Scaled-Down Performance

Composers’ early works are not always portentous masterpieces. Sometimes they are mere pleasantries, as the Mozart Camerata demonstrated Saturday night at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church.

Apparently bowing to financial exigencies, Music Director Ami Porat scaled down his forces for a program of one Classical-period, and three Classical-flavor, pieces for string orchestra written by artists not yet out of their teens.

The least mature effort, both chronologically and creatively, was the third Sonata for Strings, composed by Rossini at age 12.

Lighthearted solos, engagingly offered by principal cellist Vage Ayrekian and bassist Norm Ludwin, could do little more than inspire passing interest in this otherwise innocuous exercise. The violinists’ sloppy sectional coordination marred their well-shaped cantabile in the Andante. Nevertheless, the closing notes of the sonata were followed by bravos from the audience.

Equally inexplicable laudatory exclamations trailed the final coda of Mendelssohn’s Symphony for Strings No. 10. Here, too, stylish solos--these by concertmaster Clayton Haslop and principal violist Simon Oswell--enlivened an uneven performance. Porat led his band in a purposeful, well-shaped reading, but threw balance indiscriminately toward the top; imitative passages lacked incisiveness, cello section solos were muted.

An intrinsic balance was transferred from the original version to Porat’s arrangement of the String Quartet in E-flat by Juan Crisostomo de Arriaga. By expanding the scoring, Porat augmented the power of this work, but he also accented its unwieldy moments--particularly in the Trio of the third movement--and changed much of its character. The Presto agitato emerged more bucolic than fast, more amiable than agitated.

Mozart’s Divertimento in D, K.136, like the Mendelssohn piece, received a too-pretty, delicate interpretation, though notable for its precision and dynamic control. The Presto returned as an encore with all the bite and exhilarating verve that had been missing from the initial run-through--the only real indication of this ensemble’s potential heard all evening.