The Connections Chamber Music Series seems even better this year. The brainchild of violinist Bridget Dolkas and Matthew Tommasini, this North County chamber music series distinguishes itself through its intriguing mixes of tried and true with challenging and new.

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Saturday’s program at the Encinitas Library featured music by Robert Schumann and William Bolcom. The California Quartet and pianist Timothy Durkovic all returned from last season, but there was one important change—a rental piano was used instead of the sonically challenged old baby grand in the Encinitas Library.

The rental was a baby grand, a Kawai, and while it’s tone was sharper and cleaner in the mid to high registers, that reduced soundboard length did compromise the very low notes on the instrument. But these weak and out of tune bass notes were the only blemishes on an otherwise exemplary program.

The second half was devoted to Schumann’s Piano Quintet, the first masterpiece for that combination of instruments (piano + string quartet). Timothy Durkovic played the piano with a splendid combination of fervor and precision which was perfectly suited to Schumann’s work. The California Quartet (Bridget Dolkas, 1^st violin; Jeanne Skrocki, 2^nd violin; Pam Jacobson, viola;, and Lars Hoefs, cello) matched Durkovic’s zeal and clarity for this music.

Schumann paved the way for later composers of piano quintets by setting up the piano and the string quartet as equal but separate partners. Durkovic was an impressive keyboardist, getting the best sound possible from a piano that was at least 12 inches short of an ideal length. Rapid passagework was sounded cleanly, but when it was more accompanimental to important motives in the strings, Durkovic dropped back without compromising his part. The California Quartet was bright and forceful in the first movement, spooky in the slow movement (and lyrical in the second theme of the movement—one of the loveliest melodies in all of 19^th-century chamber music), driving and triumphant in the Scherzo.

Schumann’s Quintet was a late replacement for the Shostakovich Piano Quintet, a fortuitous substitution, not only because Schumann’s work is better. William Bolcom has written that his Piano Quintet is based on 19^th century models like Schumann and Brahms. You might not guess that listening to Bolcom’s Quintet. Bolcom is probably best known for bringing ragtime and popular music styles into the concert hall, with unabashedly hummable melodies. However, Bolcom’s Quintet is in his thornier idiom—it’s unlikely many audience members will leave the concert whistling any tunes from it.

Nevertheless, in its textures—piano and string quartet as opposing parties who occasionally come together to support each other—the influence of Schumann is more apparent. The upward-rising, relentless scalar passages of the 4^th movement of Bolcom’s work (he calls it a “samba”) recall the frenetic upward scales in the 3^rd movement of Schumann’s Quintet. Bolcom takes those large-scale 19^th century forms, and fills them with 21st century materials.

Although Bolcom’s harmonies are rather chromatic, there’s always a sense of tonality lurking beneath the dissonances. Melodically, the motives which are imitated and repeated could be plainly harmonized, but the way Bolcom combines them and chromatically shifts them up or down makes the whole sonority seem more dissonant than the individual lines really are.

In the first movement, the strings spin a polyphonic eighth note texture from a 5-note motive whose first 4 notes are simply a minor chord—but the fifth note ends up outside the minor triad, yanking that brief tonality out from under us. The piano, in contrast, has a descending chromatic line, or fires off rippling octaves or alternating chords that tumble down the piano. The California Quartet had great intonation and control in this music, and Durkovic played his flurries appropriately.

The second movement begins slowly as a nocturne or lullaby, a gently rocking music that again shifts tonalities; the middle section consists of rapid-fire hand-offs of flickering eighth notes back and forth from piano to string quartet.

The third movement, marked lamentation, is indeed a cry of pain, but it takes the form of a passacaglia—a melody which repeats, over and over, with minor modifications. The movement begins forcefully, and gradually dies down, leading into the “samba” of the fourth movement. Here constantly ascending scales in the strings are juxtaposed against dissonant syncopated figures in the piano ; over the course of this movement, the piano picks up those energetic rising scales, while the strings pound out the dance rhythms. After a dizzy increase in tempo, the work lurches to a halt with slow chords that interrupt the scales several times until the slow held chords prevail.

Earlier in the week the musicians went up to USC, where Bolcom was in residence, to be coached on this work. They played it with a conviction and passion that any composer would envy, and one should think that it was also played with authority, being guided by the music’s creator.

Graceful Ghost is probably Bill Bolcom’s best known work. A beautifully mournful ragtime piece in a minor key, Bolcom has arranged it for many different configurations. Dolkas and Durkovic performed the violin and piano version, in which Bolcom wrote out variations on the original material, making it an expansion of the original work. It was a sweet dessert to top off the serious matters of the Piano Quintet.

The concert opened with Schumann’s Fantasy Pieces, op. 73. Although originally composed for clarinet and piano, other instruments, such as the cello, have claimed this charming work for their own. Lars Hoefs bowed away magnificently, sounding out the bold melodies, capturing the tenderness and the delicate and quick passagework, and fearleslly navigating the furious runs. His efforts were matched by the sensitive accompanying of Durkovic.

For a copy of the program, click here.

(Note: The movement indications for Schumann’s Piano Quintet are, oddly enough, for Hindemith’s 4^th String Quartet instead.)

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