MUSIC REVIEWS : Orpheus Essays Boccherini, Berg Works

The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra has been widening the boundaries of repertory a conductorless ensemble can handle ever since its founding in 1972. The least likely music to succeed with such an approach--a work by Alban Berg--may have been the most powerful and successful in a concert Wednesday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

Certainly, the musicians announced their ease and mastery of ensemble with virtuosic flair in Boccherini’s Symphony in D minor, Opus 12, No. 4 (“La Casa del Diavolo”), which opened the program. The crisp, clean, urgent bowings, the precision of the starts and stops and the variety and control of dynamics vanquished any doubts about the approach.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto in B-flat, K. 456, and Dvorak’s Serenade in D minor for Winds, also on the program, should be prime candidates for this kind of group.

Unfortunately, soloist Radu Lupu proved a cerebral Mozart interpreter, emphasizing dexterity and speed over song and character, although he occasionally allowed himself the option of applying pedal to create coloristic effects.

Lupu was playing on a modern Steinway grand, and the volume of the sound he produced, even through light, pointillistic attack and fingering, sounded large, out of proportion to the accompaniment provided by the 23 or so musicians.

The musicians seemed to have little choice other than to respond with short, dry, characterless phrasings. The whiplash bowing that had served Boccherini so effectively earlier began to sound manneristic and oppressive.

It was, in short, a tough, tense, driven, bright, alert and cold performance of the work.

After intermission, the chamber orchestra split into strings and winds to play, respectively, Three Pieces from Berg’s “Lyric Suite” and Dvorak’s Serenade.

In Berg’s complex music, the musicians showed the same technical accomplishment heard before, but added to it a degree of personal intensity. The visceral upsurge of emotion that began in the cellos in the Adagio--to single out only the most dramatic sequence--led to relentless waves of passion, a heart-breaking dissolution, a recall to life and a final suspension of breath.

The performance of the Dvorak, which followed, ventured earnestness, bucolic charm and folk dance vigor, but could not entirely vanquish Berg’s last question mark.