MUSIC REVIEWS : CHAMBER MUSIC/LA FEST CONTINUES

The second program of the Chamber Music/LA Festival, Sunday afternoon at the Japan America Theatre, was a somewhat helter-skelter affair that nonetheless ended in a blaze of glory with a rousing performance of Brahms’ String Quintet in G, Opus 111.

At its outset the concert all too clearly betrayed the ad-hoc nature of its performing ensemble with a rough reading of Faure’s Piano Quartet in C minor: a slenderized cousin of the Franck Piano Quintet which had been presented last week at the opening of the festival.

The Faure ensemble found its greatest strength in the commanding, sweet-toned playing of violinist Koichiro Harada. Pianist Edward Auer began rockily, missing a few notes and slightly out of rhythmic sync with his colleagues, the latter fault perhaps attributable to the languid playing of violist Milton Thomas and cellist Peter Rejto.

One couldn’t fault the execution of violinists Harada and Yukiko Kamei in the local premiere of “Rocking Mirror Daybreak,” Toru Takemitsu’s glum, soporific essay in navel-gazing, peppered with tense silences. As for that title, the program note informs us that his work was “written after poems by Makoto Ooka and Thomas Fitzsimmons.” Not a syllable about the content of those poems.

The Brahms Quintet utilized the sterling services of violinists Paul Rosenthal and Kamei, violists Marcus Thompson and Thomas and cellist Jeffrey Solow. The special nature of the performance was apparent in its first measures, the cello’s soaring theme sounding out with massive authority--and sonority--while in less perceptive interpretations it is buried beneath the general din of what would seem to be a Brahmsian miscalculation.

No less admirable was the sweetly dolorous viola duet in the Adagio. But then it all went superbly: if not with the utmost suavity of ensemble tone (these players do not, after all, work together the year round), then always with stirring brio.