Music : 20th-Century Works Featured at La Jolla Chamber Festival

Chamber music may be rarefied and elitist in its mystique, but audiences for the genre respond in the same ways other crowds do: Virtuosity is applauded, musicality appreciated, charisma admired and glamour rewarded. Not necessarily in that order.

All these virtues popped up, at one time or another, in the two weekend concerts of SummerFest ‘90, the annual August celebration of the La Jolla Chamber Music Society. But in combination with negative elements: oddball programming, some low-energy performances, as well as unfocused playing and singing.

There were some novel aspects in both the Friday and Saturday night concerts in Sherwood Auditorium at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art.

Heiichiro Ohyama, artistic director of the fest through its five-year history, sprinkled music by 20th-Century composers into these two programs: Bruce Adolphe’s Quartet for oboe and strings (1978), Edgard Varese’s “Density 21.5” and two works by Andre Previn, his “Peaches” for flute and piano (1974) and Five Songs on Poems of Philip Larkin (1978).

Saturday night, in his spoken program notes, Previn himself, disparaging the title composer-in-residence Ohyama bestowed upon him this summer, promised a receptive audience some more recent works of his composition if he is invited back. Nevertheless, the two pieces from the 1970s heard Saturday proved highly effective.

As played by Carol Wincenc, “Peaches” turned out to be an affecting, languorous and savory lullaby--in D, with pungent chromatic accents--a five-minute reverie that sings but never cloys. At the piano, the composer became an ideal partner for flutist Wincenc.

As downbeat as “Peaches” is upbeat, the five Larkin songs reach the listener through pointed word-setting and a musical subtext of considerable potency.

Christine Cairns, familiar in Southern California through regular visits with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, seemed less than well-cast in this assignment: Her characteristically handsome, even mezzo-soprano appeared effortful, her control of vocal detail unsteady. Still, with pianist Previn guiding the way, the singer made much of the quiet dramatic points in this touching suite.

The rest of the Saturday performance emerged a splendid exhibit of virtuosity. At the end, pianist David Golub displayed his chops in an irrepressible run-through of Mendelssohn’s early Sextet for piano and strings, Opus 110. Even the most jaded chamber-music aficionado might have dropped his jaws at Golub’s flying 32nd-notes and octave runs--all of his technical feats accomplished with a clairvoyant musicality.

Wincenc, another deservedly acclaimed wizard of technique and tone, opened the program with Debussy’s “Syrinx” and the Varese piece, giving in both an object lesson in resourceful, pertinent music-making.

Despite clever programming--two novel eight-minute pieces before intermission, and Brahms’ big Sextet, Opus 36, after--the Friday-night concert failed to rouse the listener above a pleasantly somnolent state.

The problem in the G-major Sextet was a failure of leadership. All six players--violinists Franco Gulli and Robert Chen, violists Cynthia Phelps and Francesca Martin, cellists Carter Brey and Gary Hoffman--played conscientiously and in careful balance. But no strong musical thread held this performance together; it merely moved along.

Adolphe’s brief Oboe Quartet, played by Gerard Reuter, with violinist Deborah Redding, violist Martin and cellist Diane Chaplin, is a charmer, a wistful, melancholy piece in the contemporary style of Geoffrey Burgon’s deservedly admired score to “Brideshead Revisited.”

At mid-program, mezzo Cairns was joined by pianist Golub and a string quartet in Chausson’s ironic “Chanson Perpetuelle” in a performance of generalized emotions, questionable intonation and missing textual point. Those listeners who had not encountered the work before ought to be told: It’s better than this reading would lead you to believe.