A promising start to new era for Masterworks

Old Lyme - Musical Masterworks launched its 19th season Saturday night as if to prove that change is not necessarily loss.

Missing was the chamber music series' founder and guiding light, Charles Wadsworth, who not only set its high musical standards, but put a face on the series with his conviviality. Replacing Wadsworth this season as artistic director is cellist Edward Arron, who proved to be as comfortable and informative as Wadsworth in his introductions while providing some new musical directions.

In Saturday's concert at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, a program to be repeated at 3 p.m. today, Arron bookended the program with a pair of masterpieces never before performed here. Wadsworth had an endless affection for the late Romantics, but Arron tilted back toward the Classical era to play the piano quartets of Beethoven and Schumann, exciting works that fed off each other in their similarities and differences.

Arron was joined by pianist Rieko Aizawa, violinist Corey Cerovsek and violist Toby Appel to open with Beethoven's Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 16, a transcription of his wind quintet so identical they share the opus number. In both the quartets played Saturday, the sense of musical conversation, of interplay of equals, and most of all, of the ensemble serving a single purpose all but obscured the virtuosity of each individual.

Both the quartets share gorgeous cantabile slow movements, in which the beauty of the lyricism is the means of expression. In the Beethoven, it was pianist Aizawa whose returns to the song, each time with more graceful decorations, who was the focus. In the Schumann, the melodic wealth flowed again and again from the strings, with Cerovsek and Appel in a nicely balanced duet, and Arron (who used a solo by Appel to retune his C string down to B flat for the closing pages), who was given the movement's most heart-wrenching moments.

The quartet stayed in character for both works. The early Beethoven is cast in the shadow of Haydn, full of wit and interplay. The structures are so suave that when the strings appeared seemingly out of sync with the piano in the final movement's return to the main theme, it worked as a "gotcha" moment; how many times can Beethoven trick us with this? The Schumann is more exuberant, and the playing at times felt raw, but befitting his high emotions.

Both the composers use slow introductions in their first movements, but Schumann integrates his into the sonata form. Its growth to the huge cadences that conclude the first theme was increasingly exciting with each reappearance.

In the Schumann, the quartet used the edgy, seemingly incomplete scherzo as a segue to the slow movement to fine effect. And the finale was hair-raising, with its moto perpetuo fervor that gets tied up - but scarcely constrained - in fugal interplay propelling the profligate flow of musical ideas and themes.

Between the two quartets, the program included Schumann's Arabesque for Solo Piano, Op. 18, and Jean Françaix's 1933 String Trio.

Aizawa seemed hasty and perfunctory in the Schumann, not pausing to luxuriate in its main theme, so naïve and arresting in its simplicity.

The Françaix trio was a delightful romp. Arron spoke of its "urbane wit" and its challenge to virtuosity as it scrambles in three directions in once. The first movement, fast and with muted strings, also showcased the appeal of this old church - the acoustics are so vivid that mutes change the sonority but not the volume. In its three fast movements, the trio was an exercise in merriment, and its Debussy-influenced slow movement, again muted, was a beautiful song seeking a melody.

The concert was an exciting and heartening start to a new era at Masterworks.

m.moore@theday.com