Da Camera provides comfort courtesy of Mozart

Oct 05, 2008 (Houston Chronicle - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- LUDW | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- By accident, Da Camera's season-opening program proved a right gesture in this period after Hurricane Ike.

Devoted to music of Wolfgang Mozart, the evening didn't seem a typical opening gesture when announced early in the year. The works for string trio and string quintet were neither celebratory nor light and saucy. The combination was almost esoteric.

But, as artistic director Sarah Rothenberg noted in opening remarks Saturday at the Wortham Theater Center, music like this can provide "tremendous comfort." That certainly is what some Houstonians continue to need, if not necessarily those in the Wortham's Cullen Theater.

The choice of the Divertimento in E-flat Major, K. 563 for violin, viola and cello was a slight miscue. Unusually long at six movements, it proved a bit of an endurance contest in the hands of violinist Krista Bennion Fenney, violist James Dunham and cellist Bion Tsang.

But joined by violinist Laurie Smukler and violist Daniel Panner, the musicians turned the Quintet in C Major, K. 515 into an exuberant, bold assertion of the best joys of Mozart's music.

Assembling ad hoc ensembles for such a concert is a difficult task involving issues of the compatibility of musical personalities, sounds of instruments and styles of interpretation.

The group for the trio were not a good fit. Their individuality stood out a lot in the first two movements. Too, Fenney and Dunham in particular seemed not to have practiced the music enough -- or worked on technical exercises appropriate for Mozart's style. There were too many small smears, weak fast passages and stretches of unblended sound.

The trio did settle into a common, if generic style of playing for the final two movements, and that stance carried into the quintet, where Smukler was first violinist. The bowing was big and bold with sound to match. In the Quintet's second, slow movement the group relaxed into a beguiling moment of interior meditation.

Overall, though, the musicians paid too little attention to a playing style appropriate to Mozart. They could have been performing music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, perhaps even Bela Bartok.

charles.ward@chron.com

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