For Nimbus, surprise is as important as the sound

The Nimbus Ensemble is nimble, new and necessary. A small chamber orchestra, it has ideas, a good place to play, a capable music director and -- on the evidence of its impressive list of donors and the amount of advertising in its program booklet -- a head for business.

All of the above are, of course, important for the success of a new ensemble, although in what order is anybody’s guess. Likability is also useful, and that I found as well at Nimbus’ Sunday matinee in Westwood United Methodist Church. Now what the ensemble, which has not been around much more than a year, needs to concentrate on is its playing.

Sunday’s program appeared to be the kind of thing music director Young Riddle hopes to achieve with Nimbus. He began by conducting Bach’s Second “Brandenburg” Concerto in an unusual version with a solo horn playing the high-ceilinged lines usually reserved for trumpet.

Next came a “mystery” piece, which is an amusing hallmark of Nimbus -- Sunday’s was Sibelius’ Canzonetta, Opus 62a. Then came Ligeti’s “Ramification,” with its striking string microtones. After intermission, Riddle conducted Haydn’s Symphony No. 49 (“La Passione”), a work almost as weird in 1768 as “Ramifications” was when it was written exactly 200 years later.

Thus, everything -- old or new, familiar or not -- was offered as a surprise. And perhaps the biggest surprise was hearing this program in a venue that is visually pleasing (what with a glowing blue stained-glass window behind the players), has an acoustic immediacy that practically puts a listener in physical contact with the music, and offers free parking.

The physical sensation this music made in Westwood United Methodist was Nimbus’ greatest asset Sunday, and in fact the physicality of music is at the core of the ensemble’s mission. Its ancillary Nimbus Institute even held a symposium Thursday at Steinway Hall in West L.A. to explore just that topic in relationship to Ligeti’s microtonality.

By tuning two string groups a quarter-tone apart and then asking them to sidle up gratingly close to each other in pitch, Ligeti explored the strange resulting phenomenon known as beats, the mysterious aural pulses that occur when sound waves collide. It proved quite a kick to get inside them Sunday.

It was also a pleasure to hear a “Brandenburg” as almost new music, the horn creating fresh textures and a snappy recorder taking the familiar flute solos.

Haydn’s symphony begins with a slow movement full of crunchy unexpected harmonies. In the fast movements, syncopations lurch wildly. In all this, Haydn exploited players’ tensions, and they were here palpable.

So too was their technical tension. Not every uncertainty was Haydn’s. In the “Brandenburg,” you could see why horn players might fear to tread on trumpet territory. And even in the Ligeti, the tuning didn’t have the effect it might have had the strings not suffered intonation problems all afternoon.

But Riddle’s conducting was straightforward and confident. He focused his attention where it needed to be, which was on keeping his players together. With a slight ensemble upgrade, this group could have a lot to offer.