MUSIC REVIEWS : Iona Brown Leads L.A. Chamber Orchestra at UCLA

When Iona Brown stood up Friday night and conducted the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra like a real conductor, she combined the courage to take daring musical decisions with the authority to make them work. At a time when a superstar woman conductor might substantially improve the uncertain health of the classical music industry, Brown proved decisively that she has the goods to make the breakthrough.

In Mozart’s 45-minute “Haffner” Serenade, which comprised the second half of the program in Royce Hall at UCLA, the success of Brown’s breathtaking speeds and brilliant range of colors in the five out of eight movements she conducted with her back to the audience stemmed directly from a distinctive ability to set in motion the inner mechanics of Mozart’s music as if they were uniquely joyous, and inevitable, laws of physics. Brown’s only significant miscalculation was in omitting the first movement repeat, which slightly distorted the shape of one of Mozart’s most powerful structures.

Brown also had trouble balancing the woodwinds properly at times, but by the end she had them--and LACO’s trumpets, drums and high-flying horns--in perfect step with the stunningly virtuosic strings.

For the rest of the evening, however, when Brown conducted either from her accustomed, first-violin chair or, in the three middle movements of the Mozart (in which she played the virtuoso solo part with fleet if forced skill), facing the audience, the results were good but noticeably less electric and commanding.

Benjamin Britten’s endearing “Simple Symphony,” which opened the evening, was a fine, middle-of-the-road performance, the “Boisterous Bouree” marching appropriately like tin soldiers and the “Playful Pizzicato” sneaking around like mice so that it left the audience laughing at the end. But the “Sentimental Sarabande” was merely pretty, and the “Frolicsome Finale” ended up disappointingly perfunctory.

The third suite of Ottorino Respighi’s “Ancient Airs and Dances,” which came next, was, thanks particularly to the soft, sweet-toned viola section, unusually light, quick, radiant and full of the requisite Italianate charms, but those charms quickly paled and heads were seen nodding.