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Review: LACO offers ‘romance,’ mostly lukewarm

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Following its penchant for dreaming up one-word summaries of its concerts this season, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra applied the label “romance” to its program Sunday night at Royce Hall.

That meant an immersion in 19th century Romantic-era styles and sounds. Even the world premiere on tap -- Damian Montano’s Introduction and Scherzo -- did not deviate a jot from the theme. It was a program geared to soothe and please a general audience -- which, judging from overheard snatches of post-concert conversation, it did. For some.

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Montano, who happens to be LACO’s second bassoonist, delivered a brief, thickly scored curtain-raiser, with a fairly turgid scherzo galumphing along to its conclusion. Some would call it old-fashioned, but that’s beside the point. The real issue is whether there were any memorable ideas or a personal profile that could breathe new life into an older tradition -- and upon first acquaintance, nothing resonated with me.

Pianist Ingrid Fliter, who burst into the big time rather suddenly in 2006 as the recipient of a Gilmore Award, has been dealing in a lot of Chopin lately. Last year, her first CD on a major label (EMI) was an all-Chopin collection, and Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 was on her docket Sunday night, with LACO music director Jeffrey Kahane competently in support.

Alas, there wasn’t much in Fliter’s Chopin that grabbed one’s attention. She tried to be sensitive and thoughtful in the concerto’s first movement, but her phrasing and rubatos seemed artificially imposed, without much of an inner pulse guiding her hands –- and thus the music tended to drift. The lovely harmonic twists in the right-hand lines of the second movement that can convey so much emotion were tossed away casually, and the rhythms of the third movement were smoothed over. The encore, Chopin’s “Minute” Waltz, had a similar effect: blurred, unnatural, overly precious.

It took a fine performance of Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony, whipped up with precision, passion and an athletically rumbling undercurrent by Kahane, to bring the evening to life after intermission. This is a big year for Mendelssohn -- the composer’s bicentennial (the actual birthday is Feb. 3) –- and with the Master Chorale’s “Elijah” happening downtown on the same night as LACO’s “Scottish” Symphony, and an all-Mendelssohn L.A. Philharmonic program led by L.A. Opera’s James Conlon coming up in a month, all cylinders seem to be firing at the right time.

-- Richard S. Ginell

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