Music Reviews : Japan America Symphony

At times, it was hard to believe that the band of irregulars called the Japan America Symphony Orchestra of Los Angeles could play as well as they did Wednesday night at the Japan America Theatre.

Under the leadership of music director Heiichiro Ohyama, they launched Grieg’s “Holberg” Suite with such confidence and verve that they sounded like a great analog LP. The 25 musicians breathed as one, internal perspectives were radiant, even pizzicatos were rich and varied, and principal cellist Cecilia Tsan played her solo in the Sarabande with delicate beauty.

The Grieg’s excellence fell victim, however, to a swarm of buzzing helicopters and the audience’s unnerving uncertainty about when to applaud, a problem compounded by the program booklet’s leaving out the name of the last movement.

Takashi Yoshimatsu’s “Threnody to Toki for String Orchestra and Piano,” in its West Coast premiere, fared worse. Admirably lamenting the perishability of beauty embodied by the disappearance of the ibis from Honshu Island, the 13-minute work proved so hideously difficult to play, due more to the 39-year-old composer’s innocence about the mechanics of string playing than the orchestra’s skill, that even soloist Gloria Cheng’s beautiful sound and aristocratic phrasing were of no avail.

The concert got back on track with a performance of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 that hinted at what Ohyama, former principal violist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and newly named director of the prestigious Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, might do with a full-time orchestra. This was no mere dogtrot Mozart, but an illuminating, small-sized reading of polish, persuasion and unflagging energy benefiting from two moving viola statements of the slow movement’s main theme and exceptional woodwind work headed by the sweet-toned, wonderfully woody bassoons of Michele Grego and Arthur Klein.