Music Reviews : Chamber Program From Strawberry Creek Festival

The Strawberry Creek Music Festival shifted campuses Thursday, moving from its home at Pepperdine University to the University of Judaism for a chamber music program in Gindi Auditorium. Assured and pleasant music making by festival faculty and guests characterized the event.

The program dropped its only real novelty, Martinu’s comic dance suite, “The Kitchen Revue,” in favor of Dvorak’s “Gypsy Songs.” Those were presented by soprano Juliana Gondek in a big, handsome and often hammy reading, accompanied pertinently by pianist Val Underwood.

Gondek took the seven songs for their dramatic character potential, setting the booming Gindi acoustic ringing in the livelier numbers, while ravishing “Songs My Mother Taught Me” with voluptuous sound and broken phrasing at a slow tempo. Best was her softly shimmering account of “The Woods Are Still,” a marvel of beautifully sustained lyric poignancy.

Dvorak’s romantic view of Central European quasi-folk material also set up Kodaly’s more earthy ethnicity nicely. Kodaly’s Duo for Violin and Cello is in many ways a suite of spiky instrumental dances and songs.

Violinist Glenn Dicterow and cellist Peter Rejto met its contradictory demands for abandon and austerity suavely, warm in sound and poised in ensemble, though balances consistently favored the cello. They left the sprawling first movement rather episodic, but knit the adagio into a cool, dauntingly complex fabric, and then burst through the finale with bravura glee.

The account of Brahms’ G-minor Piano Quartet that followed after intermission, though also unconvincing in its opening, struck a similar balance between instrumental display and lyric expressiveness, peaking justly in the andante. Pianist Daniel Pollack set the model for impassioned elegance, ably seconded by violinist Yukiko Kamei--who signaled every new phrase or entrance with a loud sniffing inhalation--Kenneth Burward-Hoy, the almost inaudible violist, and stalwart cellist David Speltz.