Music : Program of Chamber Works Opens Ninth Malibu Festival

Veteran virtuosos never grow old; they just continue to play chamber music.

Such a motto seemed appropriate Saturday night, when another Malibu Strawberry Creek Music Festival opened with a chamber music program in the welcoming confines of a newish auditorium on the campus of Pepperdine University, hard by the Pacific Ocean.

The new concert room and the ninth edition of this summer gathering--for purposes both academic and musical--could have been made for each other.

Raitt Recital Hall, an intimate and high-ceilinged room holding 125 listeners, and with an attractive maroon wall at the back of the stage, seems acoustically viable. It reflects sounds both mellow and brilliant with apparent candor.

Put a small wind band on the stage, as was done at the beginning of this concert, and one hears overbrightness, if not to the point of pain. Program Brahms--for instance, the Trio, Opus 114, which closed the event--played by mature artists, and no offense can be taken at these acoustics. Mellowness in, mellowness out.

Since three of the five festival concerts this summer are being given in the Raitt, acoustical curiosity was high at this event. The tentative report: a comfortable and handsome room with honest sound properties.

In a program of music by Rudolf Novacek, Milhaud and Brahms, the burnished glories and smiling melancholy of Opus 114 proved most memorable.

With the 70-year-old clarinetist Mitchell Lurie, cellist Jeffrey Solow and pianist Joanne Pearce-Martin the splendid Brahmsians-in-residence, that could not have been surprising.

They brought to this reading a probing but unfinicky sense of detail, wonderful pacing and a broad emotional palette. The total became more than gracious and expert; it became deeply touching.

Earlier, a revival of Milhaud’s Suite (1936) for violin, clarinet and piano provided brilliant contrast.

With Eugene Gratovich, William Wellwood and Brent McMunn the protagonists, this cherishable piece exerted all its charms, and quite irresistibly. The three stylish and accomplished players had everything to do with that.

The Czech violinist and composer Rudolf Novacek wrote only one piece still remembered, but it is worth saving. It is the Sinfonietta for Winds, Opus 48, and here it was given an enthusiastic reading by Fellows (read: students) of the Festival: Heather Lurie, flute; Lisa Kotler, oboe; Randal Tucker and William Wellwood, clarinets; Noe Cantu and Ryan Simmons, bassoons, and Philip Bonney and Mark Munson, horns.