MUSIC REVIEW : Pianist Orth Joins Angeles for Evening : Group shines--as individuals and together--in this splendid Orange County Philharmonic Society event at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

They said it wasn’t happening, but it happened anyway.

In the past decade and a half, despite all those who denied it, chamber music in North America has been resuscitated, revived and resurrected from a moribund state. Funds still must be raised, tastes elevated and general appreciation increased, but a steady rise in the activity and visibility of touring as well as site-resident ensembles and the growth of series goes on. There may be hope.

The creation of the Angeles Quartet--soon to be 3 years old--is one of the more felicitous signposts in this national trend. In its brief life, this brilliant ensemble (the players are violinists Kathleen Lenski and Roger Wilkie, violist Brian Dembow and cellist Stephen Erdody) seems to have brought itself to an artistic plateau toward which many ensembles can only aspire.

Its latest performance--on its own series, part of the continuing Mozart Celebration at the Irvine Barclay Theatre--offered music not only by Mozart but by Ravel and Dvorak as well, in model performances.

In Dvorak’s Quintet in A, Opus 81, the Angeles players were joined by pianist Peter Orth in an alternately aggressive and laid-back performance that savored many of the joys in one of the composer’s more cherishable scores. If the resourceful Orth proved more a follower than a leader in this company, that might have been predicted; the Angeles’ make up of four crackerjack soloists is one of its strengths.

Those four virtuosi shone, separately and together, in the splendid first half of this Orange County Philharmonic Society event. In the “Dissonant” Quartet, K. 465, they plumbed depths of Mozartean feeling while outlining Mozartean style-boundaries and creating a musical arch under which all details fell perfectly into place.

Ravel’s equally exposing Quartet in F brought out a different set of sound resources, one with a wide spectrum of dynamics and a narrow gauge of colors. Unfazed by a necessary change of a cello string in the first movement, the ensemble gave Ravel’s kaleidoscopic score a whole catalogue of resonances, from the wispiest to the most firm, all within a tightly projected continuity.