Spring Wind Quintet, clockwise from left: Susan McGinn, J. Scott Janusch, James Moffitt, Martha Schweitzer and Jonathan Parrish. Floyd Honda photo

SPRING WIND QUINTET, CHAMBER MUSIC HAWAII • 7:30 p.m. Monday, Doris Duke Theatre, Honolulu Academy of Arts • $20 general, $15 seniors, free for K-12 students • 524-0815, ext. 245

The program presented Monday at Windward Community College's Paliku Theatre bodes well for the tour, and for the repeat performance scheduled for Monday at the Doris Duke Theatre. It was terrific — varied, charming and well-played throughout.

Quintet musicians — Susan McGinn (flute), James Moffitt (clarinet), J. Scott Janusch (oboe, English horn), Marsha Schweitz-er (bassoon), and Jonathan Parrish (French horn), all of the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra — formed a cohesive ensemble, moving smoothly as a unit through changing tempos and reacting to one another with sensitivity, while maintaining their distinctive voices as soloists. Especially appealing was the way in which the quintet's voices blended, even their individual tone colors matching.

Monday's ambitious program opened each half with exceptionally fine works: Gyorgy Ligeti's "Six Bagatelles," with its catchy rhythms and lively interplay between instruments, and Paquito D'Rivera's delightful "Aires Tropicales" (Tropical Dances). The two provided the concert's main substance as well as its high points: Each movement proved a gem. Excellent works, excellent performance.

Even Hindemith's "Kleine Kammermusik fur funf Blaser" (Small Chamber Work for Five Winds), a masterwork, paled somewhat beside Ligeti's more compelling voice but still proved engaging. Its syncopated finale and second-movement waltz were particularly charming.

At the center of the Hindemith, philosophically as well as structurally, lies a movement labeled "Ruhig und einfach" ("Peacefully and simply"), an enduring Germanic ideal that somehow escaped virtually all German composers in the first half of the 20th century. Hindemith managed it better than most, but his simplicity remains nonetheless complex, and his peace resides in melancholy shadow. The quintet's reading of it was lovely, unfolding with gentle clarity.

Before the final set of pieces, whose titles were not listed on the program, there was a long pause. So long, in fact, that a few decided the concert was over and left. When the quintet returned, they were wearing aloha shirts and launched into a series of Hawaiian standards, arranged for wind quintet by Schweitzer and her late husband, Kenji Otani.

In her introduction, Schweitzer said that while on tour, the quintet was "hoping to spread Hawaiian music and history." To that end and in conjunction with Aaron Mahi, former bandmaster of the Royal Hawaiian Band, the quintet prepared a separate program for that set, which Schweitzer termed "classical Hawaiian music."

Although the program was not generally available at Monday's concert, it will be when the concert repeats this coming Monday at the Doris Duke Auditorium.

Selections, which included "Lili'u E," the "Kamehameha Waltz," "Ke Kali Nei Au" (the Hawaiian Wedding Song), "Huki March," and "Aloha 'Oe," were almost comical in their familiarity because one so rarely hears Hawaiian music performed by a wind quintet. After the initial surprise, the effect was charming. After all, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these pieces were likely performed by a wide variety of ensembles, depending on who and what was available.