20TH-CENTURY PROGRAM : XTET ENSEMBLE AT WEST L.A. COLLEGE

The delicate balance between how composers and performers perceive music can create a problem: The composer often listens for musical ideas and a sense of intellectual satisfaction, while the performer may like music that is technically challenging, and runs the gamut of what the instrument can do.

Meanwhile, the listener is left to sort out these sensibilities and unfortunately is often caught with too much of one and not enough of the other.

Tuesday night at West Los Angeles College, XTET, a group of 10 Los Angeles musicians, gave a concert of the music of Manuel de Falla, Andrew Imbrie, Alfred Schnittke and Luciano Berio. A moderate-size, somewhat inattentive audience attended.

No doubt, XTET’s personnel includes some of Los Angeles’ finest instrumentalists and, as a group, they demonstrate extraordinary precision and enthusiasm. Also obvious is the ensemble’s sophisticated level of appreciation for new music and eagerness to tackle challenging pieces.

Yet there is also in XTET a tendency to overemphasize the performance. At times this proves to be a bitter pill for the listener to swallow. Evidence of this lies in Tuesday’s program: It was executed with utmost confidence but it brought together music of four very different composers that had little in common except that all the pieces were difficult or showy.

Schnittke’s “Hymnus I” (1974) made the strongest impression as an odd, low-register dialogue between cello and harp strummings and cello and timpani portamentos. Roger Lebow executed nicely the prominent cello part which, with the exception of a few frenetic solos of Russian flavor, stayed with a steady, metric pulse performed entirely pizzicato.

Likewise, Daisietta Kim’s authoritative performance of Berio’s popular “Folksongs” (1964) made use of a wide spectrum of dramatic nuance and dynamic control. Also performed were Imbrie’s “Pilgrimage” (1983), a collage of melodic fragments unconvincingly representing a trek toward religious enlightenment, and Falla’s impressionistic ditty, “Psyche” (1924).