3 Southland Groups Selected for Center Chamber Series

The Orange County Performing Arts Center will present three groups from Southern California, along with a Swiss ensemble, on its 1993-94 chamber music series in Founders Hall. But what might appear to be a new embrace of local talent is actually nothing of the kind, according to Aaron Egigian, the center’s program coordinator for chamber music and jazz.

Selecting the Southwest Chamber Music Society, Music for Mischa and the Angeles String Quartet wasn’t a deliberate decision to boost the local scene so much as an effort “to find groups who have other repertory and other players who can expand on the quartet literature,” Egigian said Thursday.

The Southwest Chamber Music Society, in addition to its regular performances at Chapman University in Orange and the Pasadena Presbyterian Church, will open the series Oct. 3 with Dvorak’s Quintet in G for Strings, Prokofiev’s Quintet for Oboe, Clarinet, Violin, Viola and Bass, and the West Coast premiere of British composer Anthony Payne’s “The Song Streams in the Firmament” for Clarinet, String Quartet and Piano.

Music for Mischa, an ensemble of varying size founded fours ago at UCLA, will play Nov. 14. The program will be announced.

On April 14, the Angeles String Quartet, based in Los Angeles, will play Mozart’s Quartet No. 22, Dvorak’s Quartet No. 10 and the West Coast premiere of Tania Gabrielle French’s “Equinox” for String Quartet.

The Quartet Sine Nomine of Lausanne will play Feb. 16. The program: Haydn’s “Lark” Quartet, Beethoven’s Quartet No. 13 with the “Grosse Fuge” as the final movement, and Berg’s Quartet, Opus 3.

The Southwest and Mischa concerts will start at 4 p.m., the other two at 8 p.m.

Series tickets, on sale now, cost $72 ($40 for students). Tickets to individual concerts will cost $20 and will go on sale six weeks before the program.

Information: (714) 556-2787, Ext. 240.