Philomusica Balances Brahms, Hindemith

New York Philomusica, a flexibly sized chamber ensemble that boasts some notable members, appeared to be playing it safe when it ended its program Sunday at Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium with the familiar strains of Brahms’ G-minor Piano Quartet.

But these players had something vital to say about the warhorse. They gave it fresh life, and their obvious zeal, though it juiced the performance, didn’t overcome their musical discipline.

Pianist Robert Levin, violinist Adela Pena, violist Ah Ling Neu and cellist Melissa Meell made their Brahmsian points implicitly. They stayed inside the curve of the melodious phrases. They pulled back on the volume to highlight a point. Their textures were slender and glossy in the main, out of which they snapped crisp fortes.

All of which gave Brahms both a classical restraint and compressed energy that he rarely gets. It was invigorating.

The center spot on this Coleman Chamber Concerts program was filled with early Hindemith, his under-sung masterpiece, the Clarinet Quintet, Opus 30. There is something grippingly elemental about this piece in the way the composer resets common shapes--dances, fugues, melodic and rhythmic scraps--into a dissonant language and thereby underlines the building blocks beneath the surface detail.

Violinists Ida Levin and Pena, with Neu, Meell and clarinetist David Krakauer, offered a wonderfully sly and polished reading.

The concert began with Haydn’s Piano Trio, Hob. XV:29, all dressed up in finery by the Levins and Meell. It moved along with the irresistible finesse of an Astaire dance.