MUSIC REVIEW : Southwest Chamber Society Opens Season : Ligeti’s Trio for horn, violin and piano proves the central event of program at Chapman.

Gyorgy Ligeti’s Trio (“Hommage a Brahms”) for horn, violin and piano served as the emotionally wrenching core of a program that opened the Southwest Chamber Music Society’s fifth season Thursday at Bertea Hall at Chapman University.

Even without the helpful introductory comments by Jeff von der Schmidt, horn player and artistic director of the society, the impact of this work, composed in 1982, surely would have been felt.

From the elegiac opening to the austere and grim conclusion, Schmidt, pianist Gloria Cheng and, especially, violinist Peter Marsh met the composer’s extreme and complex demands with confidence and sympathy.

Marsh played with sweetness and expressivity whether in the spectral harmonics at the beginning or the rugged staccato rhythms of the classically shaped scherzo. Cheng provided brooding power and Schmidt pursued the heights and depths with verve.

Rachmaninoff’s Suite No. 2 for two pianos has been so overshadowed by the Second Symphony, written six years later, that the earlier work can sound today frequently like sketches for the later one. But those hoping for the lush and lingering romanticism of the symphony would have found disappointment in the clean, fluent and objective playing by Cheng and Albert Dominguez.

Despite their basic compatibility, however, the two pianists did suggest somewhat different approaches. Cheng played with more airy and hovering phrasing, a style perhaps more congenial for the late-Romantic composer; Dominguez with more weight, thoughtfulness and deliberation. Coming after Ligeti’s spareness, however, the composer’s percussive textures and dense harmonies perhaps could not be heard to best advantage.

In a typical demonstration of the collegiality that pervades the Society, director Schmidt and the distinguished Marsh, despite their tuxes, actually served as page-turners for the two pianists.

The program opened with Hindemith’s Sonata for horn and piano, finding Schmidt initially tense of breath and prone to faulty intonation on that most impossible of instruments. Dominguez could be overly insistent. Yet overall the two brought out the nobility and lyricism of the score.

This program was scheduled to be repeated Friday evening at the Pasadena Public Library.