Through its ever-interesting programming, Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston led its audience through dualities of two worlds, both imaginary and extremely real (the uneasiness between the two world wars), Sunday at the First Church Boston. Artistic director and flutist Deborah Boldin and her players straddled many lines of music, from wind quintet to jazz-inspired piano quintet to music for a pianist who lost his right arm in the Great War.

Boldin, oboist Nancy Dimock, clarinetist Gary Gorcyca, bassoonist Nik Hooks, and hornist Hazel Dean Davis opened with Pavel Haas’s Wind Quintet, Op. 10.  Thought lost during the Second World War (the Nazis destroyed many copies of the Czech Jew’s music; Lubomir Peduzzi, one of Haas’s former students, found a full copy in the Moravian Museum in 1991), the quintet snaked its way through a series of personal influences for Haas, Moravian folk music mixed with Jewish liturgical music and topped off with a rhythmic complexity indicative of his teacher Leoš Janáček. In many ways, it’s surprising to this reviewer that this wind quintet is not technically part of the core Chameleon Arts Ensemble; several of the movements, especially the “Preludio” and “Epilogo,” made it seem like the quintet had played together for years. Duets between Boldin and Dimock on the “Preludio,” Boldin and Gorcyca as well as Boldin and Davis in the “Praghicra,” and Gorcyca and Dimock in the “Epilogo” also demonstrated how well each member played off each other; every dialogue between instruments showed ease. Hooks has many times to shine in laying down ostinato bass lines in the third and fourth movements, strong and steadfast for the rest of the ensemble to bounce off of. In rendering the Haas to an extremely high level, their ensemble showed the raw power and intricacies of the wind quintet form that tends to get elicit lighter fluff in a lesser composers’ hands.

Alban Berg’s trio (violin/clarinet/piano) reduction of the Adagio from his Chamber Symphony followed suit, seeing the return of Gorcyca and joined by violinist Francesca dePasquale and pianist Vivian Chang-Freiheit. In the reduction, Berg carried over the most important aspects of the expansive and broad original orchestration as well as possible, creating a type of hybrid between the expansive color palette of the original and the immediacy of the trio’s instrumentation. This worked to the ensemble’s advantage; dePasquale forcefully led the trio, performing in a very animated and soloistic manner. Much of the piece could be heard as a dialogue between dePasquale and Chang-Freiheit, as Chang-Freiheit maneuvered her multiple roles with delightful care. One moment she was playing harmonies to support the string and wind, the next she was overtaking them in a lyrical but dark melody. Gorcyca in many ways had considerably less to do than the other two, but he did his job admirably, maintaining the supporting role in the ensemble, which was far more important than expected: the way Berg composed the trio, each member is a true equal, rather than a pyramid of one voice building on top of each other. Each had to take his or her turn in kind and pull back into the texture as required, making the delicate change of roles successfully apparent; Gorcyca shined the most as a true team player.

Darius Milhaud reduced his orchestral ballet piece La creation du monde, Op. 81 into a b version for piano quintet. Claire Bourg, dePasquale, violist Scott Woolweaver, cellist Sarah Rommel, and Chang-Freheit shifted the mood from intensely chromatic late Romantic music to French jazz. Clearly Milhaud, in addition to understanding early traditional jazz, became familiar with the developing music of George Gershwin and in particular An American in Paris, as echoes of the latter piece resounded in the mid-1930s concert jazz styled piece. Famous for its opening with an alto saxophone melody, Milhaud made a slight misstep in having, of all instruments, the piano, offer the opening melody of the Prelude in a single line while the strings supported it; honestly, this choice is baffling, as it leaves an otherwise full-sounding melody pallid in comparison to the warm strings cradling it. Past that point, however, everything else Milhaud wrote worked admirably, taking the expanse of the orchestra and paring it down, like Berg, to its bare essentials while still maintain the overall character of the original idea. Often, especially in the Prelude, the trios became the best part, with Bourg/Rommel/Chang-Freheit pulling the standard piano trio out of the quintet and power through melodies while Woolweaver/Rommel/Chang-Freiheit inverted the trio, the strings cupping the piano in high melodic fragments. Some of the biggest highlights: Rommel became a walking bass a la The Ink Spots in the fourth movement Scherzo; Woolweaver became the third violin for a pairing of the two violins and viola meticulously blended; Bourg soared over the ensemble with a strong melody in the Final; Woolweaver and Chang-Freiheit imitated a small combo duet before the rest of the strings opened their material in a warm ending. Past an opening stumble, it could be hard to believe this originally was an orchestral work.

