MUSIC REVIEW : Mixed Works Conclude Chamber Group’s Season

Southwest Chamber Music Society has come a long way in its first eight seasons, which ended with twin events over the weekend.

The organization’s pool of splendid Southern California players remains secure--clearly, gifted musicians working in the vineyards of commerce appreciate opportunities to make art as often as possible--its standards high, its programs provocative.

At the first of these two closing concerts, Friday night at Chapman University in Orange (repeated in Pasadena, Saturday), the program offered welcome variety: Halsey Stevens’ String Trio (1959); a group of Purcell songs accompanied by lute and Baroque cello; Brahms’ autumnal but hot-blooded String Quintet, Opus 111.

This agenda achieved its climax, naturally, in Brahms’ ever-wondrous G-major Quintet, given by violinists Peter Marsh and Annie Chalex, violists Jan Karlin and Richard Elegino and cellist Roger Lebow a propulsive yet spacious continuity and bright overview filled out with telling details.

Brahms’ earthy passions and spiritual subtexts infuse all movements of this masterpiece, and these players re-created and integrated both aspects, with brilliant playing all around.

In Stevens’ touching and compact Trio--a work of neo-Classic terseness that the late composer said could be played by either winds or strings--similar strengths were achieved by Marsh, Karlin and Lebow, in an affectionate revival.

Despite a mid-performance string-breaking on James Tyler’s lute and a number of unclarified consonants in soprano Mary Rawcliffe’s enunciation, a quarter-hour of Purcell songs at mid-program nevertheless provided pleasure and contrast between the Stevens and Brahms works.

Robert Tueller was the articulate cellist in these four songs.