MUSIC REVIEW : Jeffrey Kahane Conducts L.A. Chamber Orchestra

Jeffrey Kahane brought his impeccable credentials to Ambassador Auditorium on Thursday for an appearance with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. But this wasn’t simply the cherishable pianist Kahane. This was, after a fashion, Kahane the conductor as well, appearing for the first time locally in that capacity.

The qualification above refers to the fact that bobbing, weaving and sculpting-in-air were at a minimum. Kahane led most of his Baroque program from the keyboard, honoring his colleagues by offering minimal coaxing to do what they accomplish surpassingly well without a conductor.

He began, however, baton in hand, for C.P.E. Bach’s quirky “Hamburg” Symphony in D, whose trickily darting string lines were a blur at the impossibly fast tempos dictated.

Seated at the harpsichord, Kahane offered imaginative continuo realization and alert backing for a sterling trio of LACO soloists, trumpeter David Washburn and oboists Allan Vogel and Electra Reed-Omara, in the pretty wallpaper patterns of a Telemann Concerto in D.

But the high point of the evening was the scholarship but not taste-be-damned segment, where Kahane, leading from a Steinway grand--treated neither with daintiness nor equally inappropriate thunder--attended to the heady solo of J.S. Bach’s D-minor Concerto with splendid thrust and tension.

The concert concluded with a jovial half-hour of Handel’s “Water Music”--directed from both a standing position and from the harpsichord--which was notable chiefly for the breathtakingly authoritative contributions of the LACO horns and oboes.