Music : Strawberry Creek Festival at Pepperdine

The seventh annual Malibu Strawberry Creek Music Festival opened Saturday night in Smothers Theatre at Pepperdine University with a program decidedly unusual for midsummer: It included non-standard repertory.

The 1948 Concerto for Oboe by Lukas Foss proved the most successful revival. Written in a neoclassical style virtually indistinguishable from Stravinsky’s, this engaging work received a sympathetic reading from oboist Gerard Reuter. His gracious technique and light tone allowed Reuter to weave in and out of the orchestral fabric, shaping each phrase with delicate nuance and propulsive smoothness. Music director Yehuda Gilad led the 11-member ensemble in tight-knit support.

The concert had opened less auspiciously with the seldom-ventured Septet by Konradin Kreutzer. The work, dating from 1822, is an interesting mixture of styles, with its classical harmonies and structure and the quick mood changes of Romanticism. A ragged, tentative performance by a combined student/faculty ensemble made less than a strong case for it.

Copland’s “As It Fell Upon a Day,” a song tinged with Renaissanceisms and neoclassical counterpoint, received a confident, bustling reading from clarinetist Richard Hawley, flutist Cynthia Grinstead and soprano Juliana Gondek. Earlier, Gondek gave a commanding account of Mozart’s “Parto, parto,” with the capable help of pianist Val Mann Underwood and the elegant shaping of clarinetist Mitchell Lurie.

Rounding out the program were Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, in an outgoing performance from Glenn Dicterow and a subdued one from Underwood, and Mozart’s Trio, K. 498, with Lurie, Underwood and violist Karen Ritscher offering a well-mannered but unfocused run-through.