MUSIC REVIEW : Gilad’s Baroque Program Brings Malibu Fest to Close

In an unhackneyed program, Yehuda Gilad’s low-profile but superior conducting brought the latest Strawberry Creek Music Festival to a close Saturday night in Smothers Theatre at Pepperdine University. Founder of the festival, Gilad led his Baroque Orchestra--20 players through most of the evening--in works by Zelenka, Handel and Boccherini, and kept all performances tight and stylish.

The conductor could not keep them accident-free, however. His mixed ensemble of festival faculty and students, veterans of less than a month together, proved scrappy at the beginning of the program and encountered one ear-opening temporal rift during the first half, when part of the orchestra became disconnected from one of the soloists.

By the end, however, all breaks were healed, and the concert closed with a virtually immaculate reading of Handel’s Concerto Grosso in B-flat, Opus 3, No. 2, in which several principals displayed splendid soloism.

Throughout, there were genuine pleasures. Despite occasional mechanical blemishes, Jan Dismas Zelenka’s “Hypocondrie”--the admirably literate, uncredited program notes explained that there is no explanation for the composer’s calling this septet, “Hypochondria”--sailed along, a novel and diverting overture.

Juliana Gondek, the California-trained soprano long based in Europe, returned to Malibu to sing Handel’s demanding, many-faceted cantata, “Crudel tiranno amor,” with handsome tone, impressive agility and musical point; she flinched at none of the work’s mechanical challenges, and delivered its text sensitively.

Boccherini’s familiar B-flat Cello Concerto became the province of the young and gifted Ofra Harnoy, who shone especially in the cadenzas; otherwise, her ample virtuosity tended to be swamped acoustically by the enthusiastic accompanying body.