Stimulating Fare From Marlboro Musicians

Appearing on Wednesday in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, this season’s edition of the traveling Musicians From Marlboro delivered a stimulating, unhackneyed program with unfailing aplomb.

The Chamber Music in Historic Sites event was launched by Shostakovich’s rarely heard Sixth String Quartet, in reality a series of solos, duos and trios involving four players, which begins in a deceptively bouncy-jolly vein and gradually blossoms into hysterical giddiness. At the score’s core are three slowish sections, all suggesting innocent lullabies--sung during rocket attacks.

Shostakovich’s disquieting night-thoughts were projected with terrific energy and, as if to point up the dark humor, lushness of tone by violinists Robert Chen and Scott St. John, violist Philipp Naegele and cellist Peter Stumpf.

Faure’s song cycle “La Bonne Chanson” loses subtlety when the original piano-only accompaniment is expanded, as it was on this occasion, for string quartet (the previous performers) and piano (Luis Batlle). But the suggestiveness of Verlaine’s moonstruck poems was retained in the intimate, yet richly faceted delivery of baritone Sanford Sylvan, as communicative here as in the contemporary scores on which he has built his reputation.

Mozart’s splendid String Quintet in D, K. 593, concluded the program with a reading more flashy than profound--particularly in the got-it, flaunt-it playing of violist Misha Amory. But he and Naegele, the latter likewise not one to inspire viola jokes, forcefully reminded us that their favored string instrument was also Mozart’s.