Kahane’s Attempt to Define Chamber Music

There is no hard-and-fast rule, no international governing body, stating exactly what constitutes the repertory of the chamber orchestra. Besides the music that is written expressly for it, there is a huge gray area of works for symphony orchestra in general that may or may not be appropriate for the smaller ensemble. Conductor Jeffrey Kahane ventured into this fuzzily defined space in two of the works on the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s program Saturday at the Alex Theatre in Glendale.

Neither Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin” nor Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto especially scream for chamber orchestra treatment. The Ravel, scored for eight winds, three brass, harp and an unspecified number of strings, is already clear, crystalline and delicate as can be in its instrumentation and textures. The full body of the Berlin Philharmonic couldn’t muck it up. Kahane’s reading, though organized and lively enough, sounded undernourished with its small body of strings (which included only six first violins), the colors pale, the shimmers wiry.

The climaxes in the Shostakovich lacked effect for the same reason--the diminutive string section could not muster enough volume or muscle. And since this work too is crisply scored--bright and edgy--one could wonder what was being gained by a chamber orchestra performance.

The soloist, Welsh cellist Kathryn Price, was an interesting one. She seemed to plumb the depths of this brooding work and attain its intense heights with ease, never forcing her points but making them dead-on. Her timing, pacing and inflection were similarly simple and true. Kahane and the orchestra supported agilely, with plush sounds in softer passages. Richard Todd held nothing back in the horn solos.

Kahane was on safer ground with Brahms’ Serenade No. 2, designed for a chamber orchestra without violins. Here, the weights, measures and balances came to a neat sum in a genial performance, rich in dynamic contrast and quick of expression.