Reichert, Mozart Beat the Machine

There must be as many test moments in music as there are pieces, but certainly an enormous challenge is to project one of Mozart’s most heartfelt and intimate movements successfully into the great outdoors via an amplification system that squeezes the sound as much as it amplifies it.

That is what pianist Aviram Reichert did Saturday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre when he played the wondrous F-sharp minor adagio in Mozart’s Concerto No. 23 with the Pacific Symphony, led by guest conductor Lucinda Carver.

The 26-year-old Israeli native--and bronze medal winner of the 1997 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition--had only hinted of the depths to come in the cadenza of the lyrical first movement. Still, his sensitivity and introspection in the opening of the adagio immediately arrested attention, even if the amplification system made the Yamaha grand sometimes sound as bright and tiny as an 18th century fortepiano.

Reichert was a precise colorist, linking notes cleanly, strongly, judiciously, staying within dynamic boundaries but also letting the sound expand appropriately.

The outer movements were full of life and charm.

As director of the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, Carver’s expertise in this repertory is well-known. She accompanied Reichert carefully, not always mirroring his ideas but never muscling in on them, either. She also led a buoyant account of Mozart’s youthful Symphony No. 16 to open the program.

What was a bit more of a pleasant surprise was her stylistically alert and expansive readings of music by Bizet (the second suite from “L’Arlesienne”) and Falla (three dances from “The Three Cornered Hat”). She maintained her clarity of beat and youthful pulsing in rhythm, but without scanting the coloristic and dramatic elements of the music--although, again, the amplification system occasionally introduced blurred textures and too-rapid decay of sound.

In the Bizet suite, flutist David Shostac and harpist Michelle Temple played the Minuet with loving care.