MUSIC REVIEWS : Southwest Chamber Displays Expertise

Expertise and credibility keep any nonprofit artistic organization alive and thriving. Southwest Chamber Music Society survives on these and on guts too. In its first eight seasons, the ensemble/presenter has become to the 1990s what Monday Evening Concerts was to Southern California in the 1950s and ‘60s: A central player/impetus/influence in our varied artistic life.

Nothing very special materialized at Southwest’s latest program, heard at the Armory in Pasadena on Saturday night (repeated Sunday afternoon in Orange). Still, the performances went beyond respectability, the agenda made sense and one left the little museum with that glow that comes after quality time spent with fascinating scores and splendid music-making.

The strongest performance turned up in the final work, Ravel’s “Ma mere l’oye,” in its original, four-hand-piano version, played with delicacy and probing by Vicki Ray and Susan Svrcek. Also compelling was the evening’s opener, Oliver Knussen’s transparent, centuries-crossing, wind-quintet transcription of Perotin’s stunning “Alleluya Nativitas.”

In between, there was Knussen’s “Hums and Songs of Winnie the Pooh,” for soprano and five instruments, which the British composer--who was present on this occasion--told us in a note is neither a tone poem nor a setting, but a meditation, the actual words being unimportant. Soprano Heidi Johnson was the game, undistinctive protagonist.

The resident woodwind quintet played another nostalgic Knussen piece, “Three Little Fantasies” with sensitivity and lively surfaces.

The remaining work was Ravel’s “Chansons madecasses,” sung prosaically by soprano Kathleen Roland, with cellist Steve Richards, flutist Dorothy Stone and pianist Svrcek.