MUSIC REVIEW : The Real Schickele Stands Up in Brentwood

Musical North America has known about composer Peter Schickele almost as long as it has known about his flamboyant alter ego, P.D.Q. Bach. But opportunities to hear, much less to savor, Schickele’s compositions have been relatively rare. At least for us on the West Coast.

Through serendipity and probably a lot of advance planning, one of those opportunities fell to the Westside Tuesday night, just 24 hours after Schickele’s official farewell to P.D.Q.’s touring days in Pasadena.

It was an entire evening of Schickeliana, including his complete string quartets, which number three, as played by the splendidly accomplished, Southern California-resident, Armadillo Quartet, plus friends. And it became an occasion of many humors, but no jokes.

Born in Iowa in 1935, Schickele writes mainstream music not unlike--though, some would say, distinct from--that of certain of his contemporaries, writers like David del Tredici, John Corigliano and Philip Glass.

As the three string quartets attest in varying degrees, it is music not minimalist and not neo-Romantic, but incorporating elements of both movements, and clearly influenced by pop trends, of the 1940s and ‘50s in particular.

Unabashedly but not slavishly tonal, this music strikes the listener first with its attractiveness, its idiomatic use of instruments--except for piano, an ingredient in the fourth work on the program--and the ease of its craft.

Most impressive in this generous agenda was the cogent, tightly constructed and handsome Third Quartet (1988), a work of sparse but effective emotionalism and subtle coloration subtitled, “The Four Seasons.” In the Little Theater at Mount St. Mary’s College in Brentwood, it received a careful and resonant reading from the Armadillo ensemble: violinists Barry Socher and Steven Scharf, violist Raymond Tischer and cellist Armen Ksajikian.

With similar leanness of statement and strong musical feelings, the Second Quartet also succeeds at saying much cogently, while at times challenging the players with fistfuls of notes (in the Scherzo). Perhaps gifted analysts can tell what makes this music sound “American”; some listeners will just accept and enjoy its character.

What gives the First Quartet, called “American Dreams,” its character Schickele himself described in witty and probing spoken program notes before the performance. In any case, this basically conservative, very engaging work, longest of the three quartets, needs no explanations; its pleasures are clear, perhaps even obvious.

Ending the program, Schickele, with fellow-pianist Guy Hallman, participated in “Music for an Evening,” a former party-piece for quartet and four-handed piano, elevated to concert status in 1982. After the quartets, this work seemed merely frothy and superficial.