It’s a Chamber-Sized Year at the Ojai Festival

For regulars of the Ojai Festival, the world-class classical music fete that lands every year on the precipice between spring and summer, the Libbey Bowl stage may well appear underpopulated this weekend.

The festival traditionally features some orchestral presence, usually the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by various celebrated maestros. This year, however, they’re cutting costs and saving up for next year’s big event, featuring Pierre Boulez.

Which doesn’t mean that the festival isn’t amply stocked with musical firepower. It’s just presented in smaller, chamber-sized packages. Whatever our sentimental attachments to orchestral grandeur in the park, it would be hard to sniff at a program that includes one of the world’s finest string quartets, the Emerson (performing Beethoven and Shostakovich on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights), or concert-stage-meets-cabaret singer Ute Lemper singing songs of Kurt Weill, one of her claims to fame, along with noted guitarist Eliot Fisk in the Sunday morning concert.

This year’s fest, aptly dubbed “Last and Latest Thoughts,” will be the last directed by Ernest Fleischmann, the former L.A. Philharmonic chief. He has brought energy, new ideas and a prickly stage presence to Ojai in his short stay. For instance, he expanded the festival to include pre-weekend concerts and panel discussions.

Officially, the festival began Wednesday night. Today and Friday, a symposium at the Ojai Presbyterian Church will run from 10:30 to 4:30 each day, with scholarly papers and a panel discussion featuring festival artists and Times music critic Mark Swed.

Saturday morning concerts in Ojai are often reserved for lighter, family-friendly fare. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile. A few years back, Esa-Pekka Salonen brought his delightfully flexible chamber group Toimii to play, replete with costume changes and child-tickling horseplay--a sophisticated surrogate for Saturday morning cartoons. This Saturday morning, Marino Formenti presents a gutsy yet enjoyable program, “The Latest Sounds for Eager Ears: Today’s Music for Today’s Kids,” and expands that agenda for a full, grown-up recital on Saturday afternoon.

In a way, 2002’s fest will be remembered as the Emersonian year in Ojai. The group will unveil an ambitious three-night, two-composer survey of late quartets by Beethoven and Shostakovich. It won’t be a walk in the park but promises to touch deep.

* Ojai Festival, Libbey Bowl, downtown Ojai, through Sunday. Friday at 8:15 p.m., Emerson String Quartet; Saturday at 10:30 a.m., family concert with pianist Marino Formenti; Saturday at 2:30 p.m., pianist Marino Formenti; Saturday at 8:30 p.m., Emerson String Quartet; Sunday at 11 a.m., Ute Lemper and Eliot Fisk; Sunday at 5:30 p.m., Emerson String Quartet. Call for ticket prices and availability. (805) 646-2094. www.ojaifestival.org.

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Other Festival Notes: The eighth-annual Ventura Chamber Music Festival May 2-12 came off without notable hitches and had the distinction of bringing a legend to Ventura, in the form of pianist Alicia de Larrocha. Otherwise, this year’s program was pretty tried and true, with return visits from the violinist Corey Cerovsek and the Rossetti Quartet (albeit without the abruptly departed first violinist Nina Bodnar).

Every festival needs unpredictability, and the wildest concert of the festival was the Saturday afternoon showdown of opposing forces at the Church of Religious Science. Bryan Pezzone is a wonderful pianist, whose exacting touch and gamey sense of adventure make him a favorite of the Los Angeles new music scene. On Saturday, his crisp, meaningful playing on the Mozart, and in ensemble for Ventura College teacher Cesar Mateus’ bracing, brainy premiere, were exemplary.

Left to his own devices, however, Pezzone’s improvisation-driven program--which he calls the “freedom series”--can be surprisingly shallow. Although he periodically came to life, as during the classic Bill Evans/Miles Davis ballad “Blue in Green,” elsewhere his meandering lines smacked of New Age or instrumental pop ideas, and his self-reflective chatter between pieces tried one’s patience.

After intermission, stark contrast greeted us in the form of Jim Fox’s hypnotic “Solo for Reed Instrument,” played by bass clarinetist Marty Walker. Especially effective in this quasi-Mayan chapel space, the work’s pared-down gestures focus our listening minds on qualities other than standard virtuosity or melodic development.

Mateus’ new “Visitations for Chamber Orchestra” favors explorations of overtones and fundamentals of sound rather than the traditional music building blocks. It’s a powerful example of how essentially abstract music can also be gripping. The work conveyed a distracted, ambiguous air, a feeling of expectancy and introspection, but also a sense of assertive sound painting.