Music, Dance Reviews : Carver Takes Over Mozart Orchestra

Locally, 1992 may be remembered as the year of the new music directors. Esa-Pekka Salonen took over the helm at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Christof Perick assumed leadership of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Lucinda Carver joined the club on Saturday at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre, making a bright, happy start as new music director of the 17-year-old Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra.

Carver showed clear, decisive and purposeful direction in the four-part program of well-known and unfamiliar music. She began by exhuming a rarity, the Overture to Cimarosa’s “I Traci Amanti,” moved on to a Mozart violin concerto and a suite by Grieg, and ended with one of the many lesser-known gems among the Haydn symphonies.

In general, Carver imposed no wayward interpretations, and it would have been easy to underestimate the considerable effort she exerted to give clear, stylish, uncluttered readings. But certainly not boring readings. She maintained energy and interest, shaped phrases and dynamics knowingly and revealed a sure grasp of proportion and structure.

She made an appealing case for the perkiness and lyricism in the Cimarosa overture, written for one of his 75 or so other operas (not the only one he’s remembered for--”Il Matrimonio Segreto”). In Grieg’s “Holberg” Suite, Carver exploited the concerto grosso-like shifts in small and larger ensemble, as well as the antiphonal effects from seating first and second violins at either side of the podium.

The conductor delineated the rustic vigor and sophisticated wit of Haydn’s Symphony No. 63 (“La Roxelane”), while managing to make sure that the composer’s deft deployment of strings and winds never went out of balance.

In Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5, the only work she led from a score, Carver accompanied soloist Yukiko Kamei sensitively. For her part, Kamei played with compelling sweetness and warmth of tone and also displayed architectural sureness in extending scope and direction of line.

Throughout, one would have liked more forceful and incisive playing from the orchestra. But worthy of mention were solo contributions by concertmaster Frances Moore and principal violist Marlow Fisher in the Grieg suite and oboist Catherine Del Russo, bassoonist Charles Coker and cellist Roger Lebow in the Haydn symphony.