Music Reviews : Daniel, Machiko Kobialka at Stimson House

The site, the Stimson House on Figueroa Street near Adams Boulevard, proved a good deal more interesting than the music at Sunday’s Chamber Music in Historic Sites presentation.

The turreted, red-sandstone exterior of the 1891 edifice might be described as Midwestern Ivanhoe, while its interior inspires a single adjective, woody --as in ash, sycamore, mahogany, oak--after the material whose lavish use creates an appealing acoustical as well as visual ambiance.

Violinist Daniel Kobialka and pianist Machiko Kobialka, a San Francisco-based husband and wife duo, were Sunday’s performers. Their playing is smoothly integrated, technically secure and, one assumes, informed by the interpretive strength required to do justice to material of substance.

Substance was, however, lacking in their brief program. Not even the magical name of Mozart helped much, as the Kobialkas--intent, obviously, on avoiding the obvious--chose not one of his dozen hardly overexposed masterpieces in the genre but the rather thin Sonata in C, K. 403, which in its finale also happens to be the work of a hand other than Mozart’s.

A trio of Debussy transcriptions might have proven kicky if projected with some panache and beguilement, most notably in the delectable Heifetz transcription of “Golliwog’s Cakewalk,” which emerged sober to the point of glumness.

Finally, there was the “big” work of the afternoon and, interestingly, another Heifetz specialty: the sweatily overwrought, finger-busting and widly derivative (of Brahms, Faure and Richard Strauss) Sonata in B minor of Ottorino Respighi. who was a far more interesting composer when he was being noisily, orchestrally vulgar.

The Kobialka Duo played it earnestly and cleanly (no mean feat). That Mr. Kobialka is no Heifetz is not intended as an insult. Rather, as a caution: only a legend can get away with playing music as rotten as this.