MUSIC REVIEW : The Mladi Wind Quintet in Fullerton

Outside the Sunny Hills Performing Arts Center on Sunday afternoon, the weather was balmy, the day uneventful. Inside, a concert presented by the Mladi Wind Quintet followed suit.

On paper, the fourth program in the Fullerton Friends of Music Chamber Music Series seemed promising enough--20th-Century works by John Addison and John Harbison on the first half, followed by the inevitable nod to the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death.

But Addison’s Suite in Six Movements, written for the Mladi last year, turned out to be a predictable bit of whimsy, close to the heart of the movie studios that once employed him.

The ensemble--flutist Lisa Edelstein, oboist Kathleen Robinson, clarinetist Stephen Piazza, hornist William Alsup and bassoonist Andy Radford--accomplished all that might be expected: an amicable reading of a piece that meanders pleasantly in the slower movements, and chugs along aimlessly in the faster ones.

Harbison’s 1978 Quintet for Winds received the technical accuracy it demands, particularly in the rhythmically off-beat Intrada and the treacherously virtuosic Scherzo. However, insufficient care of voicing and dynamics, and a seeming reluctance to be truly insistent, trapped the work in an unfocused purgatory--nervous when it should have been exciting, busy when it should have been biting.

After intermission came a curious mixture of amateur and professional, as Beulah Strickler, music director of the Fullerton Friends for the past 32 years, provided harpsichord and piano parts for Mozart’s early Flute Sonata in G, K. 11, and his mature Quintet for Piano and Winds.

Strickler offered square, uninspired accompaniment to Edelstein’s graceful lead, and a sloppy, lifeless addition to her colleagues’ delicate attentiveness, demonstrating that her biggest talent--not at all an inconsiderable one--lies in continued organization of this well-established series.