Good things in small packages at Musical Masterworks

Old Lyme - After 18 seasons, it's now clear who's the favorite composer with the Musical Masterworks audience. A set of three short works by the chamber series' founding artistic director, Charles Wadsworth, delighted the audience Saturday night, filling the hall with laughter and heartfelt applause.

Wadsworth's songs - including a song without words for violin and piano - were the centerpiece of a fast-paced, tuneful program Saturday night at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, a concert to be repeated at 3 p.m. today. The musicians included longtime Masterworks favorites soprano Courtney Budd and violinist Chee-Yun, a talented newcomer in flutist Angela Jones-Reus, and program that jumped from Bach to blues, including - gasp! - selected movements from larger works.

We can all thank this program for relieving us of guilt for secret pleasures. We've all been indoctrinated to feel crass when we pop in a disc and skip to our favorite movement, but Masterworks' program was great fun, with the parts adding up to a tasty whole, like a platter full of pastries.

Anchoring what Budd called the "musical chairs" of changing ensembles were the new series artistic director who replaced Wadsworth this season, cellist Edward Arron, and his wife, pianist Jeewon Park.

The program stumbled a bit at the start, with Wadsworth, Chee-Yun, Jones-Reus and Budd performing Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze." After long introductions and delays, Budd sounded in need of a warm-up, and the doubling of the violin over one of the best-known flute obbligatos seemed pointless. Then Budd and Chee-Yun kept up the Bach-like polyphony in Saint-Saëns' "Le Bonheur est chose légère," before Budd thrilled the audience with an emotive, show-stopper performance of Amy Beach's "Chanson d'Amour."

The chairs shuffled, and Chee-Yun and Park performed the slow movement and the finale to Brahms' later Violin Sonata in D Minor. When the spotlight is on her, Chee-Yun seems to turn up the volume, and the very sound of the deep register and sobbing stops of the adagio were thrilling.

Then came two movements of Weber's 1820 Trio in G Minor for Flute, Cello and Piano, with Arron and Park joining Jones-Reus, who proved a fine addition to the Masterworks mix, with a sharp sense of ensemble and effortless long lines.

The second half opened with Wadsworth's songs. The pianist explained he has much in common with many great composers, obscurity and a lack of income, but the songs were short and sweet. Chee-Yun opened with his "Song Without Words," a late-night bluesy swoon, before Budd sang two wordless songs, his "Vocalise" and "Spanish Steps." The latter was a good-natured lark, full of vocal pyrotechnics, a trio section that seemed an homage to one of Wadsworth's favorites, composer Francis Poulenc, and a finale that had Wadsworth backing off from the keyboard to clap in time and stamp his feet.

After a warm reading of Rachmaninoff's "Vocalise" by Arron, the program ended with the last two movements of Paul Scoenfield's 1984 Café Music, a jazz-based piano trio that succeeded on the flash of Chee-Yun and Arron and on Park's mastery of its down and dirty idiom.