All-Star Orchestra plays like ... all-stars

Baseball imagery is periodically imposed on classical music - never comfortably - for the sake of approachability. But with the All-Star Orchestra, whose name riffs on the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, the comparison is apt. Musicians from around the country spent a week at New York City's Manhattan Center last year playing for a series of one-hour televised programs that debut at 12:30 p.m. Sunday on WHYY-TV12.

One of the first faces you see in The All-Star Orchestra is Philadelphia Orchestra cellist Robert Cafaro saying, "This is probably the highest-level orchestra I've ever played with." (One wonders how that will go over at home.) Philadelphia concertmaster David Kim and principal flutist Jeffrey Khaner are frequently interviewed. Nine Philadelphians are mixed in with players from the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, plus musicians from Chicago, Boston, etc.

At the helm is former Seattle Symphony Orchestra music director Gerard Schwarz, who left that ensemble in 2011 after years of contention but who still was able to galvanize Seattle funders as well as classical label Naxos of America in the creation of this eight-episode series. Segments will be available on DVD.

Production values are first-class. Commentary is solidly medium-weight and rarely simplistic. Camera work is so focused on the musicians you don't get a good look at the Manhattan Center interior until the second show. So many classical concert videos seem to apologize for their content. This one emphatically does not.

The August 2012 shooting schedule was shrewd: Late summer is a dead spot in the classical music world. So the Metropolitan Opera's 19-camera crew, the selected musicians, and the Manhattan Center, a longtime recording venue, were all available. Little did passengers on the Bolt Bus (whose Philadelphia-bound buses leave from that same block) know what was going on a few feet away behind closed doors.

The format: Opening commentary from Schwarz and credentialed academics previews the pieces. Musicians discuss the challenges of bringing the music into being. Standard works - Stravinsky's The Firebird, Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 - are performed in full without breaks. Well-chosen modern works may be added as a postscript, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Avanti! and Philip Glass' Harmonium Mountain being two contrasting approaches to minimalism.

Color is used progressively: Excerpts are filtered in black and white, performances are in full color (and with a variety of angles that never become tiresome), credits are in soft focus.

So is the orchestra awesome? It's excellent, to be sure, though beyond that, one never knows how much the rich string sound should be credited to the orchestra or the generous Manhattan Center acoustics. Like other short-term super-orchestras (such as the Saito Kinen Orchestra), this one lacks a distinctive personality.

No doubt a glamorous, hyperarticulate conductor - Michael Tilson Thomas? - would have compensated for much in the personality department. But whatever one expects from Schwarz after all his questionable press (he also had an abbreviated tenure with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra), he's a likable, intelligent camera presence. His musical profile recalls Eugene Ormandy's: Performances are spirited but moderate, without the great personal imprint of, say, Gustavo Dudamel.

Schwarz's blind spots become more apparent as the series goes on. His intense relationship with Shostakovich makes for a particularly rich segment built around the Symphony No. 5. But Schumann's Symphony No. 3 shows only occasional signs of life. The all-contemporary segment titled "The Living Art Form" is digestible enough, but works such as the Samuel Jones Cello Concerto hardly represent the best of what's out there right now.

All-Star Orchestra

12:30 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 27 on WHYY-TV12