Music Reviews : Polish Program at USC Enjoyable and Pleasant

On paper, a program of Polish music at USC--featuring music by Lutoslawski, Szymanowski, Tadeusz Baird and rarities by Ignace Paderewski--looked both adventuresome and challenging to the ear. In the event, expectations deceived, as the music proved both conservative and in most cases minor.

The Friday night concert in the United University Church, organized by Wanda Wilk, director of the USC Polish Music Reference Center, always remained on an enjoyable and pleasant track, however, even if it didn’t exactly advance the cause of Polish music.

Lutoslawski’s early song-cycle “A Straw Chain,” for soprano, mezzo-soprano and winds, gave the most delight, its 13 brief songs plus overture sounding like Mahler in his cheeriest mode: folksy, bucolic and witty, complete with imitative barnyard sounds. Soprano Yolanda West, mezzo Hellen Quintana and five players from the USC Contemporary Music Ensemble, all led by Donald Crockett, gave it a bright and loving reading.

Paderewski’s once-famous Minuet in G and the turgid virtuosity of the Allegro con fuoco from his Sonata, Opus 21, received able if undemonstrative run-throughs from Lorenzo Sanchez. Three of the same composer’s “Songs to poems by Catulle Mendes” revealed corniness of a very high order, and thus seemed a little too fervently delivered by tenor Nmon Ford-Livene and pianist Alan Smith.

Baird’s brief Divertimento for flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon offered spare rhapsody and bubbly counterpoint without the angst of some of his later work. Four of Szymanowski’s “Kurpian Songs,” impressionistic settings of folk melodies, were given fluid and graceful treatment by West and pianist Mona Lands.

Stanislaw Moniuszko’s “Evening Song” concluded the concert with homey sentiment. The evening seemed quaint--was that the point?