Music and Dance Reviews : Audubon Quartet at Biltmore in Historic Sites Series

The Audubon Quartet made a stunning impression at its local debut two years ago, disclosing maturity of expression and smoothly functioning internal dynamics that belied the Virginia- based group’s brief history.

Sunday evening, on the occasion of its return--presented, as before, by Chamber Music in Historic Sites--the four artists displayed equal technical fluency and interpretive conviction. The difference in locales did, however, produce altered results.

In 1987, under the enriching Tiffany dome of the Doheny Mansion, the Audubons projected quasi-orchestral sonorities without sacrificing linear clarity. On Sunday, when Bernard’s restaurant in the Biltmore Hotel was converted into a viable 200-seat concert hall, a decidedly leaner, but by no means unappealing tone was discernible.

Another marked difference between then and now was the program. Previously, the juxtaposition of attractively quirky, vastly dissimilar rarities by Haydn and Peter Schickele and the familiar fireworks of Smetana’s “From My Life” made for a revelatory evening.

This time, the players--violinists David Ehrlich and David Salness, violist Doris Lederer, cellist Thomas Shaw--were less enterprising, offering everybody’s favorite warm-up piece, the Mozart Quartet in G, K. 387, followed by the ubiquitous Debussy Quartet, and Schumann’s warts-and-all beauty in A major, Opus 41, No. 3, less familiar to general audiences but no novelty for the chamber music crowd.

The totality proved mildly disappointing for its lack of adventure and lack of coherency, the immense worth of each component notwithstanding.

Still, amid these safe pleasures one could savor the unexaggeratedly Romantic interpretations, immaculate ensemble balance and rhythmic vitality of the Audubon Quartet.

We should always have it so bad.