Elvis, ‘Five-O’ and the merry elves

For those who have had just about enough of stale carols, overly pious early music, “Messiahs” and other encrustations of December music-making, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s holiday program Saturday night at the Alex Theatre came as an imaginative bit of sass and fun.

Yet in its merry way, the programming went deeper than that, cross-referencing pop culture of past and present, perhaps intentionally tapping into the pulse of the holiday shopping madness outside on Brand Boulevard and at the nearby Glendale Galleria.

When jazz was still a new, fresh thing in the air around 1931, Ravel caught it in his Piano Concerto; earlier, Stravinsky re-created ragtime in his own idiosyncratically distorted image in Ragtime for Eleven Instruments. The chamber orchestra’s conductor, Jeffrey Kahane, led the Ravel from the piano; the piece’s irreverent spirit benefited from the chamber-sized forces, although Kahane’s light-fingered work on the lidless Yamaha piano did not project out into the hall. Alas. Stravinsky’s Ragtime, with a Hungarian cimbalom jangling away, could not quite find its difficult groove, limping along gingerly.

For raids on contemporary pop culture, Kahane turned to composer Michael Daugherty, who has made it an obsession. “Sunset Strip,” a Los Angeles premiere, purports to be a cruise down the famous boulevard, beginning with a motif that sounds like the “Hawaii Five-O” theme as played by the Tijuana Brass, throwing in several layers of pop influences in its disjointed way.

“Dead Elvis,” which has been played in town before, remains a darkly sardonic look at our obsession with the King, with bassoonist Kenneth Munday, in full Presley Las Vegas regalia, swaggering and posing amusingly.

Osvaldo Golijov’s Lullaby and Doina also borrows from the vernacular -- the klezmer tradition -- but this piece is deadly serious in its mournfully building tension. And in their ways, Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” and “Sunflower Slow Drag” are also serious pieces, although Gunther Schuller’s bouncy transcriptions made them seem light on their feet.

To top things off, clarinetist Gary Gray rippled through a Schuller arrangement of Confrey’s rambunctious “Dizzy Fingers,” and James Reese Europe’s rare “Castle House Rag” hurtled by in a frantic rush.