MUSIC REVIEW : Mozart Opener Nimble, but Mixed

For the season-opening concert of the accomplished Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, music director Lucinda Carver relied on her old standbys: neglected Haydn, 20th-Century English music and, of course, Mozart.

Consistently well-spoken, nimble and pleasant, the results nevertheless were mixed on this occasion, Saturday night at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre.

John Walz sparkled as the soloist in Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C (Hob.: VIIb:1). His performance combined singing warmth with emotional restraint, clean virtuosity with intelligent, propelling accents. There was plenty of dash, just enough nuance, and a lot of trust in the music to make its own points, if clearly stated. Carver led a jaunty and whispering accompaniment.

In this conductor’s care Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants on “Dives and Lazarus” emerged a promised-land pastoral, in a flowing and vibrant reading. She seemed to draw richer colors from her strings here than elsewhere on the program.

Opening with Mozart’s youthful Symphony No. 17, Carver and the orchestra showed nifty kinetics and lightness of tone. The piece became dangerously close to froth in the process, however. Who knows, perhaps that’s what it is.

These musicians brought a similar finesse and attention to small things to the outer movements of Haydn’s Symphony No. 48, “Maria Theresia,” but without the low strings digging in it all seemed a bit airy for the nature of the message. Contrasts were smallish. And though Carver made some subtle points in the Adagio, she couldn’t dispel its odor of dull gentility. There is such a thing as being too polite, in music and music-making.