Concerts Highlight Jewish Composers : One program will feature works by Rossi and Marais; another will include pieces by Schoenberg, Strassburg and Mendelssohn.

Cultural separatism can be dangerous if approached in the wrong spirit. But when two different Jewish music-oriented concerts take place in Ventura County this Sunday, it will be with the intent of embracing a specific heritage while extending the invitation to music lovers of all creeds.

In a Sunday afternoon concert at Temple Beth Torah, benefiting Jewish Family Services of Ventura County, early music specialist Ensemble Bella Musica will explore the repertoire of both Jewish and Christian origin. Principally, though, the focus is on the works of European Jewish composers such as the Italian Salomone Rossi and the French Marin Marais, as well as the German baroque master Georg Telemann.

Weighing in with period instruments, the group consists of Susanne Shapiro on harpsichord, Joshua Schechter on early violin, Lia Starer Levin on recorder and Charles Fernandez on Baroque bassoon.

Meanwhile, at Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley, the annual Under the Stars concert series continues with chamber music Sunday night. Other concerts in the series take place outdoors and lean more toward entertainment mode, but the delicate dynamics of the chamber event are better served in the intimate House of the Book on campus.

As the series artistic director--and professional cellist--David Low commented, this Sunday’s program will be “the heavier concert” of the series, “but it’s mostly a pretty mainstream program.”

Centering the program will be Arnold Schoenberg’s late-romantic “Verklarte Nacht” (“Transfigured Night”). Written in 1899, when the composer was 25 and years away from devising his revolutionary 12-tone system of composition, the work is a brooding, dramatic tone poem, accessible to all.

Mendelssohn’s A Minor String Quartet, Opus 13, and Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes are included in the first half, the highlight of which promises to be the world premiere of “L’dor Vador” (“From Generation to Generation”) by Robert Strassburg. Strassburg, 80 and living in Orange County, has been affiliated with Brandeis-Bardin since 1947 and continues to compose music.

In the new work, excerpts from Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” along with text from the book of Isaiah, will be narrated by Ianthe Low, the artistic director’s wife. Strassburg said, “The words are interwoven with each movement, except the third movement is just a picture of the stars, the heavens, a cosmic kind of treatment for string quartet.”

Whitman is a wellspring of inspiration to Strassburg, who edits a Whitman newsletter and has conducted the 1992 premiere of his choral symphony, a nine-movement setting of Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.”

“I regard Walt Whitman as also being a prophet of holiness,” Strassburg said. “He looked on life as sacred and holy. He had a great reverence for life.”

Details

Ensemble Bella Musica

* WHEN: 3 p.m. Sunday.

* WHERE: Temple Beth Torah, 7620 Foothill Road, Ventura.

* HOW MUCH: $14.

* CALL: 659-5144.

An Evening of Chamber Music

* WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

* WHERE: Brandeis-Bardin Institute, 1101 Peppertree Lane, Simi Valley.

* HOW MUCH: $18.

* CALL: 582-4450.