Seattle Chamber Players go out on an esoteric limb

For some years now, the admirable musicians of Seattle Chamber Players often have performed in their concerts examples from the esoteric, dryly academic, or frankly experimental genres of musical composition.

Sunday night's concert at Nordstrom Recital Hall was a case in point. Part of the Seattle Symphony's Central Europe Music Festival, it was billed as "After Bartok: What Next?" and SCP chose a narrow spectrum to demonstrate.

The first hour's works were in fragmented style: Quartet to Christian Wolff (2001) for flute, violin, clarinet and cello by Adam Kondor, "Two Poems to Polly" (1998) for a speaking cellist by Peter Eotvos and based on ancient Japanese court music, and "Cascando" (2007) for soprano, clarinet, violin and cello by Agata Zubel (commissioned by SCP and for which Zubel was the singer).

While these works may be fun and challenging to play, they can be tiresome to hear at length. At first listening, which is all the audience gets, this is music with little discernible structure, development, rhythm or theme. Spare and unemotional, it's often just one note on one instrument at a time, and there is no hook to hang comprehension on. It isn't music to enjoy, to be soothed by, to be absorbed in, to make love to, to be excited or energized by. It's hard on an audience expecting to hear something it can relate to, and a little in a concert goes a long way. It was not possible to refer to program notes in the dim light.

There were beautiful moments: clarinetist Laura deLuca's long, expressive solo in the Kondor quartet, the brief pizzicato phrases tenderly played by cellist Joshua Roman in the Eotvos, or the beauty of Zubel's voice in her "Cascanda."

There was more to hold on to in Gyorgy Kurtag's "Hommage a R. Sch." (1990) for clarinet, viola and piano, but the best came in the last two pieces.

Jan Kapr's songs for his young daughter, "Exercises for Gydli" (1967), for soprano, flute and harp, had the audience laughing at nonsensical vocalizing brilliantly performed by Zubel.

Best of all, the world premiere of Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer's "Brettl Trio" for clarinet, violin and piano brought the audience back to a world of understandable music. There was tango, jazz, the feel of Hungarian Gypsy music, and prepared piano effects, all combined in a lively substantive work that was no less sophisticated and imaginative because it was melodic and structured.

Besides deLuca, Seattle Chamber Players includes Mikhail Shmidt, violin, and Paul Taub, flute, with Roman replacing ailing cellist David Sabee. Guests were Zubel, violist Mara Gearman, harpist Valerie Muzzolini and pianist Oksana Ezhokina.