Music Reviews : Chamber Group

The season finale in Gindi Auditorium on Monday by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Chamber Music Society was an event of which any symphony orchestra might be proud.

The concert, employing Philharmonic members, was an exhibit of orchestral depth and a refutation of the notion that only years of preparation and pondering can satisfy the naked-to-the-world requirements of chamber music.

If subtlety of execution wasn’t a primary concern on Monday, there was even a striking example of that: in the finely scaled dynamics and hair’s-breadth interplay exhibited in the variations of Ernst von Dohnanyi’s Serenade for String Trio, all of which was wittily, lucidly projected by violinist Mitchell Newman, violist Ralph Fielding and cellist Gianna Abondolo.

Then there was the pleasure of encountering the Two Rhapsodies (1901) by Franco-American composer Charles Martin Loeffler.

In an evening that amounted to a minifestival of accomplished, uninhibited viola playing, John Hayhurst projected his showy part in the Loeffler with splendidly rich tone, benefiting from the sensitive partnering of Carolyn Hove’s lushly agile oboe and the fluent pianism of Grant Gershon.

Whatever audible loose ends one found were in the context of an exhilarating reading of the Schumann Piano Quartet, whose occasional, hardly critical problem was the overprominence of Mark Baranov’s succulent violin.

In sum, Schumann’s grand sonorities and melodic marvels were lovingly communicated by an ensemble that otherwise included pianist Lina Targonsky, (Philharmonic principal) violist Evan Wilson and particularly cellist Barry Gold.