Israel Camerata enthralling orchestra

There is something extraordinarily compelling about virtuosic musicianship. Take, for instance, the well-known pianist Claude Frank, who performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G Major yesterday at the Maine Center for the Arts. Now in his 70s, Frank still can burn up the keyboard with his aristocratic confidence and spark. Listen to him play — even the simplest passages — and you can be assured you’ll get that joyous chill that comes with hearing the music as truly as if Frank had just come from dinner with Mozart.

If you were to take that quality and multiply it by an orchestra, you would come up with the Israel Camerata, for whom Frank was a featured guest artist yesterday. Under the direction of Avner Biron, this ensemble is stuffed with virtuoso musicians.

That was proved within 30 seconds of the first piece on the program, Boccherini’s Symphony in D Minor, or “La Casa del Diavolo.” Exacting, clear, clean, tuneful notes blended with delicacy and ease. It seemed as if Biron gleefully teased the musicians with his baton, as if his lucid hand tickled out the minuscule subtleties — particularly in the third movement when the violinists unleashed a kind of cat-and-mouse chase scene for the strings.

Puccini’s “The Chrysanthemums,” a rare find at concerts, might be called a composer’s knickknack. But in the hands of these fine musicians, this pleasant little piece was made opulent and atmospheric.

Joining in this year’s bicentennial celebration of Franz Schubert, the orchestra triumphantly played his Symphony No. 5 in B Flat Major.

No less impressive was “Kaddish” for Violoncello and String Orchestra, written by contemporary Russian composer Mark Kopytman and performed by principal cellist Oleg Stolpher. When a person dies, Jews recite the kaddish prayer as an affirmation that despite the most profound grief, life is still sacred and filled with promise. For his “Kaddish” piece, Kopytman mixed folk and dance music with religious music and classical form to come up with a lyrical and poignant piece about death and hope. Stolpher, an award-winning cellist, worked his way around the underlying tick-tocking rhythms and high-pitched violins to find a soulful spot for his own instrument and expertise.

Two encores — a Schubert polonaise and the last movement of Mozart’s Divertimento in F — only further drove home the point that the Israel Camerata is a know-how orchestra whose sharpness comes from a striking collection of individual virtuosos making music together.