Music Reviews : Mosko, S.F. Players at Bing Theater

Stephen Mosko and his expert San Francisco Contemporary Music Players closed what Monday Evening Concerts called a “San Francisco in L.A.” mini-festival at the Bing Theater of the Los Angeles County Art Museum Monday night. Bravely, Mosko chose to run with a program in which four of the five entries were written within the past two years.

As it turned out, Mosko saved his best shot for last with Olly Wilson’s “A City Called Heaven,” which successfully plundered the blues and jazz camps for some good repeated riffs and tumbling syncopations. The ensemble responded with a bright, assured, spirited performance, enlivened by the snazzy, sharply delineated percussion work of Todd Manley.

Alas, none of the other recent works could hold one’s interest quite as tightly as Wilson’s transfigured jumping jive. At least Augusta Read Thomas’ Aria for flute, oboe, violin, cello and piano had a coherent structure--a questioning opening that reached a high-strung climax of some length before settling down.

But Chou Wen-Chung’s “Windswept Peaks” for piano, clarinet, violin and cello didn’t even have that; it merely rambled on and on in an austere, angular, post-Schoenbergian void.

In Mario Davidovsky’s “Four Biblical Songs,” Judith Bettina’s quavering, slightly thick yet expressive soprano was turned loose on four brief, occasionally pretentious arias, of which the nimble “And Samson Said” was the most effective. The sole oldie of the lot, Morton Feldman’s “The Viola in My Life” No. 2 (1970), remains one of Feldman’s better ideas, where his obsession with quiet, sparse, white-colored contemplation--as skillfully delivered by violist Nancy Ellis and the group--was kept to a manageable length.