Review: Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, glammed up and fascinating

The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia has never been Glamour Central — its audiences don't need that sort of thing — but the orchestra's status certainly wasn't hurt by a triple dose of that commodity over the weekend.

Opera star Jessye Norman unexpectedly delivered an unaccompanied spiritual at Saturday's Lifetime Achievement Award Gala, which also came with a performance by her superb protégé, Canadian mezzo-soprano Susan Platts. On Sunday at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater, the orchestra's concluding concert program of the season (repeated Monday at Perelman, and to be heard again Tuesday at the Temple Performing Arts Center) featured Eroica Trio cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio, who has always looked and dressed like a fashion model but does not play like one.

So magnetic is she that one had to avert one's eyes to appreciate her strictly musical virtues. You wouldn't want to hear her play the Schumann Cello Concerto at Verizon Hall: Though the piece's lyric moments make it memorable, the more heroic ones require a certain amount of brute force that a cultivated chamber musician such as Sant'Ambrogio doesn't consistently command. With less expanse to fill and a smaller orchestra at the Perelman, the borderline-miraculous coloring effects created an experience you don't typically get from more hardened touring virtuosos. Detailed corners of the music were probed and explored — which can be done in a smaller-scale performance without the piece losing cohesion, thanks partly to music director Dirk Brossé's steel-trap concentration.

Brossé is turning out to be a likably eccentric presence — and an artistically significant one. Each of his concerts has an unscheduled musical bagatelle, often by one or another film composer that classical audiences don't know. And though I've yet to hear anything I'd want to revisit, his surprises are all pleasant ones. His pre-concert talks are charmingly haphazard. His bristling energy yields some unorthodox conducting moments: Leading Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 without a baton had him with arms and fingers outstretched, each digit expressively wiggling. Beethoven was often characterized as shaking his fist at God; Brossé did the same with the brass section, causing an impressively grand moment to erupt. At other points, Beethoven's 7th was original, robust, and sometimes fearlessly impolite (as it should be).

Thus, a program such as Sunday's that had nothing but familiar music was anything but a redundant experience. And though one might be used to Sibelius' Valse Triste conducted as a muted mood piece (the Charles Dutoit approach), Brossé made this short, wistfully waltzing work so eventful as to seem like a miniature symphony.

The Chamber Orchestra always walks a fine line between creating an experience that's differentiated from what goes on elsewhere in the Kimmel Center and something that won't alienate mainstream audiences. So singular is Brossé that, regardless of an individual concert's success, it won't be like anything else around.

Contact David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.