MUSIC REVIEWS : Cleveland Quartet Solid but Uninspired

The Da Camera Society presented a Chamber Music in Historic Sites concert in the Biltmore Hotel’s Gold Ballroom for the first time Sunday afternoon, the Cleveland Quartet doing the honors in the ornate, mirror-lined venue. The Historic Sites concept has proved a success over the years (the Clevelanders’ concert had been sold out since November), but once again the visual delights of a beautiful room did not solve the musical problems posed by unflattering acoustics and obscured lines of sight.

Although violinists William Preucil and Peter Salaff, violist James Dunham and cellist Paul Katz played with often brilliant technical command, their rich sounding but straightforward style combined with the room’s loud and unsubtle acoustics to make their impressively fluent run-throughs of Beethoven’s Opus 18, No. 1 and Schubert’s D. 804 quartets seem methodically routine.

The Beethoven fared the worst, the ensemble’s decision to skip the first movement repeat robbing the quartet as a whole of the affective weight it deserves and their maddeningly imperturbable interpretation raising emotional temperatures only once or twice.

The winsome Schubert, with its touching reminiscences of the composer’s “Rosamunde” ballet music in the second movement, was given the benefit of some movingly expressive phrasing, but the generally lethargic performance veered too irresistibly toward gloom.

Matters improved after intermission when marvelous ensemble work and precise intonation produced moments of surging movement and dazzling color in Ravel’s Quartet. Despite his teammates’ preference for hearty American verve over impressionistic Gallic insouciance, Preucil’s splendidly soaring work in the high registers lifted the performance to dizzying heights.