Mozart Orchestra Excels With Cohesion

With its season-opening concert Saturday night at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre, the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, under the direction of Lucinda Carver, reached a new level of excellence.

Perhaps it is the added time these talented freelancers have spent together getting ready for their first tour (in Richard Einhorn’s “Voices of Light”) and making two recordings. Whatever the reason, they are now congealing into a true ensemble, one in which blends, balances and cohesion are a delight in themselves.

This was exemplified by the performance of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, K. 297b, with the orchestra’s principal winds--oboist Leslie Reed, clarinetist Amanda Walker, bassoonist Charles Coker, hornist Jon Titmus--as soloists. Like poets in unison, they negotiated the music’s acrobatics tautly while stopping to smell the flowers. The give-and-take between these players was unselfish and engaging.

As always, Carver plumbed the 18th and 20th centuries for neglected treasures. (Her programming is consistently interesting.) J.C. Bach’s Overture to “Allesandro nell’Indie” proved slight but irresistible, perky but fragile. Ernest Bloch’s 1925 Concerto Grosso No. 1 for Piano and Strings (with Carver the elegant soloist) was more substantial, an impressively crafted, imaginatively scored and weighty neoclassical work, though occasionally pedantic.

Carver and ensemble gave them persuasive readings, with beautifully polished surfaces giving nothing away to attentive, probing musicianship. They topped it off with the terse gloom of Haydn’s Symphony No. 49, “La Passione,” in a delicately etched and propulsive account.