Earful and more from Xtet

The new music group Xtet gave its followers more music than they had bargained for Monday night at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art -- an abundance partially dictated by fate.

Emily Bernstein, Xtet’s resident clarinetist and a fixture at the Los Angeles Opera and the Pasadena Symphony, died in January at age 46. So Monday’s concert in the museum’s Bing Theater was dedicated to her memory, starting with an elegy in the form of the Andante from J.S. Bach’s Sonata in E minor for Flute and Basso Continuo, played molto expressivo by pianist Vicki Ray and flutist Gary Woodward.

Then came another unbilled attraction, Villa-Lobos’ “Bachianas Brasileiras” No. 6, the briefest and probably least-known work in this strange series. For Villa-Lobos, a “Bachianas Brasileiras” could be anything from a half-hour suite for large orchestra down to this two-movement lark for flute and bassoon. Yet even in this condensed form, expertly essayed by Woodward and bassoonist John Steinmetz, the characteristics of the entire series are brilliantly compressed into showy Brazilian-flavored flute lines and Bach-like intertwinings for bassoon.

On to the announced program, with Books I and II of George Crumb’s four-part “Madrigals” marking yet another delayed local observance of the composer’s 75th birthday in October. The first of several Crumb works using texts by Federico Garcia Lorca, these spare Webernesque pinpoints of color aren’t as interesting as such later Garcia Lorca-inspired pieces as “Ancient Voices of Children.” But soprano Daisietta Kim’s delicate yet richly upholstered exploration of the vocal part proved especially enjoyable.

Steinmetz’s own “Simple Pleasures” from 2003 turned out to be a rather tranquil, easy-to-take sequence of pastorales for sextet, framed on both ends by a Grieg piano piece and centered around a long, rambling, Balinese-flavored tribute to the style and memory of Lou Harrison.

Up to this point, the concert had been mostly rather quiet and/or ruminative, but Xtet tried to puncture that impression at the close with Russell Peck’s “Automobile” from 1967. But this pretentiously arch little period piece -- with its elements of chance, tastes of quasi-jazz bass, antic interjections by percussion, and mock-overwrought poetry and coloratura flourishes -- sounded as if it was a lot more fun to perform than to hear.