Messiaen’s ‘Quartet’ at Salmon Hall : The Southwest Chamber Music Society blends three contrasting 20th-Century works in an enjoyable evening at Chapman College.

Three contrasting 20th-Century works provided an unusual, thoroughly enjoyable program by the Southwest Chamber Music Society on Thursday night at Salmon Recital Hall, Chapman College. The evening mixed compositional styles and sensibilities, each work receiving not only intelligent attention but also skillful insight by the musicians.

These were violinist Peter Marsh, cellist Richard Treat, clarinetist Michael Grego and pianist Gloria Cheng. All four teamed up for an impressive performance of Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” (1941).

The familiar music, based on a passage from the Book of Revelation, still spellbinds with its combination of childlike simplicity, difficult ensemble maneuvering and playful excess. The foursome maintained all of these demanding aspects with taut control and convincing expressivity.

Moving from a Catholic to Hindu spiritual plane, Frederick Lesemann’s “Nataraja” (1975) for prepared piano proved a hypnotic study of timbres, rhythm and mantra-like ostinatos.

Prepared-piano sounds similar to the thuds, gongs and bell sounds of a gamelan, combine in a language that juxtaposes sonic events starkly--as one might find in electronic music, a specialty of Lesemann.

In the reliable hands of Cheng, the precise repetitions and displaced rhythms of this score fell into place with the right amount of liveliness and perspicacity. Her lucid approach stressed accuracy not severe enough to be weighty or mechanical.

Opening the evening, Marsh and Treat collaborated in a passionate and polished reading of Ravel’s Sonata (1922) for violin and cello.