Music Reviews : California Composers in Spotlight at Gindi

Californian composers were the focal point of Monday night’s Los Angeles Philharmonic Chamber Music Society concert at Gindi Auditorium. And, sure enough, it was this native music that received the most sympathetic and idiomatic readings.

The exotic and inventive Varied Trio (1986) for violin, piano and percussion by the Northern California-based Lou Harrison opened the concert.

In this engaging five-movement, 15-minute work, Harrison’s simple, repetitive melodies and harmonies are given subtle, soft color through an imaginative variety of instruments and techniques. The mechanical flavor of the pulsating second movement is captured by the use of violin pizzicato, a mallet thumping on the wood of the piano and chopsticks clanking against water-filled rice bowls.

The finale is a rambunctious Middle Eastern dance--Igor Stravinsky in Baghdad--using tambourines, tom-toms and, effectively, baker pans. Philharmonic veterans Raynor Carroll (percussion), Zita Carno (piano) and Rochelle Abramson (violin) performed with attentive bravado and calm assurance.

Ingolf Dahl, who spent the greater part of his life teaching at USC, was the other Californian represented.

His “Concerto a Tre” for violin, cello and clarinet is a playful bit of 1940s neo-classicism a la Stravinsky. David Howard, exceptional on clarinet, violinist Barry Socher and cellist Gloria Lum were the crackerjack soloists.

The anti-climactic closer was a poorly tuned, scrappily played rendition of the Piano Quintet, Opus 81, by the non-Californian Dvorak.