Music and Dance Reviews : Enesco Rarity in Chamber Music Festival

The big repertory rarity of the Chamber Music/LA Festival this year is the Octet in C, Opus 7, of Georges Enesco. Following the festival theme, it was the French entry Thursday at the Japan America Theatre, its 19-year-old Romanian composer being Parisian by training and residence at the time of its creation in 1900.

A large and vivid hothouse bloom, the Octet exudes sensual energy. Its late-Romantic passions, however, are firmly punctuated by incisive unison statements and its cyclic themes cogently developed in fluid but traditionally shaped forms.

At its most fevered extreme--a state it reaches quickly and often--the Octet is an over-the-top construct projecting a sort of deliberate hysteria. Considered simply as a sonic ride, it is a volatile experience, risky business for players and listeners alike.

The players in this case benefitted from performing the piece together in Europe last season.

Violinist Christiaan Bor carried the heavy principal load with sinewy grace, and violist Marcus Thompson gave pointed, purring and snarling utterance to the many solos that came his way. Violinists Paul Rosenthal, Ik-Hwan Bae and Yukiko Kamei, violist Toby Hoffman and cellists Nathaniel Rosen and Ronald Thomas were the other fully engaged virtuosos.

Preceding the string orgy were relatively chaste duo piano works, whose connection to the Enesco seemed purely a matter of contrast.

Edward Auer and Jerome Lowenthal preserved much of the genial spirit of Mozart’s Sonata in D, K. 448, despite a performance inconsistent in mechanics and ensemble, something the disparity in the tone of the two Steinways emphasized.

Their account of Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn proved more thoroughly integrated. Lowenthal and Auer produced ample waves of sound in the big chorale statements and inflected the dance rhythms nimbly.