Mozart Camerata Plays With Grace and Humor

Now in its 11th season, the Mozart Camerata, a chamber-sized orchestra based in Orange County, continues to observe the birth month of its namesake with a Mozart program. This year’s included the First and 36th Symphonies, and the Piano Concerto No. 15.

Heard Saturday night at the Irvine Barclay Theatre (and scheduled to repeat the program the following afternoon in Newport Beach), Ami Porat’s accomplished Classical band brought mellowness to Mozart’s first symphonic essay (written when he was 8) and genuine ebullience and technical impeccability to the “Linz” Symphony, written 19 years later.

Conductor-founder Porat played a benign role in both readings, letting each unfold and happen at its own particular set of pacings. The players, as soloists and in sections, controlled contrasts sharply and articulated each succeeding movement with an easy natural quality.

Pianist Daniel Shapiro was joyful and fearless as he executed the emotional and mechanical complexities of the B-flat Concerto (K. 450), hopping over the hurdles gracefully, doling out its measure of purling passagework and exquisite songfulness without undue self-consciousness.

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Throughout, he produced prodigies of technical accomplishment: wondrous trills, commanding cadenzas and playful, cross-handed leaps. Shapiro is an ideal Mozartean for he combines importance of musical statement with an infectious lightheartedness. Porat and the orchestra provided him with solid support and a corresponding sense of humor.

The orchestra’s encore was Bach’s “Air on the G String.”