Music Reviews : Strawberry Creek Opens With Baroque Program

Music-lovers looking for a summer festival in which inspired, enthusiastic performances and intelligent, varied programming are the norm, take note. The Strawberry Creek Festival has begun.

Now in its fifth season--its third summer on the Malibu campus of Pepperdine University--the Strawberry Creek Orchestra displayed a maturity and polish that can rival many a permanent ensemble. At the opening of the festival, Thursday in Smothers Theatre, a reduced (18 players) orchestra gave taut, virtuosic readings of four Baroque works.

In the opening piece, Handel’s Entrance of the Queen of Sheba, from “Solomon,” the ensemble displayed not only extraordinary precision but great vitality and momentum, and, under conductor Yehuda Gilad, superb dynamic control.

Such precision was found, too, in Jan Dismas Zelenka’s “Sinfonia a 8 Concertanti” in A minor, which gave several orchestra members opportunities to display their expressiveness and virtuosity.

Cellist David Speltz, bassoonist Kenneth Munday, and most prominently, oboist Gerard Reuter and violinist Kathleen Lenski brought faultless accuracy and stylish ornamentation to various solo lines, while the orchestra exhibited both tightness of ensemble and infectious good nature.

Bach’s E-major Violin Concerto gave the listener another chance to hear Lenski’s smooth, liquid tone, clear, vibrant projection and facile technique. The Adagio radiated warmth and feeling; the outer movements bustled with energy. Gilad’s orchestra rendered the tutti passages with the same crispness and drive as elsewhere.

Vivaldi’s C-major piccolo concerto provided a vehicle for Gary Woodward’s nimble fingers. Although uneven execution and imperfect intonation detracted, Woodward’s sense of line and clean articulation made this work a delightful interlude.