MUSIC REVIEW : Chamber Society Plays in Irvine

Will 1991, the year of the bicentennial observance of Mozart’s death, prove that the master’s style has become elusive to a younger, if talented generation? The thought came to mind during a program by five members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on Monday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Works by Mozart opened and closed the program (part of the “Mozart Celebration--1991” series sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society), which also included short pieces by Oliver Knussen and Toru Takemitsu.

Not all the musicians were exactly wet behind the ears. Fred Sherry, cellist and music director of the group, has played with the Lincoln Center ensemble for two decades. The others, however--Stephen Taylor, oboe; sisters Ani Kavafian and Ida Kavafian, violins, and Paul Neubauer, viola--are youthful, bright lights.

They produced a well-meshed and balanced sound, displayed a unanimity of approach and brought involvement, interaction and energy to their playing. Still, one longed for more charm, inwardness and sensitivity and for less merely direct, straightforward playing in accounts of works by Mozart.

In the Quartet in F for Oboe and Strings, K. 370, Taylor, Ani Kavafian, Neubauer and Sherry ventured buoyant rhythms and long-breathed lines but left expressivity unexplored. Neubauer played with admirable control of dynamics and suffered biting tone only when winding into the heights.

But the same string team approached Mozart’s late masterpiece, the Divertimento in E-flat for String Trio, K. 563, with a lean, hard, muscular style that scarcely plumbed the depths of the work and which seemed better suited for the later music of Beethoven.

Seemingly more at home in the modern pieces, the five musicians proved secure and evocative in tracing the moody sound-scapes, shifting colors and thematic clusterings and dissolutions of Takemitsu’s “Entre-temps” for Oboe and String Quartet. Similarly, Knussen’s Cantata for Oboe and String Trio, Opus 15, let Taylor comfortably muse and meditate while Ida Kavafian, Neubauer and Sherry adroitly spun varyingly shaded commentaries.

Sherry also exhibited a genial enthusiasm as he introduced each work from the stage. The Society will play the same program tonight at the Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.