MUSIC REVIEW | CAVANI STRING QUARTET

BRAHMS PIECE HIGHLIGHTS PERFORMANCE

Published: Sunday, May 15, 2005

FEATURES - THE ARTS 02E

By Jennifer Hambrick

FOR THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

A season of outstanding Columbus performances by some of the world's best string chamber ensembles went out on a high note.

The Cleveland-based Cavani String Quartet thrilled an exuberant audience Friday in Ohio Wesleyan University's Jemison Auditorium in a concert of string chamber-music classics presented by Chamber Music Columbus and Chamber Music Connection of Worthington. The concert opened Chamber Music Connection's 13th chamber-music festival.

The quartet's musicians -- violinists Annie Fullard and Mari Sato, violist Kirsten Docter and cellist Merry Peckham -- comprise one of today's finest American string ensembles. In its 21 years, the group has won many of the world's top chamber-music awards. Since 1988, it has been quartet-in-residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

The Cavani's rich, homogenous sound served them well in Johannes Brahms' Viola Quintet in G Major , Op. 111, but it was too much of a good thing at times in Mozart's String Quartet in G Major , K. 387. Even in the larger forces of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 , the lush sound and a tendency toward romantic interpretation occasionally overburdened the simplicity of line.

The Mozart performance, while beautiful to hear, might have benefited from a more-subtle interpretation. The octaves in the second movement, "Trio,'' had a menacing feel more at home in Beethoven's quartets than in Mozart's.

The rhythmic liberties taken in the third movement, "Andante Cantabile,'' combined with a glowing but somewhat-too-hefty (for Mozart) sound, resulted in a movement comprised of beautiful moments but lacking large-scale direction.

Seven other musicians, including Delaware native and former Cavani violist Erika Eckert, joined the Cavani for a jubilant performance of Bach's third Brandenburg Concerto . The group's round sound at the beginning of the first movement, "Allegro,'' became heavy and lost focus at exuberant moments. Fullard's solo in the second movement, "Adagio,'' with its lush vibrato and rhetorical flourishes, was beautiful.

The Cavani's rich sound and intensity found its rightful place in Brahms' Viola Quintet . Eckert and Docter played the viola duets in the first and second movements as if on the same instrument. The performers dug into their instruments with tasteful abandon in the rollicking final vivace ma non troppo presto .

Cellist Peckham led the quintet -- and the audience -- in a whimsical encore sing-along of the Temptations' hit My Girl .