Modern Modalities

Camerata Pacifica. At Lotte Lehmann Hall, Music Academy of the
West, Friday, November 17.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Schwyzer

There’s something particularly civilized about attending a
chamber music concert mid afternoon, a privilege Camerata Pacifica
provides in its ongoing lunchtime series — usually abbreviated,
informal versions of the same evening’s performance. Last Friday’s
lunchtime concert actually contained the full program, catering,
perhaps, to those planning to attend the Juilliard String Quartet
that night.

The concert opened with Paul Hindemith’s 1936 Sonata for Flute
and Piano, begun as an airy, tonal exploration in which Jean
Schneider’s rippling arpeggios burbled pleasantly beneath Adrian
Spence’s breezy flute. The work’s closing march contains an urgent,
breathless chase, but for Hindemith, this was relatively gentle.
Schneider and Spence stayed on to play the Enesco, an intense and
tangled work where the piano ranges from dirge-like depths to
dainty delicacy, and the flute from wistful strains to punchy
staccato. The shrill crescendos and diminuendos of the “Presto”
deny the listener resolution, existing in the exciting and vaguely
discomfiting realm of the minor all the way to the rousing
conclusion, when a shift to the major comes as a major relief.