MUSIC REVIEWS : Japan America Group, Ohyama in Engaging Set

Like many a violist before him, Heiichiro Ohyama has an unassuming but heartfelt and intelligent musical personality.

The former principal viola and assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic is quickly building one of his own orchestras, the Japan America Symphony of Los Angeles, into a first-rate ensemble in his own image, as Saturday night’s concert at the Japan America Theatre revealed once again.

Made up from many of the familiar local free-lancers, but shaped by its conductor into more than a part-time conglomeration (the orchestra, at present, has only a four-concert season), the JASO gave poised and polished, graceful yet fully characterized readings of a well-chosen program.

Dvorak’s Serenade for Winds, Opus 44, which opened the concert, emerged in all its charm and depth, in a rhythmically fluid, gently singing performance. The basic restraint of the reading served the sweet melodies well, and the music was allowed to peak naturally when it had to, as in the urgent, symphonic arch of the Andante con moto, which was dramatically realized. Oboist Leslie Reed was the exemplar of the ensemble.

Haydn’s Symphony No. 99, too, sparkled in understatement: Particularly enjoyable was the way Ohyama and orchestra captured the playfulness of the score without resorting to broad humor. Details of orchestration came forth nonchalantly.

In between these two works Ohyama offered the U.S. premiere of Yutaka Takahashi’s challenging Three Movements for Strings, written in 1988.

This bold, manic, dissonant 25-minute work ranges from barely moving, solo-instrument sparseness to the full-blown heights of a biting clash of instruments, in plateaus of mechanistic, polyrhythmic stress. Tough but engaging music. The orchestra played it with proper aggression and nervousness.