Music Review : Previn Conducts a Competent but Uninspired St. Luke’s

An uninspired conservatism was once more the order of the evening when New York-based ensemble, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, which had played in Orange County on Tuesday night, made its appearance at Ambassador Auditorium on Wednesday. Andre Previn was again the conductor.

With its earned reputation for an all-purpose musical versatility, the orchestra disappointed through an unimaginative program, competently but unexcitingly played.

In a city where polished and lively performances of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony happen virtually every season, it seemed perverse that this touring East Coast band--numbering between 37 and 42 at this engagement--should close its first local visit with a merely pleasant and uneventful performance of that familiar work.

Transparency and virtuosity, elements we have long taken for granted when either the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra or the L.A. Philharmonic play the piece, were in short supply.

Previn’s able reading proved propulsive and sensible, but instrumental imbalances, overloudness in the strings and undeveloped total-ensemble values in the orchestra often made this aggregation sound like an ad-hoc, not a veteran, musical body.

*

A tighter and more integrated profile characterized the orchestra’s playing of Mozart’s Oboe Concerto, K. 314, in which Stephen Taylor was the ingratiating soloist, producing long Mozartean lines and effortless passagework with calm and charm.

Taylor also wrote the showy, stylish and provocative cadenzas.

The program began with Haydn’s Symphony No. 102, reviewed in Thursday’s Calendar.