Music Reviews : Soprano Carol Neblett in Chamber Festival Finale

The fifth and final concert of the Chamber Music/L.A. Festival brought out a large and responsive audience to honor the memory of Jascha Heifetz in the Japan America Theatre on Sunday afternoon.

That fabled arbiter of taste, discrimination and lofty severity might well have been pleased with this earnest tribute. The music surely would have been to his liking, and while it was never safe to predict any Heifetz reaction, the performances held to a standard that can only command serious respect.

Mozart of course was inevitable in any such tribute, and the Viola Quintet in C, K.515, profited from a nice adjustment of musical- and sound-values. The violas of Milton Thomas and Marcus Thompson lent a distinctive but never too conspicuous weight to the score, and style and grace were agreeably dispensed by the violins of Paul Rosenthal and Yukiko Kamei and the cello of Nathaniel Rosen.

The closing ensemble, Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A, Opus 81, recruited Martin Katz to invigorate the piano part with dash and verve. Violinists Kamei and Christiaan Bor, violist Thompson and cellist Jeffrey Solow completed the personnel.

Carol Neblett, a striking image in a sequined emerald gown, may have used her bright soprano a bit too generously in three Scottish songs by Beethoven to violin and piano accompaniment, but offered a notable example of classical bravura in Mozart’s concert aria, “Ch’io mi scordi di te?”, K.505, with Katz dashing off the virtuoso piano accompaniment as if it were a full-fledged concerto.