SAN DIEGO STORY

BY KEN HERMAN

I admired the many engaging flourishes and rigorously imaginative duo writing in Komschlies’s “Steam,” a four-movement suite for clarinet and flute performed with crisp discipline by Beth Ross Buckley and Renk. The composer displayed the wit and drive of J. S. Bach’s two-part inventions without depending on the easy cliches of any of the ubiquitous neo-Baroque styles of the last century. If only Paul Hindemith’s numerous dry-as-dust instrumental sonatas exhibited Komschlies’s ingratiating allure.