MUSIC REVIEW : A Crazy-Quilt Program by Chamber Virtuosi

There should have been a door prize at Pepperdine University’s Smothers Theatre Sunday afternoon for anyone who could come up with a plausible linkage in the California Chamber Virtuosi’s crazy-quilt program.

Here were six distinctly unrelated pieces by five major composers, utilizing anywhere from one to four musicians, including a soprano. One could play this parlor game as one listened, not arriving at a complete solution but nevertheless enjoying the frequent changes-of-pace.

The vocal offerings consisted of unhackneyed gems by Handel (“Un Alma Inamorata”) and Mozart (“Schon lacht der holde Fruhling,” K. 580) that were good vehicles for Mary Rawcliffe’s delicately expressive, nimble soprano. Violinist Arturo Delmoni, cellist Timothy Landauer and harpsichordist Lucinda Carver provided a refreshingly pointed, lively accompaniment in the Handel. Delmoni and Carver (switching to piano) did similar justice to Mozart.

With obvious relish, Delmoni, Landauer and pianist John Perry knocked out a passionately flowing performance of Mendelssohn’s C-minor Trio, one where each movement developed steadily increasing amounts of momentum and logic. The balances between the three were impeccably weighed and adjusted, with no one player overly dominating the others.

However Landauer’s go at Bach’s Suite No. 6 for solo cello was a rather unfocused ramble, bereft of all but one of the repeats, in need of a surer hand in the dance rhythms. In his solo Chopin segment, Perry waxed poetically and eloquently in the Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Opus posthumous, but then proceeded to bulldoze his way through the Polonaise in F-sharp minor, Opus 44, with a lot of smeared left-hand bass and unnecessary bombast.