MUSIC REVIEW : South Coast Woodwinds Play Outdoors

Having endured several days of record-breaking (and energy-sapping) heat, visitors to South Coast Village in Santa Ana on Sunday enjoyed weather virtually perfect for an alfresco noon concert.

Held on the shopping center’s Village Green, the South Coast Symphony’s free chamber concerts are relaxed, informal affairs in which listeners may enjoy a picnic lunch while sampling music. On this third of four programs in the series, the South Coast Symphony Woodwind Quintet offered a program as pleasant and soothing as the cooler but sunny weather itself. Distractions, all things considered, were relatively few and the audience remarkably attentive, though there were minor aerial disruptions.

The first half, in which the players offered three works written specifically for wind quintet, proved stronger. Jacques Ibert’s “Trois Pieces Breves” sparkled with ebullient vitality. Anton Reicha’s Quintet in E-flat showed each player’s expressive lyricism and the ensemble’s rhythmic tautness. Malcolm Arnold’s “Three Shanties” received crisp, witty and accurate treatment.

The post-intermission portion consisted entirely of transcriptions. In both Bach’s “Little” Fugue in G minor and a Vivaldi concerto, a small number of technical blemishes and a tendency to allow tempos to drag detracted from otherwise-spirited playing.

Sweelinck’s Variations on a Folk Song fared better; here flutist Cheryl Strommen-Loofbourrow, oboist John Ralston, clarinetist Patty Hecker, bassoonist Phoebe Ray and hornist Linda DeRoche-Duffin showed just how well their instruments can blend.

To fill out the program, the players added, probably to their regret, the first two movements of Beethoven’s Sextet in E-flat, Opus 71, to their planned agenda. Rhythmic insecurity and a passel of errors marred this reading.

They should have stopped after the preceding “Pink Panther” theme.