MUSIC REVIEW : Southwest Chamber Society at Chapman

The Southwest Chamber Music Society reasserted its tradition of animated performances of 20th-Century works Sunday afternoon in Orange, with a stimulating program of music by Britten, Shostakovich and Donald Crockett.

The most recent was Crockett’s attractive 1990 “Celestial Mechanics,” for oboe and string quartet, recipient of second prize in the 1991 Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards. According to the USC faculty member, who attended the concert, his inspiration stemmed from the Oboe Quartet of Mozart and the virtuosic playing of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s principal oboist, Allan Vogel.

On this occasion--in Salmon Recital Hall, at Chapman University--Stuart Horn neatly filled the role designed for Vogel. During the first of two movements, and again toward the close of the second, he brought elegant intelligence to the woodwind’s staunchly lyrical role, against--sometimes subsumed by--the strings’ more aggressive stance.

The five players--including violinists Peter Marsh and Susan Jensen, violist Jan Karlin and cellist Roger Lebow--skipped through the jaunty patter of the final movement in crisply articulated, buoyant rhythms.

Most weighty of the three works on the roster, Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 15, Opus 144--his last in that genre--proved the most difficult to knit into a convincing whole. Relentless in its seeming obsession with death, the quartet holds to a dirgelike adagio throughout, and rarely engages all four musicians at once. Here, a series of solos--often somber, Angst- ridden and moving--resulted.

Britten’s Phantasy, Opus 2, for oboe and string trio (Horn and the quartet, minus violinist Jensen) flourished in taut and evocative ensemble.

The same program had been presented Friday night in Pasadena.