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MUSIC
REVIEW | CAVANI STRING QUARTET
SKILLED FILL-IN ENSEMBLE DOESN'T DISAPPOINT
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Sunday, October 20, 2002
FEATURES - ACCENT & ARTS 05G
By Mary Hoffman
FOR THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
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Yesterday evening at the Southern Theatre, the Cavani
String Quartet opened the 55th anniversary season of the Columbus
Chamber Music Society, stepping in after the Artemis String
Quartet's last- minute cancellation to save the day and grace the
night.
The audience was treated to works by Haydn, Bartok and Brahms
that the Cavani played earlier in the week in
Arkansas.
Faculty members at the Cleveland Institute of Music, violinists
Annie Fullard and Mari Sato, violist Kirsten Docter, and cellist
Merry Peckman are no strangers to Columbus. The prize-winning
group has been warmly welcomed here on occasion since it was
formed in 1984. Founding members Fullard and Peckman have academic
ties to our city.
The finely conceived program provided a glance at the
development of the string quartet, a demonstration of the
particular demands of the chosen works, and the rewards of
skillful, intelligent performance.
It was Haydn who set the string quartet on its modern course,
emancipating it from its rococo limitations, injecting substance,
utilizing counterpoint, introducing folk music, and expanding the
role of the cello. From the six Sun Quartets of 1771-72, the Cavani
opened the evening with a letter-perfect Quartet in D Major, Op.
20, No. 4 .
The Cavani turned then to the early
20th-century six by Bartok with their indebtedness to Haydn, but
worlds apart. In the String Quartet No. 5, Bartok's highly
original, complex musical language absorbing elements of Hungarian
folk music is replete with irregular rhythms, complex contrapuntal
lines and the employment of extreme performance techniques. The
reading was riveting.
After the difficult, sometimes forbidding nature of the Bartok,
the Brahms' String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 51, No. 1 brought a
return to comfortable equilibrium. A deadline called before
hearing it to completion, but there is no reason to suppose its
performance wasn't consistent with what preceded.
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