Music Review : Mozart Camerata Samples Grace, Balance and Drama

NEWPORT BEACH â€”  The Mozart Camerata sandwiched elegant 18th-Century pleasantries between more substantial works by Mozart and Haydn and came up with a satisfying program Sunday afternoon at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church.

The opening selection, the touching Adagio from Mozart’s Divertimento in B-flat, K. 287, had its shaky moments--some faulty intonation and strident high notes. Nevertheless, the orchestra persisted in careful phrasing and affecting attention to melodic direction. Music director Ami Porat wrote the violin cadenza, a very elaborate yet sufficiently homogeneous focal point played with arresting care by concertmaster Roger Wilkie.

The Adagio seemed to serve as a warm-up, for the small technical kinks in its reading never resurfaced.

Principal oboist Leanne Becknell lent neat and stylish leadership as soloist in Domenico Cimarosa’s Oboe Concerto in C, a 1942 arrangement compiled from Cimarosa’s keyboard sonatas by Australian conductor and composer Arthur Benjamin. With Porat at the helm, Becknell’s comrades followed in sympathetic partnership.

The unassuming charm that characterized the concerto took an even more refined form for J.C. Bach’s G-major Sinfonia, the sixth from his Opus 3. Here, Porat exacted light, fresh-faced energy for the fast movements and explored a multitude of soft shades during the thoughtful Andante.

Having delved into modest examples of grace and balance, the Camerata closed with Sturm und Drang --Haydn’s Symphony No. 44, the “Trauer.�

In his highly expressive conducting manner, Porat urged aggressive, but always clear, sectional interplay, sculpted by pointed accents and sudden dynamic contrasts. The Minuet proceeded in deliberate and somber unity. The Adagio--from which the symphony takes its name, because Haydn reportedly requested that it be played for his own funeral--emerged a sustained and bittersweet elegy.