MUSIC REVIEWS : Chamber Rarities by Elgar and Kodaly

The fourth concert in this year’s Chamber Music/LA Festival offered the opportunity to hear a couple of genuine rarities of the repertory, works included on the program Wednesday at the Japan America Theatre for more than novelty’s sake.

Why Elgar’s Piano Quintet in A minor, Opus 84, should be such a stranger is something of an enigma, unless we chalk it up to the fact that it’s dedicated to a music critic (the great Ernest Newman). Written in 1918-19, the work has plenty of color--foreboding, nostalgic, misterioso --to recommend it, partially inspired as it was by the composer’s visit to a tangle of lightning-scarred trees, said to be the remains of Spanish monks struck while celebrating a Black Mass.

The performance--enlisting violinists Paul Rosenthal and Christiaan Bor, violist Marcus Thompson, cellist Jeffrey Solow and pianist Edward Auer--captured the music’s grotesque darknesses perfectly, and rose easily to its many brighter and grander moments. Auer seemed to guide the intensity of the work, its ebb and flow, light and shadow, steadily toward strongly felt, resplendent climaxes.

Kodaly’s Serenade for Two Violins and Viola, Opus 12, also no repertory staple, opened the concert. Bor, Thompson and violinist Yukiko Kamei provided this charming, beautifully crafted, Hungarian-tinged score with an elegant and pliant reading.

Auer, Solow and clarinetist Charles Neidich brought finesse and grace and delicate sensitivity to the more familiar strains of Brahms’ Clarinet Trio, Opus 114, each of them insinuating in the background, then stepping forward with their lines in an effortless and engaging fashion.