Mozart Dazzles in Orchestra’s New Season

Despite the constant threat of overexposure, Mozart’s music still embodies sense and measured beauty. At least that was the affirmative impression given by the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra Thursday at the Zipper Concert Hall, in the first concert of the orchestra’s 25th season.

An all-Mozart program was conducted with customary aplomb by Lucinda Carver, who has been with the ensemble since 1992 and who brings an infectious passion and polish to the task. Befitting a milestone season, the orchestra has in the Zipper a happy and complementary new home that beautifully suits the small, Classical scale of the orchestra.

Musically, too, things were well in order. The first half belonged to works from Mozart’s teen years. The Overture to “Il Re Pastore” provided a warm welcome, sonorously crafted, and the gentility and sublimity of the Violin Concerto No. 4 in D was duly respected. Violin soloist Aimee Kreston brought a spirited, controlled reading to a role demanding an equal measure of both qualities. Carver wrote the seamless cadenzas.

After intermission, the Symphony No. 40 in G Minor sounded like a veritable angst fest compared to the blither spirits before it, with the brow-furrowing minuet and still-startling intensity of the final movement given their due. Generally, Carver coaxed an eloquent, dead-on performance, full of lucidly sculpted phrasing, careful balances, and most of all, a sense of vital, in-the-moment music-making. Carver, conducting from memory, knows her Mozart, not as museum fare but as living inspiration deserving alert, alive readings.

Closing on a lighter note, the orchestra polished off the final movement of the Divertimento in D, K. 205, an encore to sate a justifiably exuberant crowd.