Cavani String Quartet with Gregory Allen: Playfully Connected Strings
Jessen Auditorium, October 6 The Cavani String Quartet are, by now, familiar faces to Austin’s classical music audience. The Cavanis have spent four of the past five semesters at the University of Texas as Visiting Artists in Chamber Music. Since 1999, Austin has been privileged to hear extraordinary renderings of chamber music that range from stately classics to fiery modern explorations. The quartet, whose home is the Cleveland Institute of Music, is as interested in educating its audience as in entertaining it, and Saturday’s concert saw them at their performing, and pedagogic, peak. This Jessen Series of Distinguished Faculty Artists program included quartets by Franz Schubert and Dimitri Shostakovich, and a quintet for strings and piano by Anton Dvorak, with UT faculty member Gregory Allen fulfilling the keyboard role. The evening’s first half was an exciting study in contrasts, while the latter was stately and extraordinarily executed, if somewhat problematic.Violinist Annie Fullard introduced the evening’s first selection, Schubert’s “String Quartet in E-flat, Op. 125 No. 1,” explaining how Schubert had written the piece when he was just 16 years old, probably for his family’s chamber musicians (one of a family of 12 children, Schubert and his siblings played together regularly). This selection captured the verve and innocence of the young composer, with the playful quartet full of what appeared to be the musical winks and under-the-table rhythmic nudges of brothers and sisters most familiar with each other’s playing. The three quicker-tempo sections had plucked strings, sudden halts, and, in the Scherzo, an exuberant sense of near abandon. Schubert’s work was not without its serious side; the Adagio was pretty and soulful — capturing what Fullard opined was the composer’s innocence. Perhaps this was his tentative awakening to love? The Cavanis performed this intimate selection with a playfulness to match the piece — cellist Merry Peckham was particularly engaging as she glanced with wry, sidelong smiles at Fullard on her right or violist Kirsten Docter to her left — and one could imagine Schubert and his kin similarly smiling and sneaking looks at each other as they performed this heartfelt, energetic quartet.
If the Schubert was fun-loving and youthful, the Shostakovich selection, “Quartet No. 9, Op. 117,” was dead serious and sophisticated. Violinist Mari Sato introduced the piece and played examples of how Shostakovich took two notes and turned that theme into this powerful work. There was energy in this piece, too: dark and forbidding. This tour-de-force quartet barely let up, with shifts in movements almost indiscernible. Strings were not plucked so much as discordantly strummed, creating jarring moments. The final Allegro, “fun to play,” said Sato, was ceaselessly energetic, a brilliant flourish to a piece that had deeply haunting passages, such as the first Adagio, where the music created a palpable dread throughout the recital hall.
After the intermission, pianist Allen joined the Cavanis for Dvorak’s “Quintet in A Major, Op. 81,” for piano and strings. Another finely performed selection by the five musicians, Dvorak’s stately composition was almost devoid of the whimsy and innocence of the Schubert or the dark drama of the Shostakovich. Although some bright moments punctuated the formality, an occasional muddiness to the sound of the piano put it at odds with the crisp strings. And the evening grew long as the structured quintet was played. Perhaps too much of a good thing was just too much; the length of the concert was a challenge to the audience’s ability to maintain focus.
The Cavanis play with a verve and rock-solidness that brilliantly expressed the young Schubert and the powerful Shostakovich. And they are equally adept at the sophisticated stateliness of pieces such as the Dvorak. Their interconnectedness while performing lends an air of the dramatic to music that showed off their fine, now familiar talents. And the cheers and ovation at concert’s end prove that the Cavani String Quartet has a most appreciative second home in Austin.
This article appears in October 19 • 2001.