Fresh Breezes in ‘American Seasons’

For his latest local performance, American violinist Mark O’Connor brought the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble from Boston, for a joint program at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts on Wednesday night. The agenda was living American composers--that is O’Connor’s specialty--and the focus on his own latest work, a full-length violin concerto, “American Seasons.”

With his 15-year-old musical quilt “Strings and Threads,” the new piece took up the generous half of this program. But no impatience at the evening’s length surfaced in the audience. All seemed happy and stayed for encores.

“American Seasons” typifies O’Connor’s eclectic, pop-and-folk style, combining many elements of the 300-year-old American folk experience. But, like “Strings and Threads,” whose musical patterns it expands upon, it manages to breathe fresh air into what might be considered a used-up environment.

Unlike the Vivaldi model, O’Connor’s creates no clear-cut seasonal differences, despite the Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter movement titles. Still, as a composer, O’Connor is inventive, and as a performer--indeed, as his own virtuoso protagonist--he holds the listeners’ interest firmly.

And he does so with great insouciance and even stoicism.

No mugging clouds his performance--he flies over the musical materials with a caressing speed and no sentimentality. He plays the notes--and there are hundreds of them--without stressing their difficulty or glossing over their articulation. But he extracts their beauties.

In both suites, O’Connor was carefully and affectionately assisted by the 17-member Metamorphosen ensemble, conducted without score by Scott Yoo, an exigent but unobtrusive leader.

The first half of the program offered the orchestra without soloist, playing with great accomplishment both Dan Coleman’s haunting “Long ago, this radiant day” and John Adams’ familiar “Shaker Loops.”