Music and Dance Reviews : XTET Gives Intimate Concert at Campus Theatre

Friday night in the Campus Theatre at El Camino College, pianist Gloria Cheng and four other members of the chamber music ensemble XTET gave an intimate concert for a crowd consisting largely of students eager to receive credit for their attendance. Cheng’s name received top billing but none of the works performed featured her as a soloist.

Program notes given from the stage included cellist Roger Lebow’s apt description of the program as “four works that used to be avant-garde.” The newest work on the program was written in 1960.

That was Lukas Foss’ classic of post-Schoenberg atonality, “Time Cycle.” Playing the arrangement for quintet and omitting the improvisations that occur between movements, the XTET members bypassed the large scope of the more ambitious orchestral version.

The predominantly tentative performance highlighted efforts by percussionist David Johnson to imitate the ticking of clocks, suggesting the passing of time into the eternity of death. Soprano Daisietta Kim sang with a sweetness of tone that didn’t always bring out the weightiness of the words--especially the more crazed, consonant-laden German texts by Kafka and Nietzsche.

A better vehicle for Kim turned out to be three songs from Messiaen’s “Poemes pour Mi” (1936). Kim’s effortless singing glided through Messiaen’s mystical texts “Ta voix” and “Les deux guerriers,” while her chanting in “Action des graces” nodded more towards Mahler than St. Gregory the Great.

Clarinetist David Ocker brought out all the expressionistic rough edges and intensity of Berg’s Four Pieces for Clarinet, Opus 5, though his style contrasted with Cheng’s neater, more reserved style of accompaniment.

Beethoven’s Trio, Opus 11, for clarinet, cello and piano best displayed Cheng’s virtuosity.