MUSIC REVIEW : Classic Composer Program Opens Camerata Season

IRVINE —  The unifying element behind Friday night’s season-opening program of the Mozart Camerata may have been something of a gimmick--and not an altogether original one at that--but it nevertheless piqued interest.

The concert brought together music of Mozart, Haydn, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Johann Baptist Vanhall--those four prominent Classical composers who gathered one evening in Vienna and formed an ad hoc string quartet.

If Friday’s event at the Irvine Barclay Theatre (which was also scheduled to repeat Saturday at St. Andrew’s Church in Newport Beach) didn’t quite live up to its prospects, it wasn’t the fault of the music so much as the music director, conductor Ami Porat, celebrating his 12th anniversary at the helm.

Though he has in recent months generated a lot of extra-musical heat off the podium, Porat seemed to view this program as a series of musical pleasantries, as pieces that are prim and pretty, above all. As such, he stressed orderliness over drama, which he achieved more or less throughout the evening, in readings tidily executed, polite in manner and only surface deep.

Despite all this, the concert unearthed one genuine musical find, Vanhall’s Sinfonia in A minor, a dark, lyrical and driving work intriguingly reminiscent of Mozart’s little G-minor Symphony (No. 25). Porat followed this with another Sturm und Drang symphony, the no-less-propulsive but brighter 43rd of Haydn, the so-called ‘Mercury.”

There was nothing mercurial about Porat’s readings, however, as he missed almost entirely the nervousness and Angst at the core of these pieces. Neatness counted most, then poise.

The lightweight first half--all in E-flat by the way, as was the Haydn--featured Steve Becknell as soloist in Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4, K. 495. Becknell brought a pure, bright tone, polished technique and dynamic sensitivity to the task, in a straightforward singing performance. Porat and orchestra gave warm, lively support.

The Camerata offered a generally sturdy run-through of Dittersdorf’s Allegro for Strings--a characterful, charming, six-minute movement, but nothing to get worked up over--as a curtain raiser.

Incidentally, Porat applied his own “bravos” to two of the performances, beating the audience to the punch.

A final note: According to the program, the Camerata’s musical rarities are supplied by a Robert Ludlum-like “international network of fellow musicologists--with members in Siena, Prague, Cluj, Nagyvarad and Budapest--(who) scan the ancient libraries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire seeking lost masterpieces of the classical period, which they provide to their respected colleague, Maestro Porat.”

No doubt on microfilm, inside a black falcon statuette.