No Sparks Fly in Chamber Group’s Work

The Southwest Chamber Music Society continued its 11th season Thursday with an oddly constituted program at the Museum of Tolerance.

The pieces on the bill--Purcell’s Chaconny in G-minor, Charles Wuorinen’s “A Winter’s Tale” (a setting of the Dylan Thomas poem) and Brahms’ F-minor Piano Quintet--neither fit together in any special way nor sparked each other by contrast.

Wuorinen’s 1991 “A Winter’s Tale,” for soprano, clarinet, horn and piano quartet, was the difficult and puzzling centerpiece. The composer refers to it as “a kind of vocal concerto”; to this end the soprano line, disjunct in rhythm and interval, vaults up and down in a flowery fashion, though it is lyrical only in the sense that it’s sung legato.

The accompaniment weaves wiry, wide-ranging counterpoint in a freely dissonant style. Some interesting dovetailing occurs. Word painting happens, though just as often opportunities for it go ignored. What with Thomas’ beautiful but obscure rhetoric, a listener is left swimming and soon despairs that the poem stretches to 26 stanzas.

Phyllis Bryn-Julson negotiated the vocal meanderings lightly, in a silvery soprano. Jeff von der Schmidt led a tight instrumental contingent. In a few days, these musicians will set the work down in its--believe it or not--third recording.

Purcell’s somber Chaconny, heard in Britten’s anachronistic arrangement, made a peculiar overture--more stately than flashy--but received a taut reading from the Southwesterners.

Brahms’ Quintet came as a relief after the Wuorinen (was that the idea?) and spoke clearly in a highly disciplined account. Resisting the temptation of gilding Brahms’ lily, the performers nevertheless found his heat.

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* This concert will be repeated tonight at 8 at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church, 585 E. Colorado Blvd., $10 to $15. (800) 726-7147.