Westside haven for chamber series

Since leaving the Wilshire Ebell Theatre several years ago, the hardy Music Guild has been a gypsy of sorts, trying to find a home for its chamber music series on the Westside. There was always some problem with the venues that it tried: acoustics, the perceived prestige of the facility or the difficulty that the guild’s aging core audience had in getting to the hall at night through increasingly brutal Westside traffic.

This season, its 63rd, the Music Guild is trying out a venue best known as a place for the spoken word: the Geffen Playhouse. Yet from the looks of its first event there Monday night, the series may have hit the bull’s-eye.

The lobby was jammed with people, the makeshift “box office” was overwhelmed by a long line. Inside the theater, I hadn’t seen such a robust turnout at one of these concerts in, well, years.

From a seat on the extreme left side of the Geffen’s ground floor, the sound of the evening’s featured artists, the Trio di Parma, was just a bit dry and veiled, but that’s OK for chamber music; you don’t want things to be too reverberant. From dead center on the floor after intermission, the veil was removed, the sound focused more directly at the listener, with excellent balances. Furthermore, the comfortable, closely packed seats contribute to the sense of intimacy that a chamber music concert is supposed to deliver. The place just might work.

On to the Trio di Parma, a youthful Italy-based threesome that on this occasion stayed resolutely in the piano trio mainstream. They picked Haydn’s best-known trio, No. 25 in G, for starters, highlighted by some very effective rhythmic hesitations in the famous “Gypsy Rondo” finale.

In the Ravel Trio, pianist Alberto Miodini’s mellow Steinway did not overwhelm violinist Ivan Rabaglia and cellist Enrico Bronzi in the busier passages, although one would have liked a heftier bass sound in the left hand during the Passacaglia third movement (the Geffen doesn’t seem to have a strong bass).

It’s hard to miss with the Schubert Opus 100 Trio, another of those wondrous final works in several genres (the Ninth Symphony, the String Quintet, the B-flat Piano Sonata) that pose the tantalizing, never-to-be-answered question: What if he had lived beyond the age of 31?

The Parmese did well by Schubert -- a mostly classical approach, good rhythm, some thrust -- yet the performance did not probe very far into the music’s spiritual depths. The ingredients are there; the performance just needs more simmering.

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Trio di Parma

Where: Plaza del Sol Performing Arts Center, Cal State Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge

When: 8:30 tonight

Price: $35

Contact: (323) 954-0404 or www.themusicguild.org