MUSIC REVIEWS : Graf Leads Mozarteum Orchestra at Performing Arts Center

COSTA MESA —  There are pitfalls in masterpieces as well as in lesser works. The opening Allegro of Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony, for instance, can lure an unsuspecting--even a suspecting--conductor into a perfunctory or sterile performance. Its perfection lulls the unalert.

Hans Graf, leading his Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg in its first performance at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, fell into this trap Monday night after intermission. Regularity spawned routine.

But the Austrian conductor immediately redeemed himself and his gifted ensemble with one of the most polished and touching performances of the great slow movement one can imagine.

Mechanical glitches, recurring problems of balance and intonational discrepancies--small but bothersome details that had marred the earlier part of this program--suddenly disappeared. Musical pertinence and transparent textures characterized not only this stoic but heartfelt reading of the Andante but the closing movements as well. This accomplished band sounded like a great chamber orchestra.

The 47-member ensemble--appearing as the third attraction on the “Great Orchestras” series of the Orange County Philharmonic Society this season--operated on a more mundane level earlier in the evening.

Perhaps the drier acoustics of Segerstrom Hall probed the orchestra’s achievements more critically than had the more flattering sound in Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, where the group played six years ago. Whatever the case, one found a more fuzzy, less pristine, string profile and less distinctive wind playing than earlier.

Or perhaps Graf’s no-nonsense, brisk and sometimes impersonal podium manner kept at a distance music we usually find more cordial.

His reading of the Symphony No. 34 found most of the jauntiness in the opening, many of the deeper joys in the slow movement, and all of the exuberance in the finale, some skewed details aside. But it remained a warm-up kind of performance.

At mid-program, Ernst Kovacic, another native Austrian, was soloist in the A-major Violin Concerto, K. 219. He filled this role nicely, with easy virtuosity and a full, sweet tone produced on a handsome Guadagnini instrument. But his command of intonation sometimes faltered, and he fell short of genuine authority in those places where the soloist ought to lead. Graf and the orchestra gave commendable support.

Again under its permanent conductor, the touring Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg returns to the Orange County center Monday with a different program, this one with pianist Steven Lubin as soloist (see story, F3).