Pacific Serenades Embraces New Work

Pacific Serenades, which opened its 12th season Sunday afternoon in the Biltmore Hotel, has set itself the task of “embrac[ing] beauty” through new music. Artistic director Mark Carlson views the organization’s efforts as cutting-edge, though that’s arguable.

At the least, Serenades puts its money where its mouth is. It has commissioned and premiered some 38 new chamber works over the years, and, recently, established its own publishing house. Arni Egilsson’s “Sextet Pacifica,” heard Sunday, is the latest offering.

Cutting-edge or otherwise, there is no denying that Egilsson’s work, like so much of the new work presented by this group, speaks in an old vocabulary. Written mostly in late Romantic idiom, tonal in harmony and melodic in conception, the 15-minute work, says the reticent Icelandic composer (now an L.A.-based double-bassist), “touches on emotions of excitement and fun as well as anger, sorrow and sadness.” Seamlessly cast for strings, “Sextet Pacifica” moves through that emotional landscape in connected episodes unified by a four-note melodic motif.

It is skillful, but it sounds familiar. Darting tremolos underline throbbing lyrical flights high in the violin (a la another sextet, “Transfigured Night”). Pulsing syncopated rhythms create motorized tension a la Stravinsky. Even Lutoslawski makes brief appearances in passages of pizzicato and col legno. It all goes down easily, but it doesn’t particularly stamp the memory.

So, too, the concert opener. Anton Arensky’s “Variations on a Theme of Tchaikovsky” (heard in its original version for violin, viola and two cellos) proved pretty and pretty predictable.

A carefully honed, technically proficient performance of Brahms’ String Sextet, Opus 36, closed the program. But even here, the players, led by violinist Roger Wilkie, had nothing new or distinctive to say about the work. In a word, conservative.

* Pacific Serenades repeats the same program tonight at 7:30, Westwood United Methodist Church, 10497 Wilshire Blvd. $5-$20. (213) 852-0260.