An Adept Opening for Chamber Series

Violinist Michelle Kim, one of the contenders for the position of concertmaster with the Pacific Symphony, joined principal players from the orchestra Friday night to begin the 1996 Chamber Music Series at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art. Her appearance came on the heels of her solid sectional stewardship in the orchestra’s performance earlier in the week of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony.

Currently concertmaster for the Japan America Symphony of Los Angeles and the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, Kim matched cellist Timothy Landauer and pianist John Novacek--a familiar collaborator with both Kim and these symphony players--in rich, dark sound and ardent involvement during Joaquin Turina’s Piano Trio No. 2, Opus 76.

The three adjusted adeptly to shifting moods, imparting a nervous drive to the Vivace and conveying nostalgic yearning in slow, lushly appointed sections. Kim could not find complete agreement with her partners in Beethoven’s Septet in E-flat for Strings and Winds, however.

A tug-of-war ensued in the Theme and Variations as the violinist seemed to prefer a brilliant, faster and more virtuosic approach than the orchestra’s first-chair players: clarinetist James Kanter, bassoonist David Riddles, hornist John Reynolds, violist Robert Becker, Landauer and bassist Steven Edelman. Kanter, in particular, led his colleagues in insisting on a relaxed and ever elegant reading.

Despite any differences that surfaced, the seven did manage an ebullient, rhythmically facile and clearly fun-loving performance--not at all disappointing for a work which does, after all, owe its conception more to earlier lightweight divertimenti than to later, more dramatic explorations into the medium of chamber music.