MUSIC REVIEW : A Conductorless Prague Orchestra in Center Debut

For 40 years now, the Prague Chamber Orchestra has been known and admired as a precision instrument that produces handsome, immaculate performances.

In the ensemble’s latest return to Southern California, Saturday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, these “36 gentlemen from Prague”--as Martin Bernheimer dubbed them at their first visit here, in 1975--proved their consistency.

A conductorless band on this 11th North American tour numbering 35 instrumentalists--and not a woman among them, for reasons unexplained in its publicity--the group still makes beautiful music within a context of mechanical superiority, splendid ensemble and self-regulating balances.

For connoisseurs, however, the eternal question remains: Could this accomplished but often musically faceless orchestra give even more satisfying performances with the addition of one strong musical mind at its helm--which is to say, on its nonexistent podium?

The answer must be affirmative. Saturday in Segerstrom Hall, opening the newest season of the Orange County Philharmonic Society with an ultraconservative program of works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Isa Krejci and Schubert, the ensemble sounded solid, thoroughly prepared, technically alert--and bland.

For all its many resources of dynamics and sound, the orchestra does not display them consistently.

None of the playing is actually strident, but too much of it resides on the forte level, too little on the piano. Elegant phrasing informs one passage, but not the next. In any given work, countless places emerge where a little shushing from that phantom podium would be appropriate and helpful.

This was particularly true in a brilliant and touching performance of Mendelssohn’s E-minor Violin Concerto in which young Robert McDuffie was the remarkable soloist.

Except that he often played softer than his accompanying colleagues, McDuffie achieved what some might consider a definitive reading of this overexposed masterpiece. He brought such emotional spontaneity, unfazable virtuosity and an ever-sweet tone to this familiar music that it seemed positively new. At this point, it is no exaggeration to say that, in the elegance and passion of his playing, McDuffie reminds one of Nathan Milstein in his prime.

Otherwise, the high point of this polished concert was a tight and stylish reading of Beethoven’s “Creatures of Prometheus” Overture. The least distinguished playing came in Schubert’s Fifth Symphony, where inconsistent balances, clipped and rushed phrasing and a general air of unease kept this usually irresistible work from becoming itself.

Krejci’s four-minute scherzo, “Vivat Rossini” (1968), arrived after intermission; it is a jolly piece, but one used in this program as a token to the important music of our own century. What was actually needed was something more substantial and challenging, whatever its length.

The Prague Chamber Orchestra plays tonight at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara, Wednesday night at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena and Thursday night at Sherwood Auditorium in La Jolla.