Chamber Orchestra's Brossé stages a creative debut

The sparing use of vibrato - which the orchestra executed with security and enhanced sonority - was only the starting point Sunday. If one assumes that score contains only a fraction of the performance markings that were taken for granted in the 18th century, Brossé was not wrong to add crescendos and numerous tempo shifts for sections within movements. Where the score contains a simple "forte," he delivered a punchy sforzando or a high-contrast fortissimo. This was anything but chic, mellifluous Mozart, but it never seemed careless or willful. Problems lay in Brossé's sense of rhythm, which sometimes was too heavy handed to convey musical information. With slower-than-usual tempos necessary to accommodate all that was on Brossé's mind - plus a tendency to hold fermatas even longer than Lorin Maazel - he courted tedium and made the performance seem, at times, like a dissection as well as an interpretation.

Similar lack of momentum had subtle consequences in Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2. Venezuelan soloist Gabriela Martinez was a glamorous presence, both visually and in the Alicia de Larrocha-like coloring she brought to this less-than-sturdy product of the composer's early years. Absent was the sense of line that can so effortlessly buoy you from one charming passage to the next - perhaps due to Brossé's habit of breaking the music into sections.

As a composer, Brossé's sensibility in Fanfare for Philadelphia clearly hails from John Williams' cinematic timing and Leonard Bernstein's harmonic language. More than a fanfare, the piece was a compressed theme and variations, each section having its own orchestral sound, much in the spirit of Philadelphia's well-defined neighborhoods. Broad cinematic strokes were everywhere, stopping short only at quoting the theme from Rocky.