MUSIC REVIEWS : Badura-Skoda Joins L.A. Mozart Group

Lucinda Carver led the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra in a sprightly, if troubled Mozart program Saturday at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre.

Tempos inclined to be fast, precision was not a certain thing and lyric expressivity, it seemed, had to be caught on the fly. Still, Carver appeared incapable of conducting without showing intelligent choices and an overall sense of style.

The centerpiece of the program was the great C-minor piano concerto, K. 491. The conductor shaped the opening theme with an intriguing sighing affect, but unfortunately abandoned the idea even before the soloist, the eminent Austrian pianist Paul Badura-Skoda, made his entrance.

Playing on a Bosendorfer concert grand, Badura-Skoda, 66, demonstrated brilliance and clarity and sensitive use of light and shade. Yet, overall it was not an emotionally probing interpretation.

In the Larghetto, he seemed to be trying to establish a more flexible, singing line than the conductor wanted and that might have made a difference. But he was not entirely successful. He played his own cadenza in the first movement.

The winds, so crucial in this work, could have made a stronger profile. They sounded unused to being in the spotlight. Except as noted, the conductor followed the soloist closely, and together they keep a healthy balance between the big modern instrument and the chamber size of the ensemble.

Carver had opened the program with an energetic and transparent account of the Overture to “Le Nozze di Figaro.” After intermission, she led the group in the Divertimento in F, K. 138, and the “Haffner” Symphony.

Unfortunately, the strings sounded under-rehearsed in the little divertimento, composed when the composer was 16, playing with tentative articulation and wandering focus. A speedy, spirited account of the symphony, with more than the usual nod to the timpani, however, closed the program.