Music Reviews : Chamber Music at Strawberry Creek Festival

When is a facade not a false front but the real thing? When it’s William Walton’s “Facade”, performed with the professionalism and panache of the Strawberry Creek Chamber Players.

Narrator Janet Bookspan, eschewing the traditional monotonal interpretation, displayed one unique characterization after another. In so doing, she revealed that not all of Dame Edith Sitwell’s tongue-twisting poems are the merely delightful nonsense they are usually purported to be.

Conductor Yehuda Gilad led a crackerjack sextet whose collective versatility in both the tongue-in-cheek and occasionally serious styles belied the virtuosity of the 1922 score.

One complaint: Nearly every forte (and louder) passage--numerous in this rambunctious work--found the ensemble nearly burying Bookspan’s colorful recitation, despite amplification.

Friday night, the best had been saved for last, as the first half consisted mainly of second-rate Mozart. The Quintet in G minor, K. 516, had a little of everything at times: Wayward intonation, thin tone and miscalculated balances.

Only the adagio movement emerged with the cohesiveness and transparency Mozart’s music demands. Perhaps a last-minute program change and replacement of an indisposed first violinist were principal culprits.

The evening opened with a seductive reading of Nielsen’s “Serenata in Vano.” Led by clarinetist Mitchell Lurie’s dulcet tones, the uniquely scored work’s bucolic nuances were faithfully re-created.