A Music Festival on the Rise

Ventura Chamber Music Festival’s history has been one of notable planning and general artistic success. Every spring for the past eight years, the festival has ushered renowned and inspired musicians to town. It creates an aura of cultured activity at various sites, with food ever on the periphery. In short, the festival threatens to become a major West Coast classical event, if it hasn’t already.

With this year’s 10-day program, dubbed “Mozart in Ventura,” the festival rises a few notches with the arrival of one of the towering pianists of the day, Alicia de Larrocha. The famed Spanish pianist, who made her American debut in Los Angeles in 1955, is the clear highlight of the festival. She’ll perform a solo recital next Thursday and with the Festival Chamber Orchestra May 11, both at Ventura College Theater.

This weekend’s roster includes tonight’s nonclassical kickoff, when smooth-jazz veteran David Benoit concertizes at Livery Theatre in a tribute to jazz piano great Bill Evans. The Rossetti String Quartet, a hit at last year’s fest, will play the first of two concerts on Friday at the Community Presbyterian Church. Saturday night, “Naked Opera” features singers from Los Angeles Opera up close and personal at the First Baptist Church, and festival regular Corey Cerovsek, a dazzling young violinist, gives a recital Wednesday at Community Presbyterian.

Ventura Chamber Music Festival, various venues, through May 12. David Benoit, Livery Theatre, today, 6 p.m.; Rossetti String Quartet, Friday, 8 p.m., Community Presbyterian Church; “Naked Opera,” Saturday, 8 p.m., First Baptist Church; Corey Cerovsek, Wednesday, 8 p.m., Community Presbyterian Church. (805) 648-3146, or visit www.vcmfa.org.

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Music Appreciation: At Laurel Theater these days, the first and nearly the last sounds we hear during the wonderful two-man play “Old Wicked Songs” are those of the first and last songs in Schumann’s song cycle “Dichterliebe” (Poet’s Love). In between, the play continually writhes in and out of the score, which supplies musical and poetic logic. Fittingly enough, the Ventura Chamber Music Festival is associated with this production, directed with a sure hand by Jenny Sullivan.

Jon Marans’ engaging drama, which won approval in its New York run in the mid-’90s and is slated for a film adaptation, makes for captivating theater in its current Rubicon Theater Co. production. A tale of an elderly Viennese music teacher (Harold Gould) and a reluctant, cynical American student, Stephen (Joseph Fuqua), the play builds its tension on the themes of youthful restlessness versus the gentle irony and wisdom of age, of pragmatism versus intuition in art, and finally, of the legacy of anti-Semitism.

The play’s charm, as well as its notes of rage and poignancy, have been duly noted, but not enough has been made of the ingenious scheme by which Marans allows Schumann’s musical motif to run through it. An intense emotional focus is brought about by the drama’s unfolding over several lessons on a single set, a Viennese studio with Klimt posters and calmly ornate wallpaper.

In another way, the fixed gaze on the words, notes and ambivalent emotions contained in “Dichterliebe” gives the play much of its strength. Marans was a music student in Vienna and chose to revisit that experience, as well as the hauntingly beautiful Schumann cycle with his play. One recurring point of reference is the song called “Ich grolle nicht” (“I bear no grudge, and when my heart is breaking

Of course, what also counts is the bold chemistry of its players: Gould is a commanding presence, and Fuqua is the flexible foil.

* “Old Wicked Songs,” Rubicon Theatre Co., 1006 E. Main St., Ventura. Wednesdays to Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends May 19. $28 to $33. (805) 667-2900.

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Simon Time: The Neil Simon staple of comic theater “Plaza Suite” has settled into Ventura County at the Backlot Theater in Thousand Oaks. The 1969 play, made into a film with Walter Matthau and Maureen Stapleton in 1971, deals with the lives and strivings of three couples passing through a suite in New York’s Plaza Hotel. The Vagabond Players, responsible for last year’s production of the original play “L’Chaim,” are presenting the play, with a cast including Ronald Rezac, Gail James, Martin Horsey and Denice Stradling. Direction by Don Pearlman.

* “Plaza Suite,” Backlot Theater, 1408 Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends May 12. $14, adults; $12, seniors and students. (805) 987-6039.