Lots of Kindling, but Very Little Fire

The elements of first-rate chamber music were there Thursday night at Irvine Barclay Theatre but failed to ignite, resulting in a concert marked by solid playing but a subtle bad chemistry.

Blame, perhaps, the disparate ingredients: a Hindemith string trio, a solo violin sonata by Bach and a quartet by Smetana. Performances by the Diaz Trio and violin soloist James Buswell were individually strong but lacked the energy needed to synthesize into a satisfying whole.

The concert, sponsored jointly by the Laguna Chamber Music Society and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, was politely received by a good-sized audience that offered no ovations and sought no encores.

The trio is a well-regarded ensemble whose members include the Pittsburgh Symphony’s concertmaster and the Philadelphia Orchestra’s principal violist. Most impressive was cellist Andres Diaz. He was eloquent in the tragic, flowing second movement of Hindemith’s dark and silky String Trio No. 1, and marvelously resonant in the touching, slow movement of Smetana’s Quartet in E minor.

Violist Roberto Diaz also was strong, particularly in the dark solo that opens the quartet. Subtitled “From My Life,” this celebrated piece of musical autobiography by a syphilitic composer plunging toward deafness, lunacy and death was the most effective of the evening.

From the skipping folk tunes to the unexpected high E in the final movement, thought to represent the high pitch Smetana heard in his head as disease took hold, it was a moving performance.

The Trio’s violinist, Andres Cardenes, played with plenty of agile musical energy, but with a thinnish tone that threatened at times to disappear in the mix.

Guest violinist Buswell also was a bit of a disappointment. His rendition of Bach’s Sonata No. 2 for solo violin did not snap into focus until the final allegro. In earlier movements he drifted, often failing to convey the harmonic logic implicit in Bach’s long, complex melodies.

In a last-minute change in the order of performance, the musicians elected to begin with the Hindemith rather than the Bach. While this change may make sense on paper--the Diaz Trio, after all, was the headliner--in the end it hurt the effort by putting the weakest performance in the middle of the program, slowing rather than building critical momentum.