Dolce Suono's Mahler/Schoenberg festival

Dolce Suono's last outing of the season can best be described as a pair of jewels surrounded by an unusually attractive setting.

The biggest jewel was a performance of the chamber version of Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer that featured one of the Met's newest stars, the bass-baritone Eric Owens.

Owens has steadily mounted the career ladder with performances in operas like John Adams's Doctor Atomic, and he recently jumped a few more rungs when he sang Alberich, the dwarf lord in Wagner's Das Rheingold. The New Yorker reviewer called his performance "the chief glory" of the Met's production—an accolade that shouldn't surprise most of the Philadelphians who've enjoyed his appearances on our humble provincial stages ever since he studied voice at Curtis.

This was the first concert in an enterprise that Dolce Suono's live-wire founder, flutist Mimi Stillman, has dubbed the "Mahler 100/Schoenberg 60 Project": a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Mahler's death and the 60th of Arnold Schoenberg's. Songs of a Wayfarer made a perfect centerpiece, since it's Schoenberg's scaled-down arrangement of Mahler's original orchestral version.

Owens at his best

This was probably the best live performance of this piece anyone will ever hear. Owens seemed to experience some minor problems, judging by his need to engage in occasional dabs with a handkerchief, but his not quite best proves convincingly that he deserves his accumulated acclaim. Owens never sounds strained, and he maintains power and authority without sacrificing flexibility and nuance.

What's more, Owens was supported by musicians who provided an accompaniment worthy of his work. Mimi Stillman possesses a formidable talent for recruiting first-class local musicians, and on this occasion she assembled one of Dolce Suono's best lineups.

The ensemble included the Philadelphia Orchestra's First associate concert master, violinist Juliette Kang; Dolce Suono regulars like cellist Yumi Kendall and violist Burchard Tang; less familiar, but equally talented figures like percussionist Gabe Globus-Hoenich and clarinetist Gi Lee; and violinist Noah Geller, a newcomer to the Philadelphia Orchestra who is rapidly becoming a welcome voice at local chamber concerts.

When every stroke counts

The other jewel was Schoenberg's Opus 19, Six Little Piano Pieces. Schoenberg's mini-suite presents six short pieces— each about one minute in length— that create a spectrum of moods and styles, and the pianist Charles Abramovic made every stroke count.

For the setting for these two gems, Mimi Stillman asked five composers to write new pieces that met two requirements: They had to be related to Mahler and Schoenberg in some way, and they had to be composed for an augmented "Pierrot Ensemble."

The Pierrot Ensemble is an instrumental quintet Schoenberg employed in Pierrot Lunaire, his groundbreaking 1912 song cycle. Its basic constituents are flute, clarinet, violin and piano, with the musicians doubling on alternate instruments, such as the piccolo and the viola. It's become a popular medium with modern composers, who frequently augment it with percussion and voice.

Clever retro ploy

Composer Fang Man responded to the challenge with a clever retro ploy. Where Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde sets German translations of classic Chinese poems, Fang Man reversed the East-West transformation and set the original Chinese version of one of the poems, in the process giving Eric Owens his first opportunity to sing in Chinese.

The Pulitzer Prize composer Steven Stuckey, on the other hand, chose a poem by Mahler's favorite poet (Friedrich Ruckert) that Mahler didn't set to music, even though more than 60 other composers (including Nietzsche) have done so.

The other composers took equally distinctive approaches to the assignment. Steven Mackey provided the evening's comic relief by adding music to a sarcastic letter that Mahler wrote to an impresario who wanted to reduce the rehearsal time scheduled for one of his works.

David Ludwig chose a poem on eternity from one of Mahler's major sources— the German folk poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn— and set it, as Mahler might have, with a straightforward vocal line surrounded by instrumental music that evoked a very Mahlerian mood.

The Greek composer Stratis Minakakis penned the only purely instrumental work in the group, treating themes from Mahler and Schoenberg with an impressionistic style that sometimes reminded me of George Crumb's moodier contributions.

Un-Buddhist flute

The five pieces all included their share of musical pleasures, such as Fang Man's passionate, very un-Buddhist use of flute and gongs. Stuckey's setting of a poem on childhood brought the evening to a perfect close, with a final lovely blend of voices and instruments, led by the flute and accented with bell-like cymbals.

"Mahler 100/Schoeberg 60" could have been a routine exercise in building a concert around a commemorative date. Instead, Mimi Stillman combined a new music mini-festival with memorable performances of two established works— and demonstrated, once again, that her talent for creating fascinating programs rivals her abilities as a flutist.