Mozart Orchestra: Blithe Spirit

Outdoor concerts of familiar music are very much with us now, of course, but the medium takes many forms, and few could match the “Summer Serenade” offered by the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra for sheer charm. Music director Lucinda Carver and the Mozarteans made potentially dutiful observances delightful, Friday evening at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre.

To begin with, there was well-chosen music. Yes, Grieg’s “Holberg Suite” and Dvorak’s E-minor Serenade are pillars of the string orchestra repertory, but they are of the evergreen variety and complementary in their late-Romantic takes on classical and regional traditions.

As prefaces to each half, Carver included Mozart’s little “Serenata Notturna,” K. 239, and the Overture and “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” from Handel’s oratorio “Solomon.” These choices added countervailing measures of buoyant wit and ceremonial pizazz to the nicely balanced and symmetrically structured program.

And then there were the limber and ingratiating performances. This was hardly an agenda without soloists; concertmaster Aimee Kreston and violist Karie Prescott contributed bravura dazzle to Grieg and joined violinist Margaret Wooten and bassist Donald Ferrone in Mozart’s cheeky interpretation of the Baroque concerto grosso principal. Oboists Leslie Reed and Stuart Horn added grace to the Handel rites.

But it was basically the full ensemble’s show, and a neat and spirited one at that. There was some out-of-tune stridence at the top of Dvorak’s main waltz theme and other lapses here and there, but light, carefully turned sound and blithe but committed spirits prevailed. Carver’s interpretations fell well within conventional parameters, and were alertly fulfilled by her players.