Music Reviews : Guild Trio Launches Chamber Series

Big-time chamber music returned to the San Fernando Valley on Tuesday after a lengthy hiatus with the appearance at Pierce College by a fine young American ensemble, the Guild Trio.

The concert, in the wood-surfaced, pleasingly utilitarian auditorium of the campus Performing Arts Building, inaugurated a Valley spinoff of the venerable Music Guild series. The performing ensemble’s name proved charmingly, but coincidentally, congruent with that of its presenter.

At Pierce, one was spared the acoustical and environmental indignities imposed by the Music Guild’s traditional home, the Wilshire Ebell Theater. But further assessment of the Pierce facility’s sonic qualities should await the promised replacement of the tubby house instrument with which pianist Patricia Tao had to contend.

The program offered two staples, Mendelssohn’s D-minor Trio and the Brahms Trio in B, preceded by a delectable novelty, one of Joseph Haydn’s “London” Trios, with guest artist David Shostac brightly tootling the primo part on his flute along with violinist Janet Orenstein and cellist Brooks Whitehouse.

Without minimizing its sugar content and cozy palpitations, the Guild players invested the Mendelssohn with balancing dramatic breadth and solid rhythmicality, Orenstein’s appealing, slightly edgy violin tone complementing Whitehouse’s plummy cello and Tao’s alert, driving pianism.

By contrast, Brahms’ decidedly prepossessing Trio seemed labored--more the composer’s doing than the players’, although here one could not overlook fleeting ensemble imprecision.

Compensation was offered in an encore, the scherzo from Schumann’s D-minor Trio, delivered with terrific snap and admirable cohesiveness.

The evening--the first of four such at Pierce for 1991-’92--served not only to introduce a significant new ensemble to the Southland but suggested a future for serious music-making in the Valley.

The Music Guild is doing its bit. Valley music lovers, the rest is up to you. Do , as Tallulah Bankhead used to say, be an audience.