MUSIC REVIEW : Wallace Collection Plays It Straight and Natural

Try to catch the Wallace Collection now, lest the group’s well-deserved popularity turns it into yet another classical-music parody brass ensemble.

It’s happened before.

Founded in 1986 by trumpeter John Wallace, the eight-member group played a straight classical music program Tuesday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, as part of its first U.S. tour.

At least, the repertory, by composers from Monteverdi to American Verne Reynolds, was generally serious and played straight.

But Wallace, a boyish-looking Scot born in Fife, introduced it with wry, modest remarks from the stage.

A mix of historical and theoretical information, his comments combined musical and entertainment values, without turning popsy. One of the encores, for instance, did not turn out to be “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” as expected from his remarks, but rather Malcolm Arnold’s “Railway Fanfare.”

Musically, the program fell into two categories: works played on natural (or valveless) trumpets and those played on modern valved instruments.

The differences were striking.

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The natural trumpets (in music by Monteverdi, Cesare Bendinelli and Anton Diabelli, among others) sounded plangent, pure, noble, arresting. The musicians played these notoriously difficult instruments with compelling skill and few glitches.

Modern trumpets, of various sizes, (in works by Scheidt, Cherubini and others) sounded more muted, diffuse in focus, but capable of more subtle dynamics. Again, the playing and ensemble were top-notch.

An interesting sequence by Wallace, Robert Farley and Timothy Hawes demonstrated differing 20th-Century “nationalistic” styles, languid in French composer Henri Tomasi’s Suite for Three Trumpets, and austere in Britten’s three-voiced “Fanfare for St. Edmundsbury.”

The only disappointing choice was a transcription of a Divertimento spuriously attributed to Mozart, as K. 187, but actually an arrangement by his father of dances by other composers.

The other members of the group were William O’Sullivan, Julie Ryan and Roy Bilham, trumpets; Simon Gunton, bass trumpet, and Kevin Hathaway, percussion.

The program closed the second season sponsored jointly by the Laguna Chamber Music Society and the Orange County Philharmonic Society.