No Pregnant Pauses for Wincenc

Music making has always been pregnant with meaning for flutist Carol Wincenc. But her performance tonight at the Irvine Barclay Theatre may be even more so: Wincenc is just two months away from giving birth to her first child.

“Having this other life growing inside of me has also created new phenomena for me as a performer,” Wincenc said by phone from Houston, where she teaches flute at Rice University.

“Most important, I’m not so self-absorbed. Even while performing, it’s taken my attention off myself.”

The physical ramifications of impending motherhood might matter less were Wincenc one of the string players of the Angeles Quartet, with whom she’ll play works by Reger and Hoffmeister.

But for Wincenc (pronounced, appropriately enough, much like “wind sense”), concerns such as breath control can be considerable.

“The fourth month was very difficult,” she said, “and I know it’s going to get tight again. But right now it’s fine. Because I’m fatigued, and a little more relaxed, some things are even easier. I won’t travel anymore, but I do plan on playing right up to the delivery.”

Young people, though perhaps not quite this young, have always been a concern of Wincenc. As vice president of the education committee of Chamber Music America, she says her “hue and cry” right now is over the nation’s education system.

“The soloist can no longer sit back passively and wait for public schools to create audiences,” said Wincenc, who, in addition to her frequent guest appearances with major orchestras here and at festivals abroad, teaches at both Rice and the Juilliard School of Music in New York.

“That’s not going to happen. Performers must go right back into the system by teaching, performing in schools, or even just talking to kids.”

She evidently believes in starting early. “There’s been no correlation between the sounds of the flute and the baby kicking as yet,” Wincenc confided, “but when my spouse (Douglas Webster), who is a lyric baritone, sings into my belly, the baby definitely moves with him.”

The Southern California-based Angeles Quartet is composed of violinists Kathleen Lenski and Roger Wilkie, violist Brian Dembow and cellist Stephen Erdody. Wincenc and Lenski met 25 years ago at a summer music program in Siena, Italy. While the two have “always been in touch,” this will be Wincenc’s first time playing with the Angeles.

The program includes Schubert’s “Quartettsatz”; Reger’s Serenade in G for flute, violin and viola, written in a lighter vein than most of his works; Hoffmeister’s Quartet for Flute and Strings, based on a piano sonata (K. 309) by his friend Mozart; and Mendelssohn’s Four Pieces for String Quartet, Opus 81.

In addition to the fact that Lenski finds Wincenc “extremely vivacious, a bundle of energy,” she says that it is a particular pleasure to play alongside her.

“Sometimes wind and string players have a difficult time connecting,” Lenski said. “With Carol it’s a cinch. She studied violin, and her father was a violinist. She approaches the flute from a string player’s point of view--with longer phrases and articulation, for instance. That makes it very easy to connect.”

Asked what Wincenc feels might set her apart from other flutists, she said: “We come into the world with a certain quality of sound. Then we work to have a sonority that is fetching. I put a premium on varied sound.”

Wincenc also values non-musical approaches to music making, including yoga, the Alexander technique “and whatever else brings the body into balance as much as possible.”

Backpacking, for instance. An avid outdoorswoman, Wincenc has climbed the Middle Tetons in Wyoming and other peaks in the Canadian Rockies and Alaska. “It’s critical for me to ‘detox,’ to let down, to merge with the elements,” Wincenc said.

Long a champion of new music, Wincenc has premiered five concertos for flute in six years. In April, she gave the first performance of Paul Schoenfield’s “Klezmer Rondos” at Town Hall in New York; upcoming commissions include Roberto Sierra’s “Caribbean Flute Concerto” and Tobias Picker’s “Extinctions.”

Three weeks ago in Amsterdam, she introduced a flute concerto written for her by Henryk Gorecki, a composer enjoying a groundswell of recognition for his Symphony No. 3, based on poems of the Holocaust. “He’s the hottest thing going, and he’s due,” Wincenc said.

She described the premiere of his flute concerto with the Netherlands Radio Orchestra as “a remarkable experience. . . . He’s absolutely masterful at creating immense tension, tremendous effect and atmosphere, a genius of color, as evidenced by a 10-minute standing ovation. After playing this concerto at the Concertgebouw, if I died tomorrow I will be a thoroughly fulfilled woman.”

* The Angeles Quartet, along with flutist Carol Wincenc, plays music by Schubert, Reger, Hoffmeister and Mendelssohn at 8 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Sponsored by the Laguna Chamber Music Society and the Orange County Philharmonic Society. $11 to $22. (714) 854-4646.