MUSIC REVIEW : SUMMERFEST’S SECOND EVENT MUNDANE

After a stirring and soaring opening-night concert on Saturday, the La Jolla Chamber Music Society settled for the mundane for its second event Sunday afternoon in its seven-concert August series SummerFest ’87.

Extra seating surrounding the performers was unused in Sherwood Auditorium at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Unlike Saturday, no long line of disappointed ticket-seekers materialized at the box office. Though the concert was sold out, some empty seats remained unused through the matinee performances.

Though respectable in every sense, those performances occupied a lower level of inspiration than Saturday’s. And they happened, coincidentally, to feature artists who live and work in the greater San Diego area.

If programming can be blamed for setting the tone, Mendelssohn’s vapid Second Cello Sonata, the opening piece, gets all credit. Though given a skilled and stylish run-through by cellist Margaret Moores and pianist Edith Orloff, the composer’s Opus 58 simply never took off. Moores and Orloff deserve a better showcase.

In Luciano Berio’s 40-year-old “Quattro Canzoni Popolari,” soprano Carol Plantamura, assisted enthusiastically by pianist Jean-Charles Francois, used her showcase in the service of delectable word-point, seductive tone-coloring and musical projection. But she preceded these with chansons of another stripe, Debussy’s demanding and convoluted “Ariettes oubliees.” In these, and despite Francois’ deeply savored pianistic backgrounds, Plantamura failed to find the interpretive and technical means to bring them to life.

Yet another San Diego-based pianist, Karen Follingstad, dominated the final work, Beethoven’s “Ghost” Trio, Opus 70, No. 1, in which her partners were violinist Andres Cardenes and cellist Jeffrey Levenson. These three meshed handsomely in terms of style, personality and ensemble, and the results had consistent authority and virtuosity, though at a lower energy level than one might have expected.