Music Reviews : Previn and Colleagues Play Milhaud at Gindi

The anticipated high point of Monday’s concert in Gindi Auditorium by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Chamber Music Society was a performance by pianist Andre Previn and a string quartet from the orchestra of an arrangement by Milhaud of his “La Creation du monde” (1922) for jazz band.

In this chamber version, the composer asks the piano not only to be itself but to deputize for saxophone, clarinet, trumpet and percussion. Previn personified the one-man band magnificently, playing with optimum flexibility, strength and bluesy suggestiveness. His cooperative colleagues were violinists Judith Mass and Franklyn D’Antonio, violist D. A. Hikawa and cellist Peter Snyder.

Still, the piece is not only a reduction but a gentrified diminution, lacking above all the jagged, jamming blare which characterizes the magnificent original.

Thus, the most substance in this French program was provided by Debussy’s magical Sonata for flute, viola and harp, projected with elegance of tone and a strong rhythmic profile that, happily, did not preclude an air of mystery, by flutist Anne Diener Giles, violist Richard Elegino and harpist Lou Anne Neill.

In addition, the evening offered the frisky, frothy, Frenchy Wind Quintet by the aptly named Jean Francaix, a pushy exercise in Gallic whimsy that you wish would go away far earlier than it does. The 1948 composition was fleetly executed by an ensemble comprising flutist Giles, oboist David Weiss, clarinetist Lorin Levee, bassoonist David Breidenthal and hornist Robert Watt.

Debussy’s Sonata for violin and piano, in a businesslike reading by Rochelle Abramson and Zita Carno, opened the program.