Stoltzman Trio Soars in Eclectic Orange Festival

For casual observers as well as professional listeners, one of the abundant joys in the continuing (through mid-November) Eclectic Orange Festival is the opportunity to hear unhackneyed repertory. Such repertory made up the entirety of the Richard Stoltzman Ensemble’s delightful and provocative performance at the Irvine Barclay Theatre Wednesday.

The ensemble--clarinetist Stoltzman, violinist Lucy Stoltzman and pianist David Deveau--is one of equals, each player bringing virtuosic skills and an urgency and intensity to everything performed. There were no lags or glitches in this engrossing evening.

There were, of course, high points among these works, which are known but not often played, not least because there aren’t many clarinet trios in business. The two masterpieces on the program came after intermission: Bartok’s “Contrasts” and Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto--in the very effective trio arrangement made by Lucy Stoltzman--great works that challenge players and listeners alike. The three soared, delivering this important music in fresh reconsiderations.

They also made charming, even irresistible, the second-level inspirations before intermission. These were Copland’s middle-period Sonata (1941-42) for violin and piano, Lukas Foss’ early “Three American Pieces” (1944) in R. Stoltzman’s arrangement and Leonard Bernstein’s Clarinet Sonata (1943).

In the Foss and Bernstein pieces particularly, the listener was struck--awestruck, even--by Stoltzman’s expressive range, the wide array of musical colors he brings to the music, the varied sounds: seductive, biting, poetic, witty, beautiful, ugly. And when he plays softly, it is a thrilling softness, an intense quietude, a breathtaking diminuendo.