Music And Dance Reviews : Perick, LACO End Season With Blockbusters

For their final program of the season, presented on Thursday at the Veterans Wadsworth Theater and to be repeated tonight at Ambassador Auditorium, Christof Perick and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra honored and refreshed two repertory blockbusters: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, with Robert McDuffie the compatible soloist, and the “Great” C-major Symphony of Schubert.

The use of only 20-some strings and the composers’ original wind complements resulted in bright, pointed tone (no small feat in the deadening Wadsworth acoustics), transparent textures and natural balances, allowing the conductor to propel the music and make it dance, as Perick did at every opportunity in the Schubert symphony, whose “heavenly length” (Robert Schumann’s description) never became too much of a marvelous thing.

The oppressively dominant position assumed by the trombones in traditional large-orchestra presentations of the Schubert here became something much more subtle and ingratiating. The deft trio of trombonists concentrated not on the instruments’ muscularity and capacity for menace but their capability for nuanced dynamics and variety of tone, even gentleness.

Nor was there anything bullying about McDuffie’s poised delivery of the Beethoven Concerto: a lean, intimate, rhythmically alert reading more evocative of the work’s classical roots than its intimations of romanticism, despite the employment of the Kreisler cadenzas, even more than usually inapt under these circumstances.

McDuffie’s concept proved particularly convincing in light of Perick’s--or should we say Beethoven’s?--insistence on integrating soloist and orchestra, resulting in the kind of solo-wind interplay characteristic of a Mozart concerto.

A deep bow in this respect to an unsung hero of the Chamber Orchestra--veteran bassoonist Kenneth Munday, whose delicately perfumed playing in the slow movement projected the composer’s inspiration with rare sensitivity. * Christof Perick conducts the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, with violinist Robert McDuffie, in the same program tonight at Ambassador Auditorium, 300 W. Green St., Pasadena, 8:30. (800) 266-2378.