Philharmonia Virtuosi in Cost-Saving Program

It is a fairly common occurrence in these slender days for classical music: A chamber orchestra on tour leaves its winds at home to cut costs. The repertory for strings alone gets trotted out once again.

Thus the New York-based Philharmonia Virtuosi, under its music director Richard Kapp, opened its concert Saturday night at El Camino College with Elgar’s ever handy Serenade for Strings--just 12 in this case, and rather puny sounding in cavernous Marsee Auditorium.

But later, though probably few in the unsuspecting audience realized it, Kapp offered up Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 2 without its requisite oboes and horns. Gaping holes were left where rich sonorities should have been. This was simply unacceptable penny pinching; and, with the cheapest seats in the house going for $15, not very nice either.

Concertmaster Mela Tenenbaum took on the solo duties and showed herself as an outstanding craftsman. But the music only sporadically came to life under her cool, rather dutiful care. The same might be said of her performance of the Violin Concerto, Opus 3, No. 6, by Pietro Locatelli--one of the violin’s earliest “fingerhelden”--only there’s not much life in the piece to begin with. She did play the caprice cadenzas with ultra-clean virtuosity.

The program proper, safe and sane to a fault, wound up more successfully with Holst’s exquisitely orchestrated “St. Paul’s” Suite, in a vigorous and charming reading. Bartok’s Romanian Dances served as encore. Kapp delivered genial, rambling spoken program notes.