Adventurous Opening to Ventura Festival

Kicking off its fourth annual, bigger and better event this weekend, the Ventura Chamber Music Festival started out with a gala party at the Ojai Spa on Thursday, where music was marginal. Then the festival promptly went to church and dove into the musical imperative.

On Friday night, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano settled, aptly enough, into the San Buenaventura Mission for the first performance of its residency at the festival. (The quartet will also perform Tuesday afternoon and Saturday morning.) Their opening program managed to be both musically accessible and full of gumption, free of familiar names, let alone warhorses.

The following afternoon, in the embracing ambience of the Community Presbyterian Church’s chapel, the dazzling young violinist Corey Cerovsek was joined by his gifted sister, pianist Katja. This program was as middle-of-the-road as the quartet’s was daring, a diversity that perhaps defines this festival’s scope.

The Cuarteto played with its usual flair and commitment to new and worldly music. In this case, the material covered the meditative contours of Iranian-born Reza Vali’s Folk Songs, the subtle, cross-tonal tensions threading through Eric Muhl’s “Trucco,” and the jazzy flavor of Mexican composer Arturo Marquez’s “Homanaje a Gismonti”--for the famed Brazilian musician Egberto Gismonti--with a fitting blend of folkloric, classical and jazz ideas.

The second half was given to the American premiere of a 1908 piece, “Caprichos Romanticos,” by noted Spanish composer Conrado del Campo. This was the most straightforward piece of the evening, an agreeably late Romantic opus showcasing another side of the quartet’s collective voice.

Though plainly a strong and charismatic player, Cerovsek’s recital was less seamless than desired, partly because of the frequent applause between movements, and perhaps, as the violinist explained, climate changes between Canada and Ventura had left his vintage instrument in a temperamental state.

No matter: Cerovsek exerted a commanding presence, whether on the romantic heart-on-the-sleeve staples of Brahms’ Sonata No. 3 in D Minor and Franck’s Sonata in A, or the moving tunefulness of Falla’s “Suite populaire espagnole.”

Framing the program were handily tackled technical showpieces by Kreisler and Saint Saens/Ysaye and, for an encore, a gymnastic bonbon by Sarasate. But it was Bartok who stole the show. The Hungarian master’s Rhapsody No. 1 lured out the twin muses of folk and modernist influence, and the violinist found here a gutsy, sweet expressiveness.

The festival continues through next Sunday, when Christopher Parkening performs.