical forms inside and out. He comes up with one simple, trusting, lightweight tune after another, working them out in repetitive ways. Occasionally he throws in an unexpected modulating curve, and he is not above lifting a well-known triplet figure from Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

Yet this attractive piece could have been the work of any conscientious, skilled conservative who conformed to the patterns of his day. We hear plenty of craft, but not genius, alas.

In both Franz Xaver’s work and his father’s Violin Concerto No. 5, K. 219, the soloist was Corey Cerovsek, still only 19 and fearlessly determined as ever to pursue both the piano and the violin. On this given day, his piano work was more satisfying, rippling forth with classical clarity and a singing touch that made a good case for Franz Xaver’s modest charms.

In the violin concerto, Cerovsek had some problems staying in sync with the orchestra in the first movement, but otherwise pushed the right buttons with a bright, outgoing tone. As always, he displayed outrageously precocious poise and self-confidence through a long night of solo work.

For his part, Ami Porat continued to command a marvelously polished ensemble, with its silken, dark-hued sheen in the strings and finely blended winds. As before, though, the Camerata sound was the main attraction, as opposed to the merely efficient backings in the concertos and the humdrum, albeit smoothly played interpretation of Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 (“Haffner”).

Ultimately, Porat paid tribute to his strings with a gorgeous, melting, mauve-colored transcription of J.S. Bach’s “Air on the G String” as an encore.