Music Reviews : Iona Brown Begins Farewell Performances

The goodbys began--they will end May 10--at the first of three performances of Iona Brown’s penultimate program with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Wednesday night.

Beginning next season, the outgoing music director will remain a presence here--with the title Principal Guest Conductor--but her appearances, for many, will seem perfunctory.

This week’s agenda of music for strings revived works long familiar on LACO programs. Indeed, one of them, Bach’s D-minor Harpsichord Concerto, appeared on the first Chamber Orchestra performance in October, 1969.

Bartok’s Divertimento for Strings also graced that first LACO season, though, 23 years ago, the orchestra certainly did not command all the resources of color, dynamics and musical probity it does today.

This time around, at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, Brown led a reading that had contrast and drama in abundance--quiet passages, especially, strongly resonant--with all details brightly in place.

She and her colleagues also gave Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” thoughtful reconsideration, as well as transparency without overstatement.

American harpsichordist John Gibbons, playing on a handsome-looking instrument, brought to Bach’s familiar masterpiece admirable aggression in the outer movements and stylish restraint in the middle. This was one time, however, when tasteful sound enhancement might have helped the Baroque instrument reach all members of the audience.

According to the page facing the printed program, the entire concert was “performed in memory of our friend and colleague, cellist Nils Oliver, who for 13 seasons graced us with his warmth, humor and incomparable musicianship . . . “

In tribute to Oliver, who died March 24, one month before his 40th birthday, Brown added to the program Bach’s Air from the Orchestral Suite No. 2.