MUSIC REVIEWS : Eloquence, Thrills at ‘Farewell’

It was either the final curtain for the 10-year-old Chamber Music/ LA Festival Sunday afternoon at Japan America Theatre, or a new beginning. The usual suspects from festivals past had gathered for “A Farewell to Yukiko Kamei,” the founder and artistic director of the springtime event who will now devote her talents elsewhere.

There were no speeches in appreciation or pleas for money. There were no statements of intent. Just music-making of profound eloquence and tasteful thrills. This was no dutiful rehashing of chamber music pleasantries.

Cellist Nathaniel Rosen attacked the thorny complexities of Hindemith’s Passacaglia (from the 1948 Cello Sonata) with razor-sharp ferocity and technical abandon, pianist Doris Stevenson backing him up with crashing brilliance. The ensemble of Stevenson, violinists Paul Rosenthal and Christiaan Bor, violist Milton Thomas and cellist Jeffrey Solow gave an exquisitely pointed and wonderfully restrained performance of Schumann’s Piano Quintet. There was audible thinking going on here; the players didn’t simply indulge in Romantic gush.

Bor, Rosenthal, Kamei and Stevenson had lilting, sugary fun with Joseph Hellmesberger’s Serenade, a salon ditty for three muted violins and piano. To close, Kamei led all of the above (minus Stevenson) in Brahms’ String Sextet, Opus 36--a performance that trusted the work to make its own points, emphasizing lithe lines over ponderous accents, clear textures over euphonious clouds, rhythmical purpose over swoony emotion. It was what Brahms should be, and too often isn’t.

The Chamber Music/LA Festival used to be a thriving, weeks-long event that brought together these players who share a common ancestry as students of Heifetz and Piatigorsky. The last two seasons have seen it reduced to a single concert. There is apparent interest in at least some of the musicians and backers in continuing the festival. The playing Sunday made one earnestly hope that they will.