MUSIC REVIEW : Dukov Plays Vivaldi in Beverly Hills

Despite their pictorial blandishments, Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” concertos make perilous pops fare, as at least one high-powered organization has learned this summer. Sunday afternoon with Bogidar Avramov and members of the Beverly Hills Symphony, however, Bruce Dukov proved himself a fiddler for all seasons in the pleasant and functional courtyard of Greystone Mansion.

Dukov brought ample technical skills to the assignment, plus burnished tone and free spirits. He focused the bravura energy pertinently, fleshing out the descriptive music with a wealth of color and inflection.

The concertmaster of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra lavished his most creative ornamental effort on the Largo of the “Spring” concerto, in a reading generally more stylish in spirit than in textbook details. He occasionally pressed for effect, as in the “Summer” Presto, but generally provided fluent, passionate playing.

Avramov and 16 strings accompanied Dukov with supportive brio, though often awkward at cadences and transitions. Citing in a program note the impracticality of the harpsichord outdoors, Avramov and Co. dispensed altogether with that vital--and sorely missed--continuo element.

That placed a big burden on principal cellist David Shamban, who delivered with pointed grace. The “Autumn” Adagio was left almost entirely to him as an unimaginatively bare and simplistic arpeggio study, but one he projected with confidence.

After intermission, Avramov and his string band returned with two of the concerti grossi from “L’Estro Armonico,” No. 2 in G minor and No. 10 in B minor. First desk violinists Miran Kojian, Razdan Kuyumjian, Alan Grunfeld and Richard Altenbach--all colleagues of Dukov in the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra--played the incidental solos solidly, albeit uneven in production and inspiration.

Avramov took a mostly lyrical approach to these pieces, but without fettering their mechanical drive. His musicians gave him a cohesive body of string sound, inconsistent in ensemble.