Diverse Charms From Southwest Chamber

So entrenched is the habit of exploration with the Southwest Chamber Music Society that even the group’s program of light, after-dinner music became an adventure among unusual suspects.

Held on a balmy Saturday evening on the Huntington Art Gallery Loggia (the classical-columned, side porch of the old Huntington residence in San Marino), the concert touched base with Haydn and Mozart but also forayed into Charles Wuorinen, Ingolf Dahl and Carl Friedrich Abel.

Not that the lesser-known music rattled any ears. The event proved blithe and breezy almost to a fault.

Longtime Angeleno Dahl’s frothy, Stravinskian “Concerto a Tre” (for clarinet, violin and cello) took the honors as spiciest concoction. Written for Benny Goodman, the work juxtaposes neoclassical, sometimes dissonant counterpoint with Coplandesque simplicity, all propulsively driven by bubbling, tumbling rhythms.

The modernist Wuorinen’s “Transcriptions From the Glogauer Song-Book” turned out to be a thoroughly pleasant exercise in the re-instrumentation of 15th century music. Violin, cello, clarinet/bass clarinet and flute/piccolo are resourcefully used to render these jaggedly rhythmed but generally danceable pieces in ever new light and color.

Abel’s Quartet in G for flute and strings put utterly charming, well-polished music to the face of the famous Gainsborough painting of the 18th century musician (shown with his dog and viola da gamba) housed in the Huntington. Haydn’s featherweight Flute Trio, Hob. IV: 1, and Mozart’s more substantial Flute Quartet, K. 285, completed the program.

The performances--by Southwest musicians Susan Jensen (violin), Jan Karlin (viola), Leighton Fong (cello), Dorothy Stone (flute) and Michael Grego (clarinet)--showed consistent poise, neatness, perception and geniality.