Modern pieces upstage the real thing in Mozart program

With their epic Mozart piano concerto cycle barely out of the starting gate, Jeffrey Kahane and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra made an abrupt swerve into other matters Mozart at the Alex Theatre on Saturday night -- prefaced by some 20th century appetizers that virtually stole the show.

First there was Ibert’s brisk, breezy overture, “Hommage a Mozart,” which was not so much a tribute to the man from Salzburg as it was an echo of Ibert’s wonderful screwball suite, “Divertissement.”

Next, Schnittke’s Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Chamber Orchestra put a different spin on the practice of pastiche, sampling from the styles of Berg and Shostakovich before spinning through an irreverent finale that included a jaunty cakewalk and, so help me, an apparent takeoff on “La Cucaracha.”

Kahane was fortunate to have the services of the splendid young British violinist Daniel Hope (in his Southern California concert debut), who had consulted with Schnittke in the last years of his life and played the piece from memory with a biting attack and, in the introspective passages, fervent soul.

For the benefit of lucky early birds who attended the preconcert talk, Kahane took further advantage of Hope’s Schnittke connection by accompanying Hope in the original violin-piano version of the Sonata’s Largo movement -- which makes the piece’s Shostakovich influence more starkly explicit -- and Schnittke’s “Congratulatory Rondo,” a real Mozart pastiche.

And Hope was not through after the sonata. But instead of essaying one of the five familiar Mozart violin concertos, he and Kahane constructed an imaginary Mozart concerto of sorts by stringing together the Rondo in C, K. 373, the Adagio in E, K. 261, and the Rondo in B flat, K. 269.

It wasn’t exactly a unified sequence -- the distinctly different keys of each piece work against that -- but the Adagio gave Hope a chance to show off his full, rich vibrato, and the final Rondo was played with incisive rhythm.

Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 -- probably the noblest of them all -- completed the evening, played by Kahane and his crack ensemble with a light, clear, brilliantly polished texture, comfortably swift tempos, not too much emotional depth and not too many repeats either.