WOLFF CONDUCTS L.A. CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

An orchestra lacking a permanent conductor to hold it in check eventually takes on the aspect of a ship without a rudder. On Thursday the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra imported for its leader a previously little-known 31-year-old conductor named Hugh Wolff and found a temporary haven in the rather forlorn Beverly Theatre.

It was not the happiest of occasions. The stellar light fell on Elmar Oliveira, the first American violinist to win the gold medal at the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow, who successfully revived Samuel Barber’s neglected 1941 Concerto.

Barber and Oliveira met on congenial terms. Barber entertained sensible notions of the ingredients of a useful concerto. He invented a persuasive set of melodic themes, and put them to work in an idiom that did not strain the instrument and that exploited its traditional possibilities.

Oliveira summoned a warm and elegant tone to sing the melodies, enough perceptiveness to establish moods and emotional flutterings, and a technique that could dispose of the hazards without having to force the issue or strive for excessive brilliance. It was a well-tempered performance of a work that still wears its modest aims with style and distinction.

Wolff is hardly yet a seasoned conductor. He works hard at it; he thrusts and lunges and pokes and writhes but the able musicians of the orchestra responded calmly without getting too involved with the conductor.

Wolff’s musical ideas were mainly acceptable without reaching any very high communicative level. He steered the players through the rhapsodic twists and turns of Kodaly’s Dances from Galanta with more sobriety than abandon. He treated Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony respectfully on the whole, though a lengthy succession of underplayed pianissimos became an undependable crutch in defining Mozart style. The smallish audience was cordial to players and conductor.

The same program will be presented in Ambassador Auditorium at 8:30 tonight.