Pacific Serenades Revisits New Works

Through its first nine seasons, the chamber music series Pacific Serenades has served the most important function of an impresario, presenting first performances of new music by living composers. Moreover, Pacific Serenades has done so 139 times.

Justifiably, then, the series’ 10th season is dealing in a retrospective listen to four of those 139 works, along with--as always--the standard chamber-music repertory.

Opening the season Sunday afternoon in the Gold Room at the Biltmore Hotel, director Mark Carlson, often seen as a flutist as well as heard as a composer on the series, juxtaposed masterpieces by Haydn and Rachmaninoff with a complete run-through of his song cycle, “From One Who Stays” (1991-92). Sung by mezzo Kathleen Roland and played by Carlson, cellist David Speltz and pianist Joanne Pearce-Martin, the six songs represent a major leap forward for the 44-year-old composer.

Adding emotional dimensions to texts of loss by six disparate poets, the cycle explores, in a Janacekian idiom, complexities of grief and healing from the alienation of denial through the guarded embrace of optimism. These are beauteous, haunting and contrasting songs, here performed poignantly by Roland and her sensitive colleagues.

The afternoon concert began with a highly polished and delightfully projected reading of Haydn’s Trio in G, Hob. XV:15, by Carlson, Speltz and Pearce-Martin. It ended with a touching, virtuosic performance of Rachmaninoff’s Sonata in G minor from Speltz and Pearce-Martin.

* Pacific Serenades repeats this program Sunday at 4 p.m. at Westwood United Methodist Church, 10497 Wilshire Blvd., (310) 474-4511. Tickets: $10-$15.