Nature’s Winds Prove No Match for Those of L.A. Chamber

Irony buffs could take pleasure in the extra-musical details of Sunday morning’s appearance by members of the Los Angeles Chamber Winds at the John Anson Ford Amphitheater: The wind itself became an unsolicited page-turner.

Further trouble arose when a movement of the Poulenc Sextet was halted because of a missing page of music. It was found, and composure quickly regained. The music was French, after all, bolstered by joie de vivre and fatalistic urbanity.

This was the kickoff event of the Ford’s Brunch Classics series, refining an idea launched last summer. There remains the question of how well chamber music fares in the great outdoors, where ambient noises and the elements can counteract the intimate “chamber” ideal. The verdict, at least Sunday, was “very well, thank you,” distractions notwithstanding.

Context and programming helped matters. LACO music director Jeffrey Kahane, acting as a flexible accompanist-accomplice, offered an all-French program that went down well alfresco on a Sunday morning. In all, it was stylistically coherent and a showcase for the considerable strengths of this group of wind players.

Flutist David Shostac captured the delicate modernist wisdom of the Sonatine for Flute and Piano of Henri Dutilleux, a composer deserving wider recognition. Witty, almost circus-like repartee marks Jean Francaix’s Divertimento for Horn with Piano, neatly played by hornist Richard Todd, and bassoonist Kenneth Munday met the romantically inclined, whirlwind challenge of Saint-Saens’ Sonata for Bassoon and Piano.

From Poulenc, we heard both the Sonata for Oboe and Piano, a handsome and darkly lyrical late work played here masterfully by Allen Vogel, and, to close the concert, the Sextet, for all involved.

The work’s finale is alternately briskly energetic and rhapsodic, its mercurial spirit carried on the wind, so to speak.