Music Reviews : Final Institute Chamber Music Concert at Schoenberg

The Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute closed its series of free chamber music concerts Friday. Vigorous performances of varied repertory and a star turn by Institute director and cellist Lynn Harrell cheered a large audience at Schoenberg Hall, UCLA.

The program began with the nervous acerbities of Lutoslawksi’s String Quartet, as coached by the composer, who had been in residence at the Institute. Violinists Ashley Horne and Carolyn Huebl, violist Kirsten Monke and cellist Trina Carey set forth both its attenuated insinuations and its jack-hammer violence with purpose and elan.

Claude Frank, scheduled to take the piano part in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Institute Orchestra at Hollywood Bowl Sunday, was featured in Schumann’s Quintet in E-flat, with violinists Josefina Vergara and Susan Hytken, violist Caroline Coade and cellist Jonas Krejci.

Frank offered blocky, brassy, intermittently inaccurate extroversion in the first movement, and then turned abruptly into an eminently supportive team-player. The strings played well as a unit, balancing the work nicely in sound and spirit.

Frank also backed Harrell in a prefatory Schumann indulgence: a suitably yearning account of “Traumerei” in transcription.

The Suite for Brass Quintet by Vern Reynolds traces an overlong neo-Classic course, clearly delineated and deftly scored. It received a bright, technically resourceful and thoroughly musical performance from Timothy Divers and Chad Foster, trumpets; Barbara Adamcik, horn; Jonathan Willis, trombone, and Douglas Tornquist, tuba.