MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : Arianna Quartet Skilled but Unseasoned

The Illinois-based Arianna String Quartet has been together only since 1992, and at its concert on Friday at the Doheny Mansion, presented by the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College, its inexperience showed.

Which is hardly to say that the young players--violinists Sarah Thornblade and Rebecca Rhee, violist Makoko Eguchi, cellist Kurt Baldwin--are unskilled. All four are strong technicians, who hurled out the phrases of Haydn, Turina and Brahms, the three disparate composers on their program, confidently, even boldly. But also with a sameness of expression that failed to give the scores their individual due.

The sublime Quartet in G from Haydn’s Op. 76 was played fast, tough and, for the most part, loud. Surely the slow movement should have projected a subtler play of light and shade, and Eguchi’s very aggressive opening phrases in the finale, while impressive as viola playing per se, seemed out of place within the composer’s good-natured context.

With fewer depths to plumb, “La oracion del torero” (The Bullfighter’s Prayer) of Joaquin Turina elicited the most nuanced playing of the evening, momentarily vivifying this faded bit of Spanish impressionism.

The requisite seasoning should have been provided by veteran clarinetist Melvin Warner in the Brahms B-minor Quintet. The Arianna Quartet, however, resolutely played its tough-toned, tautly inflected Brahms while Warner expounded his more spacious, melancholy and, to these ears, more sympathetic view of the composer.

Check with us again in a few years, Arianna.