Music Review : Chamber Music Society Hosts 2 Pianists

With a little help from some friends, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Chamber Music Society made a disparate program fly higher than might have been expected Monday night.

Guest pianists Bryan Pezzone and Lina Targonsky--the first, a veteran performer of new music about town and elsewhere, the second, the wife (but not only) of Philharmonic assistant concertmaster Mark Baranov--offered strong contributions to their respective ensembles, in University Synagogue in Brentwood.

To be frank, there was at least one listener in the audience who wasn’t looking forward to another trek through the swamps of Tchaikovsky’s A-minor Trio, Opus 50, but the performers on hand, Targonsky, Baranov--not incidentally, both Moscow-trained--and cellist Barry Gold soon changed his mind. A performance of pointed subtlety and cinematic sweep proved that there is more in this score than most musicians usually find.

Baranov led the way with wonderfully heated but never overblown violin playing, Targonsky added meaningfully colored, nuanced and, when needed, hefty pianism (despite a dropped note or two), and Gold provided burnished, lyric flights of his own. The piece sang from beginning to end.

Pezzone took a rare trip (for him) into the Classical repertory with violinist Barry Socher, violist Evan N. Wilson and cellist Daniel Rothmuller in Beethoven’s Piano Quartet, Opus 16. He gave a consistently and interestingly sculpted reading in the featured role, while the string trio, matched in sound and temperament, argued convincingly for this arrangement over the composer’s original for winds.

In between came American composer Eric Ewazen’s Quintet for English Horn and Strings of 1991, a thoroughly accessible, forgettable work--bucolic, impressionistic modalism--but well-crafted and harmless enough. A more rugged and contrasted reading than that given by the polished group headed by English hornist Carolyn Hove might have helped its cause, but probably not much.