ECCO essays ambitious program

Now in the 11th year of its sometimes existence, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra arrived for its annual tour with a strong sense of what's necessary to keep this high-spirited bunch in a state of optimal engagement.

The 18-member conductor-less group consists of musicians who have other activities (Time for Three member Nick Kendall, for one) and so aren't about to converge for another Pachelbel's Canon.

Friday's concert at the Independence Seaport Museum was a tortured but singular program that fully tapped the group's resources but was not ideal for workweek-weary subscribers of the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.

Beethoven's huge, crazed Grosse Fuge was the tip-off: Nobody cracks this Icarusian product of the composer's detached-from-practicality late period that is perhaps best read on the pages of its score than actually heard. The passionate, vigilant ECCO performance was better than most that I have heard. But the greater feat was Schoenberg's Suite in G major.

Though written deep into the composer's development of the 12-tone system of composition, the suite was created right after the Austrian Jewish composer fled the rise of Nazism and settled in the United States. Originally meant for student orchestras, the piece tries to return to tonal realms of composition Schoenberg practiced decades previously. But he could not really go home again. Most sections start and end with a certain amount of genteel composure. But the music keeps making hairpin turns into more atonal terrains, like an inescapable memory of what he left behind or a premonition of what was to come. Imagine Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings with some interior monster bursting out from within. The audible strain in the ECCO performance was arguably part of this tough piece, which (like the Grosse Fuge) should not sound tidy.

After experiencing all of that, Dvorak's Serenade in E major (Op. 22) was thin soup. Like many lesser Dvorak pieces, it has a few good movements. The rest simply get the job done. But there was no autopilot in Geminiani's "La Follia" Variations in a marvelously outrageous arrangement by ECCO's Michi Wiancko featuring various percussive effects, including flamencolike foot stomping.

The piece is featured on ECCO's new disc (on the eOne label), though the major points of interest are Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings (for real) and the Shostakovich Chamber Symphony showing the group's considerable collective intelligence amid beautifully buffed surfaces.

Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.