MUSIC : Da Vinci Piano Quartet Brings Together Brothers at UCI

Blood may be thicker than water, but it doesn’t guarantee deep or simpatico music-making. At least this was the case when the Da Vinci Piano Quartet--top-heavy with brothers, pianist Norberto and violinist Alessandro Cappone--made a modest impression at its debut concert Monday at the UC Irvine Fine Arts Concert Hall.

Born in Luxembourg, the siblings have gone separate musical paths until recently. Norberto Cappone has taught piano privately in the county for more than 15 years. Alessandro Cappone is a member of the Berlin Philharmonic. The two will not alter their careers but reportedly hope to perform chamber music together periodically.

The other members of the group are violist Eva Tomasi, also a member of the Berlin Philharmonic, and cellist Nella Hunkins, assistant principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1973-78 and now a resident of Berlin.

The members’ busy schedules preclude much working together; the lack of time to mesh personalities while still allowing individuality combined, at this initial performance, with the orchestral musicians’ tendency toward self-effacement, producing workmanlike but scarcely inspiring performances of works by Brahms, Mahler and Mozart.

Poised but blocky phrasing, minimal sensitivity to shifting moods and sparing use of rubato conspired for an emotionally cool reading of Brahms’ Piano Quartet in G minor, Opus 25. In this instance, the pianist did not dominate, which was part of the reason that Arnold Schoenberg orchestrated the work. But neither did he match the strings’ surging passion when, in the wondrous, soaring coda of the third movement, they finally blossomed.

The most bold and committed playing the quartet offered was in the one surviving movement of Mahler’s Piano Quartet in A minor, composed between 1876 and ’78 and probably Mahler’s graduation piece for the Vienna Conservatory. The nine-minute piece shows debts to Brahms and Schubert and hardly hints at the style to come, but the Da Vincians played the repetitive musings with gusto.

The concert opened with a severe and plain account of Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor, K. 478.

As an encore, the ensemble played the Andante from Brahms’ Piano Quartet in C minor, Opus 60.

SOUTHWEST MOVES NORTH--The Southwest Chamber Music Society will be moving all its Orange County concerts to Chapman College in Orange next season, abandoning the Newport Harbor Art Museum, which gave the fledgling society a boost in attendance after its first season in 1987 at Santa Ana High School failed to draw sufficient audiences.

“We are giving up (the museum) because it would not guarantee us that they would not double-book our space,” the society’s artistic director, Jeff von der Schmidt, said Monday. “But we are leaving the museum on very good terms. It is completely within the realm of the possible that we could--and we hope to--perform at the museum again.”

Last season, the society split its season between the museum and the college, where four of the society members teach. But two of the seven concerts at the museum had to be canceled because of conflicts with other museum events.

Next season, the society will offer eight concerts at 8 p.m. on Thursday nights at the Salmon Recital Hall at Chapman College. Duplicate programs will be held on the following Fridays at the Wright Auditorium of the Pasadena Library.

The Orange County series:

-- Oct. 18: Elgar’s Sonata in E minor for Violin and Piano; the U.S. premiere of British composer Anthony Payne’s “Consort Music” for String Quintet; Brahms’ Quintet No. 2 for Strings.

-- Nov. 1: Max Reger’s Serenade in G for Flute, Violin and Viola, Opus 141a; one of Britten’s six “Metamorphoses After Ovid” for solo Oboe; Mozart’s Duo in B-flat for Violin and Viola, K. 424; Alexander Goehr’s “Paraphrase on Monteverdi” for Solo Clarinet; Prokofiev’s Quintet for Oboe, Clarinet, Violin, Viola and Bass, Opus 39.

-- Nov. 29: Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 5 in D; Luigi Nono’s “. . . sofferte onde serene . . .”; Beethoven’s Trio No. 4 (“Ghost”) for Piano, Violin and Cello.

-- Jan. 31, 1991: Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello; Frederick Lesemann’s “Nataraja” for prepared piano; Olivier Messiaen’s “Quatuor pour la fin du temps,” for Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano.

-- Feb. 28: Francis Poulenc’s Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano; George Antheil’s Sonata for Flute; Three Scenes for piano from Stravinsky’s “Petrouchka”; Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Quintet for Flute, Violin, Viola, Cello and Harp.

-- April 4: Mozart’s Violin Sonata in A, K. 305; Ernst Krenek’s Sonata for Solo Violin, Bartok’s Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano.

-- May 2: Reger’s Piano Quartet in D minor, Opus 113; Charles Martin Loeffler’s Two Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola and Piano; Faure’s Quartet No. 2 for Piano and Strings.

-- May 16: Carlos Chavez’s Sonatina for Violin and Piano and Invention No. 2 for String Trio; Copland’s Sextet for Clarinet, Piano and String Quartet and “El Salon Mexico,” as transcribed for two pianos.

Tickets: $12 for each concert ($6 for full-time students and seniors). Series tickets, priced at $96, offer benefits at participating record and bookstores. Information: (800) 794-4799.