MUSIC REVIEW : Southwest Society Opens Sixth Season

Enthusiasm can make up for much in a faulty musical performance, but it cannot make those faults entirely disappear.

Thursday night’s season-opening program of the Southwest Chamber Music Society was delivered, as is usual with this ensemble, with obvious and visceral enthusiasm. There seems never a dull moment with this always adventuresome group, now in its sixth season. But in this concert at Chapman University in Orange, the rough edges were more apparent, and irksome, than usual.

The presence of a new member accounted for some of it. The venerable Leonard Stein, former assistant to Schoenberg, musical scholar and pianist, has joined the ensemble this year, taking the place of the late Albert Dominguez. A series of performances of Schoenberg’s chamber works is thus promised--in fact, got under way Thursday.

Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony in E, Opus 9, in Anton Webern’s seldom-ventured transcription, served as the centerpiece of the program. The aural climate of Salmon Recital Hall--resonant, a bit overbearing--is poorly suited to the complex textures and turbulent rhetoric of Schoenberg’s work, and on this occasion the players seemed not to adjust to it.

In a fast, aggressive and urgent reading--featuring Stein, violinist Peter Marsh, cellist Roger Lebow, flutist Dorothy Stone and clarinetist David Howard--it was often difficult to decipher exactly what was going on through the acoustical murk. Stein belted out the very busy piano part--Webern possibly relied on it too heavily--overpowering his partners regularly. Purpose and excitement were never lacking in the barrage of sound, however.

Similar problems befuddled the Piano Quartet, Opus 25, by Brahms which closed the program, with Stein, Marsh, Lebow and violist Jan Karlin making up the ensemble. Here, poor balances and unkempt ensemble were everywhere apparent, in what sounded rather like an ad hoc reading. Nevertheless, the players did manage to capture the rustic vigor and grandeur of the score unflaggingly. This was gusty Brahms.

The concert (scheduled for repeat tonight at Pasadena Presbyterian Church) began with two miniatures by Mel Powell. The “Three Madrigals for Flute Alone” proved an attractive, rhapsodic and sultry atonal study--linear and angular impulses interrupted by bursts of louder notes and by rests. Stone provided an evocative and polished account, on flute and alto flute.

The Nocturne for Solo Violin is a more austere offering, a sketch in silence as much as in sound: Forceful angles and quiet filigree and nothingness. Marsh delivered the work deliberately.