MUSIC REVIEW : Krenek Sonata in U.S. Debut at Chapman College : Sixty-six years after its composition, the Opus 33, a long and complicated work, is performed in Orange. Violinist Peter Marsh shows that we’ve been missing something.

It has taken 66 years, but it has finally happened. Someone has performed Ernst Krenek’s Sonata for Violin, Opus 33, before an American audience. It’s about time.

On the other hand, it’s almost understandable. Krenek, now 90 and living in Palm Springs, pulled no punches when writing this piece in 1924-25. It is fiercely atonal. It is technically intimidating. It is long and complicated, four movements of unaccompanied violin music stretching the endurance of violinist and listener alike.

Still, we needed to hear it to know these things.

And what became plain as the work progressed--performed by violinist Peter Marsh on Thursday night at Chapman College--was that it is worth everyone’s effort.

The Sonata’s two slow movements reach formidably dramatic heights, grinding through multiple stops of seconds and sevenths, slithering through icy polyphony and gathering momentum with what seems like improvisational fervor.

The second movement, marked “Vivace Furioso mit Vehemenz,” rages maniacally with stinging down strokes and tremolos, bustling motion from top to bottom range.

The finale, termed piece joyeuse , is a sprightly wink of the eye, an atonal but Mahler-like scherzo with lightness next to dark banality counterpoised by profundity.

Marsh’s technical abilities were stretched, some strain creeping in, but his reading had strong direction, finesse, drama. Now, we need to hear the work again.

The concert--presented by the Southwest Chamber Music Society as part of its Krenek festival and repeated Friday at the Pasadena Library--opened at the other end of the spectrum, with Mozart’s tuneful little Sonata, K. 305. Marsh and pianist Albert Dominguez offered an untidy reading, with spotty tuning difficulties but generally elegant phrasing from the violinist, but sloppy, full-speed-ahead piano work.

To close, Marsh captured the sultry lyricism and driving deviltry of Bartok’s First Violin Sonata.