Concert Review—

Final Concert For NFoM’s Season Is A Great Success

By June S. April

Watching the Cavani String Quartet connect with the audience last Sunday was in itself a joy to experience.

Celebrating 20 years of being together – a score in the truest sense of the word – these four musicians are technically and emotionally linked to their music, the future of music and educating their audiences.  Violinist Annie Fullard proudly declared at the opening of the concert that going into schools was a primary mission for their quartet.

The April 25 concert marked the final concert sponsored by Newtown Friends of Music in its 2003-04 season.

The performance was not only an exquisite blending of instruments, but the very obvious connections during the performance and to one another that engaged the young and the elderly who were in attendance at Edmond Town Hall.  Winners in many competitions including the Cleveland Quartet Competition, the Banff International, and the prestigious Naumburg Chamber Music Award, much of their time commitment is devoted to outreach programs to bring young people to the appreciation and devotion to fine music and musicianship.

The encore Sunday afternoon was a jazz version of the poignant spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” It was written by Charles Washington and entitled “Midnight Child.” This departure into a truly American genre of music was a refreshing and unique event for the 26-year old Newtown Friends of Music series.

This same dynamic energy was also brought to the students in one of Newtown’s public school on Monday when the quartet came worked in some most inventive ways with the school-age students.

Sunday’s performance began with a modern work by Margaret Brouwer, a friend and colleague of the quartet. The technical challenges presented by the Demeter Prelude posed no problems for the musicians.

The music for this work reflects the struggle of the story, both lyrical and with harsh chordal progressions.  It tells of Demeter’s efforts to obtain the release of her daughter Persephone, who has been abducted by Hades to the Underworld, and how she confronts the Gods, including Zeus.

In great contrast, the quartet then performed Beethoven’s beautiful and poignant Quartet in B-flat Major, Opus 18, No. 6. Subtitled “La Malinconia,” the work was created during a period of Beethoven’s life when his increasing deafness was a frustration he was having a difficult time trying to cope with.  The influence of Haydn and Mozart were still impacting his style of composing; thus the Cavani Quartet reflects strong classical elements.

The sheer exuberance of the final work truly embraced the nature of the Cavani String Quartet. Bohemian born composer Antonin Dvorak was invited to America to teach at the New York Conservatory of Music. He traveled through parts of this country and was deeply moved by what he saw.

Two compositions, The New World Symphony and Quartet in F Major, Opus 96 (known as the “American”) are sonorous salutes to his love of this land.  Dvorak undoubtedly would have been proud to hear how passionately the Cavani String Quartet played his music, and brought it to almost a visual imagery.

The uniqueness of this quartet is not simply its technical mastery, nor its bond.

To put it simply, they are funny. Theirs is a love of life that shines from them, between them and through their performing. Looking at their website is a lot of fun. It’s a link to them, and a look at their lives and personalities.

Violinists Annie Fullard and Mari Sato, violist Kirsten Docter and cellist Merry Peckham are the Cavani String Quartet, but they are much more. They are also the promise and hope for the future of loving and supporting music.