MUSIC REVIEWS : An Incendiary Evening at Schoenberg Hall

The chamber music program, Friday night in Schoenberg Hall at UCLA, by members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute consisted of two works, Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony and Schubert’s String Quintet in C. More would have been excessive--if not intolerable.

The inherently overheated Chamber Symphony proved incendiary--just short of fried to a crisp--under the ministrations of Institute conducting fellow Thomas Dausgaard, who led 15 intensely willing and able colleagues through Schoenberg’s ecstatic sound world with stunning aplomb.

Critical nit-picking seems foolish under the circumstances. Make that impossible. One didn’t so much listen as allow oneself to be swept away.

The merciless beauty of Schubert’s Quintet--the reviewer waxes goofy on such an evening--was delivered with exceptional clarity, drama and lyric flow (a rushed, occasionally scrambled finale notwithstanding) by an ensemble governed by the silken first violin of Viktor Liberman, concertmaster of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

His youthful charges were second violinist Dorota Siuda, violist Mario Miragliotta and cellists Bard Bosrup (substituting for Lynn Harrell) and Paul Brunner.