MUSIC REVIEW : A Far-From-Flawless Chamber Concert at Irvine Barclay

Given the choice between chamber music performed by accomplished musicians who occasionally meet in ensemble or lesser musicians who are constant partners, knowing listeners would generally choose the latter. Chamber music is like that--a subtle communal art.

The six California-based musicians who came together for Saturday’s UCI Chamber Music concert at the Irvine Barclay Theatre would seem to be, as a chamber group, of the ad hoc variety. Accomplished players all, neither their program biographies nor their performances pointed toward a constancy of ensemble contact. They offered an engaging and disparate program in never-less-than professional and welcome performances which, nevertheless, didn’t always congeal into flawless chamber music.

In Beethoven’s Piano Trio Opus 1, No. 3, for instance, the compact intensity and vigor of violinist Yoko Matsuda’s and cellist Gayle Smith’s playing was often overwhelmed by the larger-than-life reading of pianist Kevin Fitz-Gerald. Vitality proved never in short supply, however.

Similarly, in Weber’s charming Trio for flute, cello and piano, Fitz-Gerald offered an outsized expressiveness--in dynamics, color, touch, phrasing--next to his more subdued partners, flutist Janice Tipton and Smith. And Matsuda, Tipton and oboist Allan Vogel individually provided lively and polished accounts of Boismortier’s rarely heard Sonata for flute, oboe and violin, but didn’t always find proper balances or match intensities.

The most satisfying partnerships involved duos. Soprano Maurita Phillips-Thornburgh sang with impressive delicacy and purity of tone in four Schubert songs--including “An die Musik” and “Standchen”--while Fitz-Gerald provided supple, ultra-sensitive support.

And Vogel and Phillips-Thornburgh gave strong advocacy to six of the Ten Blake Songs by Vaughan Williams, threading the lyrical counterpoint in warm, give-and-take phrases.