MUSIC REVIEW : TRIO D’ARCHI AT DOHENY MANSION

Not everything that takes place under the gilded Tiffany dome of the Doheny Mansion ranks as a major chamber-music experience. The everyday obtrudes even in those rarefied precincts, as was the case on Friday when the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College presented the local debut of the Trio d’Archi di Roma.

The artists--violinist Antonio Salvatore, violist Paolo Centurioni and cellist Mario Centurione--are familiar in another context, as members of I Musici, the crack Italian string orchestra.

They are secure, accomplished veterans, readily able to convey-- as they did on this occasion--the slender graces of trios by Joseph Haydn (in G, Opus 53), Schubert (in B-flat, D. 471) and Giovanni Francesco Giuliani (in G, Opus 8: a total of six consecutive movements of resolutely major-key Classical piffle.

The real music came in the form of Mozart’s Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563, one of the richest, harmonically and melodically, of all the composer’s intimate works, and at nearly 40 minutes, the longest.

It worked on Friday, not because of any notable inspiration on the part of the executants but as a consequence of their solid professionalism and Mozart’s unquenchable genius.

Here, violinist Salvatore indulged a tendency to move fractionally ahead of his partners, forcing somewhat more tension than is inherent in the music. Then, too, of Classical style there wasn’t a trace in a dynamically lush, richly vibratoed and portamentoed interpretation in which trills were doggedly taken from the lower note.

Withal, there was plenty of energy, some big, lovely tone--the enriching acoustics of the Doheny showplace always being a factor--from each of the players in turn as well as in combination. Mechanically this very taxing work emerged in good enough order, a patch of cello misintonation in the first movement and the violinist’s tendency to champ at the bit notwithstanding.