MUSIC REVIEWS : Jewish Symphony Celebrates Diversity

Having wrapped up its second year of existence, the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony seems committed to the axiom that diversity is a terrible thing to waste or ignore. Specialist ensembles such as this one--committed to Jewish musicians and composers--enhance the cultural spectrum and help ward off standard repertory doldrums.

Sunday at the University Synagogue in Brentwood, music director Noreen Green led the ranks in a program built around two centerpiece works by the late Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Born a century ago, the Italian Jewish composer fled his homeland on the brink World War II and spent many years in Los Angeles, writing for film until his death in 1968.

His Guitar Concerto No. 1, written for Segovia in 1939, was the final opus written in Italy before the composer’s exodus. A solid entry in the slim ranks of guitar concertos, it was played here with lucid grace by the young soloist Jordan Charnofsky, who displayed a sure hand and expressive range. Charnofsky peaked with a bravura unaccompanied passage, culminating in flamenco-style strumming.

The composer’s unabashedly romantic, Jewish-themed Violin Concerto, written for Jascha Heifetz and premiered by Toscanini in 1933, closed the concert with grand flourish, in the able hands of soloist Mark Kashper. In Kashper’s reading, subtlety, passion and clarity were never lost, even when the score thinned out.

In between came Tsippi Fleischer’s tone poem “A Girl Named Limonad,” an episodic construction of uneven charms, and “The Suite Sephardic,” a set of simple, orchestrated folk tunes commissioned by the Symphony from Connecticut-based composer and cantor Joseph Ness. A good cause continues.