L.A. Chamber Soloists Make Mastery Look Easy

Jeffrey Kahane and Allan Vogel took over the solo spotlights at the latest Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra concerts over the weekend. Popular for all the right reasons, pianist-conductor Kahane and principal oboist Vogel again dominated their event.

Given for the first time Friday night in UCLA’s Royce Hall--and repeated at the Alex Theatre in Glendale on Saturday--this was a tough program, at which orchestra and soloists had to earn their success. Nothing easy is required from the players in Arnold Schoenberg’s rarely heard Chamber Symphony No. 2, in Richard Strauss’ gorgeous but exigent Oboe Concerto or in Mozart’s deep, long and complex Piano Concerto in E-flat, K. 482.

And what was most satisfying in these performances was the lack of struggle evident in the joys all participants created while making this music come to life.

In an evening of mellow pleasures, the first peak was Vogel’s thrilling, fluent delivery of the concerto. As handsome and inspired as any piece Strauss ever wrote, it compresses the tunefulness and invention one associates with another of his masterpieces, the score to “Ariadne auf Naxos,” and with equal freshness.

Vogel played it with artful spontaneity and all its articulate contrasts; music director Kahane and the orchestra provided earnest, full-throated accompaniment.

Then Kahane was his own soloist, conducting from the keyboard yet never distracting himself. One became unaware of the feat; one heard only the lyrical and splendid music itself. Pianist Kahane lavished on every little phrase the beauties it demands, all the time keeping a perspective on the larger entity that is this most serious concerto. The collaboration succeeded in every way.

Kahane and his colleagues also found the poetry and angst in Schoenberg’s accessible but demanding Second Chamber Symphony, a piece so rarely heard around here--the Los Angeles Philharmonic has not played it within the city limits since 1945, for example--that every revival is an occasion.