A Smart 20th Century Survey From L.A. Chamber Orchestra

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, a valuable player in the matrix of West Coast culture, is rightfully enjoying its 30th season at present. Celebration is in the air, after having weathered near-crushing hardships with wits and musicality intact. This is no time for a warhorse parade, nor a plunge into esoterica. Balance and intelligence are in order.

That’s what we got Saturday at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, when conductor Jeffrey Kahane led an ensemble of varying size in a rarity: an evening of strictly 20th century music without the angst aftertaste that audiences often fear. Of course, it helped that Respighi’s 1927 piece “Gli Uccelli (The Birds)” freely ransacks pre-20th century musical archives, and that Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” heard here in its original, leaner, meaner 13-piece chamber version, is one of the most cherished examples of emotive tonal writing of our time.

Stravinsky’s Octet for wind instruments, written in 1952, also lifts from the past, but interjects plenty of modernist perspective. Its tart neoclassical colors and rhythmic gymnastics were captured handily here, in a crisp and fervent reading to open the concert. The evening’s largest gathering of musicians joined on stage to realize the post-romantic aviary of the Respighi piece.

The real hero of the program, though, was Hindemith, courtesy of his 1922 piece Kammermusik No. 1, mit Finale 1921, Opus 24 No. 1, the first of his series of chamber music pieces. This music, played here with tough love and purpose, sounds at once bracingly up-to-date and period-related, its wry tonalism conveying all the fragile dynamism of the ‘20s (and suitable for the fragile dynamism of the ‘90s), replete with accordion and a brief siren effect for added street credentials. It’s a beauty, played beautifully.

In the end, LACO’s survey of the 20th century came off as smart and fresh, yet still stocked with accessible pleasures. That’s no mean feat.