MUSIC REVIEW : Reuter and Bennett Team Up for an Engaging Bing Recital

Oboist Gerard Reuter came to the L.A. County Museum of Art Wednesday night with a mostly 20th-Century program in tow, but the prevailing mood proved pastoral, the music melody-based.

As such, it was easy to take. But with exceptional collaboration from pianist-composer Richard Rodney Bennett, Reuter used his own quietly communicative skills, in this Pro Musicis Recital in the Bing Theater, to go beyond the merely pleasant.

The 44-year-old Reuter, a New York native and a founding member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, wasn’t exactly the sparkling virtuoso on this occasion. His technique is ample and adequate to be sure, but there were unsettled patches (mostly caused by a catch in his reed), and his tone lacked distinction. It hardly mattered. Reuter showed that he is a musician of quick intelligence and subtle insight, putting across his fascinating program with an unfailing sense of drama, line and nuance and doing it without musical histrionics.

Bennett, a distinguished composer (former student of Boulez) and Academy Award nominee to boot (for his film score to “Murder on the Orient Express”), revealed a composer’s sensitivity for detail and sonority and a casual, elegant touch as a pianist.

The high point was Poulenc’s 1962 Sonata, one of his last works, elegiac and deeply felt. Reuter and Bennett explored its lonely expanses gracefully and wistfully, always remaining on the bittersweet side of sentimentality. Just as it should be.

Treasurable too were Bennett’s “After Syrinx I,” a crystalline, misty, rhapsodical piece, and his arrangement of “Three Sondheim Waltzes,” charming, Frenchified dances from “A Little Night Music” and “Company.” Telemann’s Sonata in G (from “Tafelmusik III”) seemed as perfectly mediocre as others of his works, but Reuter’s busy ornamentation quickened interest.

Dutilleux’s keenly crafted 1947 Sonata and Benjamin Godard’s irresistibly tuneful and colorful “Scotch Scenes” rounded out the printed agenda. Faure’s poised “Piece” served as encore. In short: wonderful program, deep musicianship, nourished listener.