Debussy Trio Concert Features L.A. Composers

Contemporary music with a Los Angeles accent dominated the invigorating Debussy Trio program Thursday in Founders Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

Ian Krouse’s “Cinco Canciones Insolitas” (Five Peculiar Songs) received its world premiere. A Baltimore native now living in the City of the Angels, Krouse has found haunting, lyric and dramatic melodies to fit texts by Federico Garcia Lorca, ranging from hopelessness over unrequited love to a lullaby that warns away a lover because the woman’s husband is in the house.

They were richly sung by L.A. Opera mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzman. Fulfilling the composer’s aim of writing “chamber music with voice, rather than accompanied songs,” Guzman sat among her Debussy colleagues--harpist Marcia Dickstein, flutist Angela Wiegand and violist David Walther.

Unfortunately, management failed to insert translations in many of the programs. So even though Guzman spoke the lyrics of the fourth song (“A la vera del agua” / At the edge of the water) in Spanish and English before singing it, anyone who didn’t speak Spanish missed much of Krouse’s sensitive and detailed word setting.

Bruce Broughton, another Angeleno and this time a native, was represented by the American premiere of “Tyvek Wood,” a 20-minute, three-movement fantasia full of sparkling and mercurial elfin lights. Donald Crockett of Pasadena spun out prismatic and characterful minidramas in his eight “Short Stories.”

All three works were composed for the trio, and the composers were on hand to take bows.

Typically judicious, economical and superbly crafted, Ravel’s 1905 Sonatine, as arranged by Carlos Salzedo, did not sound out of place among the contemporary pieces.

The trio played Krouse’s “Tri Chairde” (Gaelic for “Three Friends”) as the single encore.