Music Review : Cavani Quartet Opens Series at Founders Hall

The Cavani String Quartet opened the second chamber music series in Founders Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center with stylistically odd but challenging music-making on Wednesday.

The quartet warmed up with some romanticized Haydn, surprised with some Gallicized Shostakovich and ended, fortunately, with some muscular Debussy.

Named after a 19th-Century Italian violin maker, the Cavani Quartet was formed in 1984 by violinists Annie Fullard and Susan Waterbury, violist Erika Eckert and cellist Merry Peckham. It has been in residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music since 1988 and has won numerous accolades.

Despite a persistent, slightly audible hum (probably from the air-conditioning system in the hall), the Cavanis managed to play with warmth and energy, if not always with precision. They seem to be a tight ensemble responsive to one another, although cellist Peckham’s frequent facial telegraphing of emotions proved distracting and annoying to at least one member of the audience.

In Haydn’s “Sunrise” Quartet, Opus 76, No. 4, the players demonstrated a degree of elasticity of tempo and phrasing that moved beyond the classical period and even gave the impression that they were exploring the work rather than communicating a settled viewpoint about it. At times, the structure seemed strangely amorphous and arbitrary.

The mood of Shostakovich’s First Quartet, dating from 1938, certainly is a long way from the personal anguish expressed in later works in the series of 15 quartets spanning 36 increasingly bitter years in the composer’s life. But rarely has the work sounded so light, sweet and classically proportioned as it did in the hands of the Cavanis. Even the Russian folk song in the second movement emerged relatively uninflected; the light, elfin playing of the third movement was superb.

The ensemble opened Debussy’s Quartet in G minor with buttery playing and hazy swirls of sound that erupted with vigorous, forceful sweep later. Still, even here a sense of clear purpose proved elusive.

The Cavani is the first of four string quartets appearing in the series. (Next up is the Stamic String Quartet from Czechoslovakia on Nov. 3.) The official tally was 137 listeners in a 250-seat configuration, but the subjective impression was that more people were present than that.

Incidental intelligence: The excellent program notes were reproduced without acknowledgment from Melvin Berger’s “Guide to Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide” published by Doubleday. The group’s New York-based manager, John Gingrich, said his company supplied the notes.