Ventura Fest Hits High Points

Sold-out houses and general highs dotted the 10-day, multi-venue Ventura Chamber Music Festival, which ended Sunday. String quartet tradition was well-represented by the Muir Quartet as the festival opened April 30, and the exacting, enthralling Shanghai Quartet Friday. The virtuosic Canadian violinist Corey Cerovsek wowed in several appearances, including a luminous recital Thursday with his pianist sister Katja.

Likewise, pianist Christopher O’Riley repeatedly impressed with his sensitivity and seamless technique, putting in stunning readings of Beethoven Piano Trio in E-flat, Opus 70, No. 2. and, with the Shanghai, Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F-minor. The young Romero Guitar Duo surprised SRO audiences at the Ventura Mission by bringing on their noted fathers, transforming themselves into the Romero Guitar Quartet.

If there was a festival epiphany, it happened Saturday morning at the Community Presbyterian Church, when Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” was performed by violinist Elizabeth Baker, clarinetist David Peck, cellist Dennis Karmazyn and O’Riley. Messiaen’s masterpiece, written in a World War II prison camp, emerged as intended, dizzying in its balance of hope, angst, prayerful introspection, sensuous energy and mind-expanding, Messiaenic harmony.

Its power pointed up a weakness in the festival program: a lack of challenging music from this century. Saturday night’s chamber orchestra concert was fine but overly long, with a Bach Concerto (played a bit overbearingly by O’Riley) and two Vaughan Williams works (one too many, for some of us), and Copland’s feel-good “Appalachian Spring.” Twentieth century, where is thy sting?

The sting department was handled, in some degree, by Oxnard-based Miguel del Aguila, a frequent festival contributor. This year’s premiere was “Return to Homeland,” in which sweet nostalgia turns to brooding, on the loss-of-innocence theme. Written for Cerovsek, the piece slaloms over an emotional landscape, revealing many of Del Aguila’s traits, from Latin American rhythms to a mischievous mix of personalized romanticism and structural self-derailment.

The festival closed on a no-risk high with Chanticleer, Sunday at the Mission. The stellar vocal group offered a salad-bar program that included Renaissance music, new music from Augusta Read Thomas, John Tavener and Steven Stucky, and condiments. Musicianship, ensemble mesh, daring and kitsch were in good supply.