Philharmonic Shines Spotlight on Witty, Wistful Poulenc

Big changes are taking place in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s chamber music division--a move down the hill from the Gindi Auditorium to the Skirball Center in Bel-Air next season, and a new series of concerts downtown in the Colburn School’s Zipper Hall this season. Though it’s only a temporary move until Disney Hall is completed, the Zipper is a natural locale for such a series with its warm acoustics and proximity to the Music Center.

For a start, various members of the orchestra, plus pianist Armen Guzelimian, paid some attention at the Zipper on Friday night to a centenary that has been overshadowed by the world’s ongoing tributes to the Johann Strausses, Chopin, Ellington, J.S. Bach, etc.--that of Francis Poulenc (1899-1963).

The centenary has only generated a slight uptick in Poulenc’s reputation thus far; perhaps his penchant for bringing playful pratfalls from popular music into a sophisticated, indelibly French style (a modern-day American equivalent would be John Adams) has held him back in some stuffy circles.

You can hear some of that in-your-face irreverence in the Finale of the otherwise elegant, wistful staple, the Sonata for Flute and Piano, in which flutist Janet Ferguson and Guzelimian traded phrases in a true conversational manner. The Sonata for Clarinet and Piano is actually a sassier piece, but clarinetist David Howard and Guzelimian chose to emphasize its soaringly lyrical aspects, with the clarinetist’s tone melting resonantly through the hall. A rarer delicacy, the tiny Sonata for Horn, Trumpet and Trombone, dispenses with melancholy altogether in a series of slapstick jokes, deliberate wrong notes and such, which the trio of Jerry Folsom (French horn), Boyde Hood (trumpet), and Ralph Sauer (trombone) dispatched with a warmth that took the edge off some of the wit.

To round off the evening, the Tchaikovsky String Quartet No. 3--which at about 37 minutes is longer than all three Poulenc sonatas combined--received a performance from the quartet of Barry Socher and Stacy Wetzel (violins), Minor L. Wetzel (viola) and Barry Gold (cello) that fared best in the stretches of rough vigor in the outer movements.