Music and Dance Reviews : Foss, Mladi Quintet at Pierce College

The second concert in the Music Guild’s inaugural chamber music series in the San Fernando Valley featured the services of American musician Lukas Foss in both his composing and performing capacities.

Appearing with the locally based Mladi Wind Quintet before a non-capacity audience in the small auditorium at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, Foss proved an avid and engaging Mozart pianist in the Quintet for piano and winds, K. 452.

The snappy rhythmic energy and wide dynamic range of his playing--he managed everything from a dry but pointed pianissimo to a grandly accented forte--focused the musical argument assertively. He also inspired the Mladi to its most musically satisfying playing of the evening, despite quite a bit of intonational difficulties.

Earlier, Foss accompanied flutist Lisa Edelstein in lively readings of three of his pieces from 1944: “Early Song,” “Dedication” and “Composer’s Holiday,” vibrant music of neoclassical Americana.

In three quintets on its own, Tuesday, the Mladi--Stephen Piazza, clarinet, Kathleen Robinson, oboe, William Alsup, horn, Charles Coker, bassoon, and Edelstein--revealed capable playing on an individual level, but remained unconvincing as a group. The players each seemed to have personal concepts of time and timbre and phrasing, making true ensemble a sometime thing.

Nevertheless, Luciano Berio’s “Opus Number Zoo” received a satisfying account, the rhythmic narrative of the poetic texts, describing several tragicomic adventures of animals, delivered by the players with clear enunciation and humor.

Nielsen’s Quintet, Opus 43, emerged by turns bright and graceful, despite the lack of togetherness in execution. Reicha’s Quintet, Opus 88, No. 2, opened the program in forgettable fashion, a solid but merely respectable work. Life’s too short for respectable.