The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra opened their season with a program that would have been inconceivable 60 years ago when the band began. Then it was something to fill a niche in the city's musical entertainment menu. There was a new vogue for Baroque music, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven by virtuoso chamber orchestras that delivered with sophisticated elegance, humour and punch. The LACO became an international star after Sir Neville Marriner arrived in 1965. They are still the best in town in their core repertoire and have broadened it out considerably. They have pride in the music they make, which they share with their audiences.
Mozart's Jupiter after intermission was like the old glory days, olympian and vigorous, with stunning clarity in the dialogues between the strings, anchored by stalwart cellists and double basses. The woodwinds, each with their colors and personality, were led by sweet-toned virtuoso bassoons. Himself a flutist who worked with Marriner for 20 years, Jaime Martín kept the narrative flowing with the elegant, life-enhancing energy that characterized LACO under Marriner, just as stylish with perhaps more temperament, the music incisive and bold without being heavy.
The Andante cantabile moved along at a lovely rolling gait, with elegantly bowed strings and nimble-fingered cellists after the double bar. The Menuetto swaggered endearingly with exquisite details in the woodwinds; in the Trio the trumpets were superb. In the finale, all the little explosions were timed perfectly to keep the music going while the musicians were exalting in the physical beauty of the music and solving the puzzle of making the fugal elements come out right. It was if as they were summing up Mozart's symphonic legacy. They played The Marriage of Figaro overture as an encore.
Dai Wei introduced the West Coast premiere of her Invisible Portals, co-commissioned by LACO and the American Composers Orchestra in New York, as a shambhala teaching. As the music for instruments and electronics rustled its way into sometimes alien existence, Wei picked up a microphone and joined in their sounds of nature. As underlying beats gathered into waves releasing into cool pool of bells and flutes, Wei sang in a variety of voices, some her own, some those of ghosts or children. Wielding the microphone like it was an instrument, dancing and moving to the music with slinky innuendo, and with an actor's mask that flashed out in vivid beauty at moments of strong emotion, she brought the music's disparate strands together. She was a huge audience favourite.
In the Mendelssohn that followed Augustin Hadelich took a pleasantly moderate tempo, played both brilliantly and within himself, sweetly and sleekly. In the second movement, he added some sugary portamenti. The finale went better, and he led the woodwinds a merry chase which sparkled like diamonds but they caught him at the end and brought down the house.
Hadelich resisted to shouts, roars and cheers and played two of his own arrangements as encores: An earnest classical music take on bluegrass legend Howdy Forrester's Wild Fiddler's Rag, and a dangerously charming one of on Carlos Gardel's Por una cabeza, shot full of impeccably played acrobatics and double stops.
