Some Clean, Tight Summer Mozart

Dressed in wintry-black formality, the 32 members of the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra gave an outdoor summer concert at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre on Saturday night. Its varied program suited all seasons, and music director Lucinda Carver led it purposefully.

The Mozart on this agenda came last, in an elegant, highly detailed account of the Symphony No. 29, one that spoke carefully, kept its cool and lacked some measure of ebullience. But it was clean and tight and thoroughly admirable.

Holding a tight rein on the work’s progress, Carver also maintained handsome balances between orchestral choirs and ensured a followable continuity. Next time around, one would like to hear more relaxation from all concerned.

Only one passing aircraft marred the sound proceedings on this occasion. That came during the program opener, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants on “Dives and Lazarus,” and spoiled only a moment in an otherwise fluent, butter-rich, gorgeously integrated performance.

In Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” the gifted soprano soloist was Camille King, who made legitimate if undistinctive sounds but kept the bulk of James Agee’s text a secret. Roger Lebow’s incisive program notes and the actual words of the work were available in the program but not truly at hand, since the audience sat in the dark.

The orchestra played surpassingly well--both the niceties and the sweep of the piece well tended by Carver--and King delivered beautiful sounds, but again the words never reached the listener.