MUSIC REVIEWS : Chamber Series Opens Deftly

A new season of Music for Mischa concerts opened on Sunday in Schoenberg Hall of UCLA with a mine field of a program executed with a degree of polish and communicativeness rare among ad hoc chamber ensembles.

Participants on this occasion were pianist Antoinette Perry, young Israeli violinist Yehonatan Berick, violist Michael Nowak and cellist Robert Martin, the series’ producer.

The lesser-known of Beethoven’s Opus 70 trios, in E-flat, which opened the proceedings, makes the players sweat while seducing the listener with its seemingly benign emanations. It’s rife with subtle mood shifts, tricky modulations and the shock of those of otherworldly, shades-of-Schubert sighs in the otherwise sunny, Landler -like third movement.

Perry, Berick and Martin delivered a generally clean, commanding interpretation which potently conveyed Beethoven’s mixed message.

With Nowak an assertive fourth, the players concluded with the emotional convolutions and lush sonorities of Brahms’ C-minor Quartet, Opus 60. Their view of the piece was, as it must be, boldly dramatic, with internal ensembles--violin with piano, violin with cello, etc.--handled with remarkable skill.

Sandwiched between these pillars was a thick slab of a novelty, the 1985 (piano) Trio in Three Movements of Argentine-born, Darmstadt-trained Mauricio Kagel. Remember “Ludwig van,” his scandalous Beethoven Bicentennial trashing?

That madcap spirit is absent from this long-winded creation. Did I hear a waltz? Shards of Shostakovich--unthinkable for the Darmstadter of yore, except as parody--here, there, perhaps everywhere?

Kagel’s Trio sounds like a succession of preludes, each preceding nothing in particular. The performers presumably feel otherwise.