MUSIC REVIEW : Southwest Society Loses Its Balance on Schubert : Chamber musicians offer an expressive presentation of Ligeti’s Trio, but the too-loud piano dominates the violin and cello in the classic piece.

Members of the Southwest Chamber Music Society showed more affinity for the music of Gyorgy Ligeti than they did for works by Schubert or Satie on Thursday in Bertea Hall at Chapman University.

Perhaps that was the impact of their working closely with Ligeti, who is a visiting scholar in residence this month at the Getty Center for the Arts and Humanities in Santa Monica.

Under the circumstances, hornist Jeff von der Schmidt, violinist Peter Marsh and pianist Gloria Cheng presumably offered a definitive interpretation of the composer’s Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano.

Certainly, von der Schmidt, who is also the Southwest Society artistic director, negotiated the treacherous intervals--often at the range extremes--with aplomb. Marsh played with characteristic fervor, Cheng with fluency and strength.

As a result, Ligeti’s work struck at least one listener mostly for its expressive terms rather than for all its formidable technical complexity and fiendish demands on the players.

The work journeys from melancholy to mourning, traversing episodes of manic, jazzy energy, militant regimentation that quickly and deliberately goes out of gear and outbursts of grief that evoke the folkloric spirit, if not the letter, of Ligeti’s fellow Hungarian, Bartok.

The players had little problem achieving a proper balance among the instruments Ligeti calls for. But in Schubert’s Trio in E-flat for piano, violin and cello, played after intermission, proper balance among the players proved totally elusive.

Cheng’s dynamics tended to be oppressively loud, and that--coupled with an inflexibility of tempo and phrasing--made Schubert’s Trio an ordeal. When it was possible to distinguish their contributions, Marsh played with his typical warmth, subtlety and sweetness, and cellist Roger Lebow managed to combine both grace and power. But both were pushed dynamically beyond comfortable limits.

As was Schubert. Rarely has this composer seemed to demand so many fortissimos. Rarely has his music peaked so often, with so little effect. Or lacked so much charm, intimacy and telling shifts between light and dark.

Cheng had also opened the program with a rather coolish account of Satie’s “Trois Gymnopedies.”

Incidental intelligence--After the concert, a patron pointed out a connection between Ligeti and Schubert that was not revealed in the program notes: film director Stanley Kubrick. Ligeti composed some music for Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and Kubrick also used the slow movement of Schubert’s Trio--in endless repetitions, as far as this listener can remember--for his film “Barry Lyndon.” Now if anyone can point out that he used Satie, it will be a clean sweep.