Fresh Brahms Performance by Mozart Chamber Players

Brahms labored mightily with the music that became his F-minor Piano Quintet, rescoring and recomposing it several times. The result is a paradoxical piece as nearly perfect as any of Mozart’s but with all the turmoil left perilously close to the surface. In a strong performance--such as that of the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra’s Chamber Players, Monday evening at Zipper Concert Hall--it is music that seems to be creating itself bar by bar, the struggle as evident as the inevitability of the process.

Pianist Lucinda Carver, the orchestra’s music director, and violinists Aimee Kreston and Margaret Wooten, violist Karie Prescott and cellist Roger Lebow had their own struggles with this taxing epic. There were moments of misconstrued emphasis, and some tiring and loss of control became apparent in the scherzo and finale.

But this was also a performance of great vitality and sincerity. Its gestures were fresh and its convictions inspired. Above all, the playing had the mettlesome, expansive energy and direct expressivity of its object.

Faure’s C-minor Piano Quartet makes an intriguing companion for the almost coeval Brahms work. The perspective here from Carver, violinist Susan Rishik, Prescott and Lebow pointed up similarities rather than differences, particularly in color and texture. Rishik’s elegant but reticent playing left the work sounding even darker than usual and rather thick around the middle. Best was the yearning arc of the adagio plaint, projected with a remarkable tenderness free of all bathos and self-pity.

A namesake nod, Mozart’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in B-flat, K. 454, opened the generous program. Kreston and Carver delivered it with affectionate grace in buoyant, balanced partnership.