The La Cafamore String Quartet with guest pianist Nina Horvath at the Knox Presbyterian Church, Cranbrook, Wednesday May 12, 2012, 7:30 pm

The La Cafamore String Quartet with Nina Horvath

The LaCafamore Sting Quartet(Carolyn Cameron, Angela Synder, Alexis Moore and Jeff Faragher) is enjoying a fourth season as a performing ensemble and it is their second visit to Cranbrook. As with the previous visit last September the program was again varied and interesting. To get the audience relaxed the program opened with a Mozart Allegro from Divertimento No.3 K138. Following this typically tuneful the ensemble was reconfigured to a piano quartet (violin,cello, viola and piano) with Nina Horvath as the special guest on piano. Nina chose a contemporary composition by Vancouver composer Ryan Noakes  as her opening piece. Built around a “breathing” motif the piece was very modern but in some instances the melody was almost hard-bop jazz like without the frenzied pace typical of that school of Jazz. The full string quartet returned to play the Samuel Barbers String Quartet Op. 11. Although this piece was written in the modern era this composition still clings to the emotional characteristics normally associated with the romantic era. The piece is famous for the the Adagio of the second movement (Barber’s Adagio). After the intermission Nina rejoined the string quartet to performed Robert Schumann’s Quintet In E Flat Op.44. So there we have it – a program of the Classical (Mozart), the modern  (Noakes), the neo-romantic (Barber) and the honest-to-goodness romance of Robert Schumann for a complete evening of fine chamber music.