Pacific Chamber Players Enliven Museum Pieces at Bowers

A certain amount of care has been given to the presentation of the Pacific Symphony’s Chamber Music Series at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, and it shows.

With the concerts held within the galleries themselves, and dinner and champagne beforehand, the series, dubbed “A Feast for the Senses,” has the potential--let’s face it--for stuffiness.

On the one hand, it provides a suitable feeling of occasion for the performance of great music. On the other, there’s the perhaps unavoidable sense of country-club exclusivity and museum reverence that hangs about, which can create the wrong frame of mind for approaching the vital art of chamber music.

That Friday night’s concert, the first of two during the weekend, sidestepped these obstacles was largely due to the lively musicianship of the gathered players. Propriety and politeness had nothing to do with their performances; genuine expression and active involvement did.

Opening the concert in the high-ceilinged, reverberant Leo Freedman Foundation Galleria, PSO principal flutist Louise DiTullio gave a vigorous airing to Bach’s Partita in A minor, BWV 1013. Though one could quibble with certain aspects of this reading (she took the Allemande, considered a medium-tempo dance, too fast, and the steely sound of her modern flute overwhelmed some of the gentle aspects of the work), DiTullio showed technical accomplishment and a forward, focused musicality throughout.

The concert then headed upstairs, to the Gloria & Si Fluor and Family Gallery, where, surely for the first time in history, a Mozart flute quartet and a Faure piano quartet were played in front of a glowing display of orange-crate labels.

DiTullio led an aggressive but detailed reading of the Flute Quartet, K. 285, with PSO cellist Timothy Landauer and guests Clayton Haslop, violin, and Peter Bucknell, viola, her attentive, spirited cohorts.

The same string players were joined by pianist Chester Swiatkowski for the C-minor Quartet, Opus 15, by Faure. Though slightly hampered by the close acoustics, they offered a big, expressive, pointed and, happily, enthusiastic performance. In short, it revealed in every bar the genuine affection these musicians had for the music at hand.