George Rochberg’s Between Two Worlds (Ukiyo-e III) for flute and piano heralded the return from intermission. Reflecting on a Japanese art style that juxtapose different emotional states in one alongside Rochberg’s experiences in the starting endless war-covered Middle East (Rochberg composed this piece in 1982, directly in the middle of the Soviet-Afghan War), Boldin returned with pianist Mika Sasaki on a deeply personal journey. Rochberg famously abandoned academic serialism for more tonal composition practices, but in Between Two Worlds (Ukiyo-e III), we get to see a mix of modernity and tonality all wrapped in one dissonant bundle. As the other works of the evening were more chromatic without being extremely dissonant, we welcomed the change. We very much enjoyed the breadth of Boldin’s tone colors, frequently shifting phrase to phrase between a dark warmth and a brightness that never rang shrill. Knowing that most of several movements lived in the lowest and breathiest register of the flute (often sitting on the low C, lowest note of the flute unless one happens to have a B joint), Boldin showed how she can overcome the inherent thinness of the flute and project into the hall with finesse and a deep sense of musicality. Sasaki had mostly to support Boldin, but she had could very pliantly duet in both iterations of “Night Music,” expanding and elaborating on Boldin’s active stasis gestures with both hands and the extended range of the piano. Suffice to say, this reviewer wants to hear Boldin and Sasaki in a dedicated solo recital.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold ended the evening with the described-as-rare-yet-not-so-rare-as-one-imagines Suite for two violins, cello, and piano left-hand, Op. 23 (Chameleon did in in 2012 and NEC in 2019). Epic in its own right, both in scale and length, massive and intricate at nearly 40 minutes in length, it proved taxing to players and listeners. Lots of ideas floated in and out among the different instruments echoing Mahler’s grandiose style, and the musicians had to frequently stop between movements and retune, indicating that the music had been taking a toll on their intonation; the audience, believing the third movement to be the last, let out an enthusiastic applause only to be met with sheepish smiles and waves from the stage. In fact, another 15 or so minutes remained; Sitzfleisch was beginning to wear thin and antsiness became evident. While there is no doubt that Korngold is a master, having nearly single-handedly created the sound of the Hollywood talking film score, perhaps concluding the Suite at the very active third movement (Groteske. Möglich rasch) or removing one work from a nearly 2 ½ -hour concert might have tipped the balance.

Despite those reservations, this reviewer can report that dePasquale, Bourg, Rommel, and Sasaki had scads of remaining energy by the time they reached the epic Rondo-Finale (Variationen). Schnell, heftig. Sasaki’s left-hand achieved almost orchestral sonoroties. Will she undertake the Ravel Concerto for the Left Hand some day? This reviewer hopes so. When Rommel and dePasquale had the chance to solo, everyone could see how well they dug into their respective instruments and ground out intense and passionate music. Interestingly, dePasquale and Bourg often had to double lines at the unison, a choice that often does not happen in chamber music but sounds far more indicative of orchestral section playing. The two ladies matched each other’s tones nearly perfectly. The slightest intonation discrepancy can throw off the sound entirely with two violins in unison.

Like the namesake color-changing lizards, Chameleon players matched themselves to a plethora of ideas, colors, timbres, emotions; for them it seemed as natural as drawing breath. The ensemble’s “How it ends?” takes place the weekend of April 5^th at the First Church of Boston. Should you want a musical roller coaster ride, do attend one of its concerts.

Ian Wiese is an Associate Professor of Ear Training at Berklee College of Music, Music Theory Faculty at New England Conservatory Preparatory School, Artistic Director of the Old Stoughton Musical Society, and full-time composer. In the past, he studied with the late John Heiss, Michael Gandolfi, and Kati Agocs.