MUSIC REVIEW : Mozart and Schubert on Fest Program

The penultimate concert in the Chamber Music/LA Festival--with familiar and much-loved music by Mozart and Schubert on the program, and first-class musicians on the roster--flowed by in a predictably agreeable fashion.

But it certainly didn’t make any large dents in one’s musical consciousness: While Wednesday night’s performances at the Japan America Theatre weren’t quite of the everyone-for-his-or-herself variety of chamber music playing, neither were they notable collaborations.

With at least seven top solo-competition awards between them and two Stradivarii and a Hamburg Steinway in front of them, pianist Jerome Lowenthal, violinist Nai Yuan Hu and cellist Ko Iwasaki offered vital sounds and generally crisp tempos and attacks in their solid account of Schubert’s B-flat Piano Trio.

Yet it failed to settle down into anything special performancewise, each player seemingly engrossed more in his own, rather than the group’s, nuances. Each had a slightly different slant on that insistent, accented motive in the finale, for instance.

An understated reading of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet threatened to underwhelm with politeness at times, but Charles Neidich, on basset clarinet, consistently engaged interest, tracing gracefully expressive long lines, using circular breathing and even a bit of ornamentation unobtrusively.

Restraint had its advantages: Milton Thomas could croon gently in the viola variation, forceful projection being unnecessary.

To open, Lowenthal and Neidich combined for a cogently shaped and poised reading of Berg’s brief, enigmatic Four Pieces, Opus 5.