MUSIC REVIEWS : Wilkie and Friends in Works by Beethoven, Chihara

Violinist Roger Wilkie showed off his wares to a Pacific Serenades audience in the Biltmore Hotel’s Gold Room Sunday afternoon. Concertmaster of the Long Beach Symphony and the Angeles Quartet’s second violin, Wilkie led violist Victoria Miskolczy and cellist David Speltz in strong performances of string trios by Beethoven and Dohnanyi and, joined by flutist Mark Carlson, the world premiere of Paul Chihara’s “Aubade.”

Sitting stiff and impassive, Wilkie didn’t look like much, but the firm line of his commanding technique made every bar of Beethoven’s big Opus 3 a treasure, from its flashing virtuosity to its melting lyric sweetness to its joking final bars. With colleagues who hardly missed a step themselves, Wilkie crafted a magnificent interpretation that once again revealed how potent the string trio genre can be.

Audaciously, the three pulled out even more stops when, after intermission, they played Erno Dohnanyi’s Opus 10 Serenade with a brilliant display of late-Romantic firepower that exploited all of the work’s gorgeous melodies and decadent textures without once seeming superficial.

Chihara’s 10-minute, tonal “Aubade,” for which flutist Mark Carlson joined following the Beethoven, evokes the aubade’s traditional early-morning lovers’ ambience and suffuses it with allusions to “Tristan und Isolde” and a boldly colored Japanese folk song.

The slow opening section, in which imaginative hints of Wagner are layered in soft pastel cries, is followed by a surprisingly aggressive fast section dominated by triplets reminiscent of those in Bernard Herrmann’s film score “On Dangerous Ground” and embellished by two gorgeous solos for flute and cello. The short third section summarizes the preceding elements before decaying into a final breathless note on the flute.