MUSIC REVIEWS : L.A. Chamber Orchestra Goes Italian

It wasn’t the music but the way it was delivered that provided interest on Wednesday, when Claudio Scimone led the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in a program of featherweight Italian works of the 18th and early-19th centuries at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena.

The program opened with Boccherini’s quirky Sinfonia in D, subtitled “La Casa del Diablo,” which displayed the orchestra’s seeming ability to play more softly than possible, the number of p ‘s demanded by Scimone perhaps having less to do with the needs of the music--with so much dynamic diddling, the work did not flow--as with the predilections of the conductor.

Scimone subsequently played the humble, helpful accompanist in Cimarosa’s innocent, tuneful Concerto in G for Two Flutes, played by orchestra principals David Shostac and Susan Greenberg with all the skill, singing sweetness of tone and wit the most jaded listener (and an obviously delighted conductor) could desire.

A Concerto in G minor (RV 576) by Vivaldi, designed for the wind-dominated Dresden court orchestra, exhibited an interpretive style less attuned to clipped, volatile contemporary notions of Baroque style than to the expansively lyrical attitude in effect during the 1960s heyday of the Italian chamber orchestra, in which Scimone’s Padua-based ensemble, I Solisti Veneti, was a prime player.

The handsomely executed program concluded with a big, Beethovenish (in scoring and gesture) Symphony in D by Muzio Clementi, unknown to posterity except for his piano compositions and fabled keyboard virtuosity.

Clementi’s symphony, which bustles energetically while remaining harmonically torpid, illustrates the huge qualitative gulf that exists between composers whose works we remember and those whose efforts have fallen into limbo.

The program is scheduled to be repeated, tonight at the Japan America Theatre and Saturday night back at Ambassador Auditorium.