A key to the future vitality of classical music in Houston will be the small ensembles created by residents and former students looking for outlets for their art.
  Maggini, a (largely) string ensemble founded by violinist Adam LaMotte and conductor Marlon Chen, both longtime Houstonians and graduates of Houston arts programs, has been testing the waters for a couple of years.
  Next season, Maggini launches its first subscription series with three events in the Hobby Center's Zilkha Hall. Saturday's amply attended concert should have won it more fans.
  Titled Voices of Angels, the program illustrated the delicate programmatic balance LaMotte and Chen hold as their ideal.
  The first half moved carefully from movie music to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings.
  Soprano Tracy Rhodus was the wordless soloist in Titolo from Ennio Morricone's Once Upon a Time in the West and returned for well-sung art songs of Barber (Sure on the shining light) and Fauré (The roses of Ispahan, in French).
  Pianist Cristina Perotti Smith added elegance to the slow movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 (the Elvira Madigan theme). Oboist Nicholas Masterson impressed with gorgeous soft high notes in a Suite from Morricone's The Mission (arranged, like much of the music on the first half, by Maggini members).
  Barber's Adagio was the most substantial piece on that portion and the Maggini's strings played it with generally well-honed and svelte musicianship. Chen didn't press the musicians to play too intensely, producing both a better sound but more muted interpretation.
  Aaron Copland's ballet Appalachian Spring, in the original version for woodwinds, strings and piano, followed intermission.
  Chen and his ensemble unfolded the familiar tale with charm and grace. Playing was a bit more ragged - the lowest strings weaker than the rest - but performance sustained the relaxed, engaging spirit of the evening.

  Maggini, a new string ensemble headed by present and former Rice University musicians, gave the accessibility movement a boost in its Houston debut Thursday.
  All arts groups wring hands over how to get more people to their events. Conductor Marlon Chen and violinist Adam LaMotte, the music director and artistic director, respectively, offered an imaginative option at Rice University's Stude Concert Hall: an immediately likeable program that never pandered, plus a catered post-concert reception.
  The evening got off to an ultra-familiar spurt: Mozart's string serenade Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music).
  Through his visually personable conducting, Chen added zip to energetic passages but gave players the freedom for more flexible phrasing during introspective music. A highlight was the tense, surging energy during the minor key section of the second movement, Romanza.
  Maggini's modern-instrument sound was full yet pliable throughout the evening. The players brought strong personality to their work.
  Schubert's Quartettsatz (Quartet Movement), D. 703, then took the program in a more dramatic direction. LaMotte's effective arrangement of the string quartet gave Chen and the musicians a chance to expand the range of intensity and expressiveness heard in Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
 In Fratres, by the Estonian mystic composer Arvo Pärt, that color came from simple knocks on percussion instruments. The fatelike gestures periodically interrupted the piece's theme: a slow, eerie chordal theme moving over a musical drone. The intrusions gave effective form to the long, drawn-out idea. The performance was beautiful.
  Chen left the musicians on their own for Francesco Geminiani's Variations on La Folia after Corelli.
  LaMotte and cellist William Skeen led the bright, charged and entertaining variations in a performance that showed virtuosity and musicality as equal partners.
  Music from The Lord of the Rings is starting to make the rounds of classical music events, and it closed out the evening.
  Adding soprano, horns and percussion to Maggini's strings, LaMotte arranged two pieces from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
  Soprano Tracy Rhodus sang Into the West with ample simplicity and appropriate style. The Return of the King was pure Hollywood movie music - smooth, soothing, but vapid after more than a couple of minutes.
  A quick peek at the reception on the way to my car revealed hors d'oeuvres, wines and cloth-covered tables waiting to cap off an entertaining evening.

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