Caine proves able at riffs on Mozart

When Uri Caine plays Bach, Beethoven and especially Mahler, he dis-plays it. That is, the irreverently ingenious jazz pianist shows off the “Goldberg” and “Diabelli” Variations and moments from Mahler movements and songs while revealing (and reveling in) their opposite.

To do so, he may enlist straight-ahead jazz musicians, turntablists, cantors and/or various kinds of Asian and Middle Eastern vocalists, klezmer clarinet, string quartet, erhu, pipa, dizi, accordion and yanquin in just about any combination. Traditional Bach choirs and period instrument Baroque ensembles have also been Caine co-conspirators. Going off on tangents is Caine’s norm.

Saturday night, Mozart got the Caine treatment at the Alex Theater. And this time, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and its music director, pianist Jeffrey Kahane, were Caine’s double agents for the premiere of his Double Concerto for two pianos and chamber orchestra, which killed at least two Mozartean birds with one stone.

Kahane is in the midst of a two-year project of leading all the Mozart pianos from the keyboard in celebration of the composer’s 250th birthday. Meanwhile, Caine has begun a three-year residency with the LACO this season. So, for his first collaboration with the orchestra, he was commissioned to write this double concerto as the filling for a Mozart piano concerto sandwich. No. 15 in B-Flat preceded the new score. No. 22 in E-Flat followed the intermission.

LACO offered little in the way of notes to describe Caine’s concerto. But we were told about the inclusion of improvisation. Mozart was reputed to be an accomplished improviser, as are, not surprisingly, Caine and, surprisingly, Kahane.

The score, in three movements, also pays tribute to Mozart by using 18th century harmonies and phrasing that then goes amusingly awry. But despite the occasional P.D.Q. Bach brand of monkey wrench thrown into the works, the double concerto was unusually lacking, for Caine, in disrespect.

The outer movements approached standard-issue post-Modern neo-Classical sizzle, the kind of thing John Corigliano and William Bolcom have been known to do. An introspective, bluesy, slow movement had a more distinctive voice in which Bill Evans, Mahler and some dark harmonic tints from someplace far away merged and were distorted through a glass darkly.

The concerto, of course, was a showpiece for Caine and Kahane, a spectacular pair. But the Alex has terrible acoustics for piano. These two powerful virtuosos on two big Fazioli pianos might have made a riotous sound had not so much of it drifted upward, lost in the rafters.

Still, dazzling finger work is dazzling finger work, and that was unmistakable. The improvisatory passages -- or at least the passages I took for improvisations -- were flowing and thrilling on the part of both players, although the seemingly unflappable Caine seemed considerably more relaxed than Kahane. Joel McNeely, a film and television composer and conductor, was a guest on the podium, and a stiff one. But a more problematic stiffness was the classical concerto format. Caine simply needs more room to cut loose.

Then again, a glory of Kahane’s Mozart piano concerto project has been his ability to cut loose in these traditional scores. But once more, the acoustically gluttonous Alex attempted to gobble up as much of the piano as it could.

Speed is a principal pleasure of Kahane’s Mozart. His fingers are fleet, and the keyboard practically melts in his hands. So, too, does the orchestra. The E-flat concerto purred and bubbled, as Kahane brought out the liquid character of its woodwind writing and revealed every melody to be a small miracle.

Mozart didn’t write cadenzas for this concerto, so Kahane did. I can’t say whether improvisation was included, but they were jazzy without being stylistically inapt and a great delight, as was the drum that was invited into the first movement cadenza.

As both Caine and Kahane proved, Mozart concertos can take just about anything you might want to throw at them, and there are plenty more concertos to throw things at coming along next season. But the Alex’s acoustics are something they can’t take. A summer project for the city of Glendale should be to pull off the sound-absorbing curtains tacked to the walls in the back of the hall and to go shopping for a new shell for the stage.