An Evening of Exhilaration in South Bay

An elegant program in a handsome hall performed gamely by the Chamber Orchestra of the South Bay brought conductor Frances Steiner and her accomplished band down the hill from its usual concert home in Norris Theatre in Rolling Hills to the older comforts of the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro on Saturday night.

Strong and clarified performances marked the evening, beginning with Mozart’s quirky and unfamiliar Symphony No. 17, cresting on Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony and reaching an appropriate climax with the Beethoven Violin Concerto. In the last, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s principal concertmaster, Martin Chalifour, was the articulate and probing soloist.

Chalifour, Steiner and friends gave the Olympian work a noble reading, particularly in an eloquent account of the central larghetto, the core of the work, and the aristocratic finale. The weak part of this performance became the opening movement, in which soloist, conductor and timpanist seemed unable to enforce solidity on a wavering tempo.

Mozart’s early symphony, written when he was 16, is charming and characterful and deserves wider hearing than it usually gets. Steiner and her colleagues gave it a good scrub and scrutinized its inner workings affectionately. The Warner Grand Theatre still needs acoustical boosting from a shell or risers; as it is, too much of the orchestra’s sound seems to be lost in the space above the stage.

Exhilarating, full-voiced and yet consistently transparent, Steiner’s spirited account of Prokofiev’s beloved Symphony No. 1 reinstated the piece’s pungency and good humor.