Local meteorologists would do well to consult the schedule for the Mainly Mozart Spotlight Series this year. Every time there’s a Spotlight Series concert at the Neurosciences Institute, it rains.

Saturday was no exception. Downpours made a trip to the Neurosciences Institute scarier, delayed the concert, and threatened the tuning for string instruments. Considerable time between movements was spent by Ronald Thomas and Arnaud Sussmann keeping their cello and violin respectively in tune. However, audience member or musician, if you take the appropriate precautions, everything will work out fine, and that’s exactly what happened Saturday evening. While locals may grumble about the precipitation, New Yorker Cynthia Phelps expressed her gratitude and joy at being in Southern California, where she did not have to shovel snow (East Coasters are certainly working overtime in that department this year, aren’t they?)

Mainly Mozart.

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Cynthia Phelps is no stranger to San Diego. Old timers will remember that brief period at the end of the San Diego Symphony’s Atherton years when Phelps was principal violist. Since then, she’s returned to San Diego many times (in between her gigs as principal violist for the New York Philharmonic), and has always enchanted audiences with her superlative playing and warm stage presence. Her husband, cellist Ronald Thomas, and her accompanist this weekend, Anton Nels, have also brought local audiences many years of pleasant listening through their Mainly Mozart appearances.

There was a new ingredient to the Spotlight Series, and that was violinist Arnaud Sussmann. He’s young enough to be the son of any of his onstage partners, but if you closed your eyes, you would have sworn that a seasoned chamber music veteran was in his chair. His technique was wonderful (although at times during passages where his vibrato was kept to a minimum, his tone sounded a little pinched), his understanding of phrasing was excellent, and his ensemble work was generally flawless.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonata no. 1 for Viola da Gamba and Harpischord, BWV 1027, opened the program. The gamba was the primary bass instrument of the baroque era and today a gamba part, when not performed on the actual instrument, is usually taken by cello. However, the range of Bach’s first Sonata is all in the upper register, making it easily transferable to viola (except for a few lower pitches which need to be transposed up an octave), and it made a delightful vehicle for Phelps’s musicianship. Anton Nels played the harpsichord part on piano, using a delicate but precise touch and a restrained dynamic range. Bach ingeniously puts the gamba part in between the left and right hands of the keyboardist, and the interplay of all three lines makes the work more of a trio than a duo.

No doubt there are early music purists who sniff at the idea of performing Bach on different instruments than those for which the master conceived his composition, but the truth about Bach is that for much of his music, the melodies and counterpoint are so wonderful that they adapt easily to other instruments with similar ranges. Wendy Carlos made a fortune playing Bach’s music on purely electronic instruments, and if listeners in the 1960s were at first attracted to the new sounds of the Moog synthesizer, they replayed Switched-On Bach because of Johann Sebastian’s melodic and contrapuntal invention.

On such a rainy night, the sunshine of Mozart’s Piano Trio no. 4 in E major, K. 524 was welcome. Sussmann, like his colleagues Thomas and Nel, was no early music pedant, bringing a bit of rubato and romanticism to his performance, but never veering too far from the composer’s intentions. Thomas is a splendid cellist, with admirable intonation and a warmth of tone. Mozart’s piano trios are not his most interesting chamber music, perhaps because they are more straightforward, with less exciting detours than his other works. If it is possible to be pleasant to a fault, that might describe K. 524. Regardless, Sussmann, Thomas, and Nel gave their full concentration, and if a few patrons nodded off during the performance, blame it on the composer, not the performers.

Following intermission (and free wine and/or water, a nice extra on this year’s Spotlight Series!), all four musicians assembled for a heart-tugging, dramatic performance of Schumann’s Piano Quartet, a brilliant work given its proper due by these terrific musicians. Schumann had a tremendous gift for melody, but you wouldn’t know it if you weren’t familiar with his solo piano music or his songs. The shadow of Beethoven, which intimidated so many 19th century composers, seems to hang over Schumann’s chamber music, with its relentless rhythmic motifs and emphasis on architecture. However, the slow third movement of the Quartet features one of Schumann’s sublime melodic creations, a heart-on-the-sleeve tune given a rendition individually by all three strings. Here Thomas had a real chance to display his beautiful tone, as did Phelps later on in the movement. Throughout the Quartet, Nel got to cut loose and indulge in a big cantabile tone and virtuosic passagework, opportunities not really granted to him on the first half, and he made the most of them.

This was another fine evening in the 2010 Spotlight Series, which has proven to be reliably excellent in the caliber of performers featured, if not always matched in greatness by their repertory. Conrad Prebys Hall at UCSD has justly gained critical attention, but the Neurosciences Institute is still one of the finest halls in Southern California in which to hear chamber music. The final two installments of the Spotlight Series are eagerly anticipated by this listener.

For a copy of the program, click here.