MUSIC REVIEWS : Strawberry Creek Festival Offers Preview Concert

A warm-up concert Wednesday for the Strawberry Creek Festival--which officially begins Sunday evening at Pepperdine University--appropriately showed off the expertise of many of the festival’s spotlighted participants. Although the three chamber works presented at the Schoenberg Institute at USC served largely as an appetizer, at least one performance hit a bull’s-eye.

Specifically, Hindemith’s Quartet for clarinet, violin, cello and piano deftly blended several varied performance styles among the players, producing a remarkably satisfying result. The sophisticated, intricate writing sang out with a warmth and rapture that unflaggingly measured every moment.

Clarinetist Mitchell Lurie and violinist Eudice Shapiro provided tireless, meticulously calculated playing. Pianist Val Underwood’s diligent approach carefully crafted the undulating, precise passages. Peter Rejto’s work on cello pleasingly applied expressivity more passionate and wrenching than his colleagues.

A lighter undertaking for oboe, viola and piano, Two Rhapsodies by Charles Loeffler, represented the evening’s only example of gushy Romanticism. Again, the careful work of Underwood fueled a performance that aggressively examined all aspects of the flowery music.

Gerard Reuter supplied not only overflowing melodies on the oboe accompanied by heavy body-swaying, but an unintentionally comic reading of the poem that inspired Loeffler’s piece. As it turned out, the music has very little to do with the grotesque images of death and ugliness in the poetry.

Opening the program was a dutiful performance of Schoenberg’s “Ein Stelldichein,” a short fragment for oboe, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. The static, pre-Expressionist study found few moments of virtuosity, although the presentation proceeded intelligently and without noticeable flaw.