Kahane, Carver and Their Mozart

Our city is blessed with two conductor/pianists who specialize in, and have a special way with, Mozart. Jeffrey Kahane, leader of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, is one. Lucinda Carver, music director of the L.A. Mozart Orchestra, is the other.

At the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre on Saturday, in the orchestra’s season finale, Carver, conducting from the keyboard, again demonstrated her Mozartean prowess, this time with the Piano Concerto, K. 595.

Hers was a performance that, rather than coming at you with flags waving and lights flashing, drew a listener gently into its grasp. Seated in the center of the orchestra, not soloistically out front, Carver presided over a reading in which musical questions, answers and comments, in their tone and inflection, were unusually well connected and conversational.

With violins positioned right and left, Carver underlined Mozart’s stereophonic, talkative effects. The golden woodwind writing glowed in the center or floated in the shadows, as need be.

As a pianist, Carver seemed to be accompanying her musicians as much as they her. She never pushed anything toward empty brilliance, but explored nuance with small gradations of touch. Her phrasing was smoothly vocal. Even her whizzing scales in the finale were more pearly than preening.

The concert opened with Mozart’s little Overture to “La Finta Giardiniera,” a work that showed how the teenage composer could take the slightest materials, toss them up and turn them into an intricate celebration. It ended with the mature “Linz” Symphony, written in less than a week yet overflowing with ideas. Carver shaped a spirited account, snappy in the outer movements, meditative and dappled in the beautiful Adagio.