MUSIC REVIEW : A Classy Concert From Perick, Roge

Iona Brown is still listed as music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and she will retain that title--as well as numerous important engagements with the ensemble--until next fall. Friday night at Royce Hall, however, the orchestra gave a concert that clearly reflected the prerogatives and priorities of its next resident conductor, Christof Perick.

Unlike Brown, Perick is not most celebrated, or most comfortable, going for Baroque. He certainly is no leader who fiddles while his orchestra churns. He is, essentially, an old-school, Germanic maestro who likes to think big, even when the forces at his disposal happen to be small.

Chances are, the Chamber Orchestra will revert under his able leadership to the mini-symphonic ambitions that became the norm in the years when Gerard Schwarz held the podium. Given this repertory perspective, Perick’s unhackneyed program at UCLA offered fascinating previews of coming musical attractions.

The evening opened with a beguiling 74-year-old novelty: Franz Schreker’s Chamber Symphony for 23 Solo Instruments. Formidably convoluted yet delicately plotted, it attests to the expressivity of a romanticism in decay.

Schreker was an inspired technician and a lofty theorist. Ultimately a victim of the Nazi regime, he died at the age of 56 in 1934. His grandiose, ever-transparent chamber symphony dabbles in enlightened cliche expansion and, at the same time, stretches conventional harmonic barriers in an amiable manner that would have done Richard Strauss proud.

Exercising little fuss and less muss, Perick conducted the piece with obvious affection and just the right hint of muted passion. The orchestra responded brilliantly.

At the end of the evening--in Haydn’s Symphony No. 104, a.k.a. “London”--Perick demonstrated a respect for classical purity unencumbered with starchy reverence. In his hands, Haydn’s symphonic valedictory had plenty of point and poise, ample clarity and elegance. Nevertheless, these obvious virtues were never achieved at the expense of spontaneity or propulsion.

The glittery centerpiece of the program was Ravel’s G-major Piano Concerto, which served as introductory showpiece for the French virtuoso Pascal Roge. Unfazed by the perfumed rhetoric and decadent funk, he breezed nonchalantly through the perky opening, brought languid sensuality to the indulgences of the Adagio, then ripped with dazzling, heroic bravado over the hurdles of the Presto finale.

This was a snazzy, elegant performance, sensitively accompanied by Perick and the orchestra.

The audience--relatively small, like many an audience in these troubled times--registered appropriate bliss. Contrary to customary orchestral etiquette, Roge responded to his ovation with a solo encore: “Gnossienne” No. 5, by Satie.