Fiery Schoenberg Kammersymphonie

Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie, Opus 9, originally for 15 solo instruments, is such a passionate work that it sweeps all before it, even when played in a reduced arrangement for five.

Such an arrangement, made by Webern, one of Schoenberg’s most illustrious disciples, to facilitate private and touring performances of the work, closed the Monday Evening Concert program in the Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The musicians were pianist Sarah Rothenberg and the Netherlands-based Schoenberg Quartet--violinists Janneke van der Meer and Wim de Jong, violist Henk Guittart and cellist Viola de Hoog.

The arrangement necessarily diminished the amazing textural and timbre richness of the piece and typically introduced unfavorable balance problems between piano and strings. But the musicians played with such fire and commitment that much of that didn’t matter. The 1906 music sounded virtually romantic now and utterly dramatic and persuasive. Still, the fast and unison passages emerged with much more character than did the slower, exposed lines, which seemed unnecessarily pale.

Van der Meer, Guittart and De Hoog also played Schoenberg’s Trio, Opus 45, which the composer said reflected a hospital stay due to heart disease. (While he was hospitalized, his heart stopped and he had to be revived by an injection directly into it, which is supposed to be represented in the piece.)

The musicians explored the varied states of consciousness, the coalescing and dispersing of recollections of the past and the sudden attacks of dread with sensitivity to the textures and alertness to the music’s mercurial detail.

Rothenberg played four varied selections from Book I of Debussy’s Preludes with atmosphere and fine character. They were “Voiles,” “La serenade interrompue,” “Des pas sur la neige” and “Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest.”

The program opened with Debussy’s Quartet, Opus 10, magical in the slow movement, but clotted and meandering elsewhere, as if the players were tentatively taking the measure of the hall.