MUSIC REVIEW : Historic Places Add a Twist to Centennial Fete

Americans love a traditional centennial celebration. But to MaryAnn Bonino, executive director of the Chamber Music in Historic Sites series, such a celebration is a chance to add something different.

As part of the yearlong celebration of the Orange County Centennial, the Da Camera Society held a festival Sunday scattered over several places in downtown Santa Ana. Topping the bill were two exceptional afternoon concerts by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and I Cantori.

The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet--Anisa Angerola, John Dearman, William Kanengiser and Scott Tennant--appeared in the stately, turn-of-the-century courtroom of the Old County Courthouse on Santa Ana Boulevard.

Positioning themselves in front of the judge’s bench, the musicians performed magnificently in the extremely resonant room. Polyphonic sections rang with splendor while unison passages were amazingly tight and accurate.

“Antique Suite after Neusidler” (1976) by Orange County composer-guitarist Ian Krouse showcased skillfully rewritten music by Renaissance composer Hans Neusidler. Styled after Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” Suite, the four movements at times mimicked the sounds of zithers, lutes and viols and at other times broke off into Penderecki-like sustained sections.

The quartet brought the right amount of ebullience and sophistication, as it did with selections from Falla’s ballet “El Amor Brujo.” Arranged by Kanengiser and Krouse, the only Spanish music of the program was executed with drama and an appropriate amount of Latin flavor.

Other selections performed with expertise were James Smith’s carefully constructed arrangement of Gustav Holst’s “St. Paul’s Suite” and Leo Brouwer’s minimalist “Cuban Landscape With Rain” (1984).

Selections from Copland’s “Rodeo” included a rousing version of “Hoe-Down” and was the biggest crowd pleaser, while an encore of the bluegrass standard “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” induced much toe-tapping.

I Cantori performed down the street from the courthouse, at the Episcopal Church of the Messiah. The small, dark church, designed 100 years ago by 26-year-old Ernest Coxhead, an English architect who built several churches in Southern California , cast an almost mysterious shadow on the event.

Unfortunately, dry acoustics in the tiny sanctuary--thanks to an abundance of thick red carpeting--contributed to making the eight voices of I Cantori sound weak and, at times, strained. Yet the refreshing program of Renaissance and contemporary music from the New World unfolded with flair and style while the choir’s infectious enthusiasm overcame any shortcomings of their surroundings.

Conducted by the group’s founder, Edward Cansino, with idiomatic percussion played by Timm Boatman, the hourlong concert introduced little known villancicos by Tomas Pascual, as well as more familiar music by two Renaissance composers from the Puebla Cathedral, Gaspar Fernandes and Juan Gutierrez de Padilla.

I Cantori’s insight into Renaissance folk styles--not to mention its facility with archaic dialects--was best represented in Fernandes’ “Eso rigor e repente”; Gutierrez de Padilla’s “Exultate justi in Domino” gave it a more polished, Palestrina-like style to work with, something with which it is also comfortable.

Cansino alertly conducted his forces, often singing alto. His work as a composer was presented with his eclectic “Two Madrigals on Poems of Gutierre de Cetina,” which were sometimes enigmatic, often ponderous.