by Daniel Hathaway
The original plan for the season finale of Arts Renaissance Tremont called for the Cavani Quartet — joint artistic directors of the series at St. Wendelin Church — to join the Verona Quartet, Oberlin Conservatory’s resident string quartet, to form an octet. But when a member of the Cavani became indisposed, the Verona agreed to play the whole program on Sunday afternoon, May 5.
Although the audience at St. Wendelin might have been surprised by the change in plans, nobody could possibly have been disappointed. Violinists Jonathon Ong and Dorothy Ro, violist Abigail Rojansky, and cellist Jonathan Dormand gave revelatory accounts of Mendelssohn’s first and Beethoven’s fifteenth quartets. And they very likely introduced all but a few cognoscenti in the audience to the fascinating music of Grażyna Bacewicz with the Fourth Quartet by the Lithuanian-Polish violinist and composer, who lived from 1909 to 1969.
ENCORE Chamber Music held a musical tasting on Sunday afternoon, July 3rd at the Dodero Center for the Performing Arts. “Tales of Travel and Transformation” featured members of the Verona Quartet, artistic director Jinjoo Cho, and other faculty of the summer institute.
In their debut album Diffusion, the Verona Quartet celebrates folk music’s influence on string quartet language at the beginning of the 20th century — a style that reflects their values as an international ensemble with members hailing from all across the globe.