MUSIC REVIEW : Cassatt Quartet at Caltech

The Cassatt String Quartet won the Coleman Chamber Music Competition one short year after the group was formed in 1985. With cellist Anna Cholakian as the only holdover of the original ensemble, the quartet returned Sunday to play at Beckman Auditorium, Caltech, as part of Coleman’s 90th anniversary season. The other current members are Muneko Otani and Sunghae Anna Lim, violins, and Michiko Oshima, viola.

The program consisted of staple repertory by Dvorak and Debussy and the less frequently encountered Second Quartet (“Intimate Letters”) by Janacek.

Written when he was 73, the Second Quartet is a part of the composer’s tremendous creative upsurge as a result of his falling in love with Kamila Stosslova, a woman 38 years his junior.

The Cassattians played the frequent and abrupt mood shifts with intensity and passion, with lyrical tenderness and yearning, with crisp and clear motoric drive.

Where they were weak was in tying episodes together, in projecting a sense of organic relationship and development.

This lack also marked their playing in other repertory. Dvorak’s “American” Quartet found them strong in deliberation and speed, deficient in structural pointing.

Debussy’s Quartet in G minor unfolded with uncommonly tense propulsion, although the players also were capable of sensitive, if at times too vaporous delicacy, especially in the third movement.