MUSIC REVIEW : Chamber Society Premieres Krenek Works

The pleasures of Martin Haselbock’s Southwest Chamber Music Society recital, Sunday afternoon at the First United Methodist Church in Pasadena, began with a tight, premiere-laden program. The Viennese organist offered the U.S. premieres of some major, late Krenek duos, and the putative first local performance of some Schoenberg snippets.

Krenek labeled his big, characteristically craggy 1979 duo for violin and organ simply “Opus 231.” From an almost whimsical beginning, the formally rounded piece developes a recurrent, dramatic motive in a freely atonal dialogue that moves from simple call-and-response paraphrases to complex deconstructions.

Not surprisingly, it presents sharp challenges to the ensemble instincts of the performers, particularly in the integration of the crabbed, volatile statements of the violin into the organ framework. Haselbock and Peter Marsh delivered it authoritatively, with the rich, sturdy sound of Marsh seldom lost in the dense organ tapestry.

Krenek’s “Opus 239,” from 1989 for horn and organ, takes up where the earlier duo leaves off, even to similar thematic gestures. There is a greater emphasis on coloristic permutations, melding the two wind instruments into vivid new sounds, played with power and grace by Haselbock and Jeff von der Schmidt.

The large, first movement excerpt from an organ sonata that Schoenberg began in 1941 makes a strong concert entry in its own right, although its short Allegretto companion only muddles the impression.

The organist also played Krenek’s stunningly dramatic, virtuosic “Four Winds” Suite with imposing control of the malleable resources of the resident Skinner-Rosales instrument.

In addition to his organ posts in Vienna, Haselbock is conductor of the Wiener Akademie, a period instrument band with which he has done much Mozart. Inevitably--in this Mozart year--but pertinently, the mechanical organ pieces filled the interstices of the program, brisk and unsentimental in Haselbock’s care.