MUSIC REVIEWS : L.A. Mozart Orchestra Shines Softly

A small but, in its own way, mighty ensemble, the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra opened its 18th season at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre Saturday with a program that mathematically would have to be called semi-, rather than mostly, Mozart. A symphony and two concert arias by the orchestra’s namesake were counterbalanced with music by an obscure contemporary of the composer and a turn-of-this-century English composer.

Ratios aside, this is a specialist orchestra that abides by the genteel Mozartean spirit. Self-imposed limitations can be virtues, in life and in orchestral mandates, and this organization has neatly settled into a niche of its own devising.

Some of the renewed fervor of the venture can be traced to the guiding hand of Music Director Lucinda Carver, starting her second season with the group. An animated marionette-like presence at the baton, Carver brings a firm but lively hand to the task, coaxing sharp, buoyant rhythms and a lucid, purposeful overall sound.

She conducted from behind the harpsichord for the opening Symphony in G by the 18th-Century West Indian composer, Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges.

The exception to the 18th-Century rule taken here was British composer Sir Hubert Parry’s “Lady Radnor’s” Suite (1894). Written for an all-woman orchestra led by Lady Radnor, the work is an attractive but also generic gallery of baroque-esque snippets.

On the Mozart front, soprano Jennifer Foster Smith, blessed with a sonorous, pearly instrument, brought a handsome sheen to the Mozart arias, “A queso seno . . . Or che il cielo” and “Voi avete un cor fedele.” Closing the concert, the orchestra produced a graceful glow and snug precision in Mozart’s Symphony No. 29. After an embattled financial past, the L.A. Mozart Orchestra is rising to the occasion again, making a noble sound of a certain sort.