Music Reviews : Steinhardt / Mayorga Team in Sites Series

As a sultry afternoon sun, streaming through the Tiffany glass dome roof, turned the salon of Edward Doheny’s 100-year-old mansion into a hotbox Sunday, violinist Arnold Steinhardt and pianist Lincoln Mayorga rendered the non-air-conditioned circumstances irrelevant.

The wonder of Steinhardt is that his flamboyance exists entirely in the playing, not in mannerisms or stance. Though his basically warm, fruity tone occasionally becomes thin and scrappy, he never loses the music for an instant.

Mayorga, diffident and restrained, everywhere provided subtlety, warmth, rhythmic alacrity and sensitive support.

The opener, Dvorak’s G-major Sonatina, got a composed, equable reading de-emphasizing its American folk elements. Grieg’s Third Sonata, that heady flight of ultra-Romanticism, was splendidly served up and imbued with visceral impact, though Bartok’s First Rhapsody (1928) emerged a mite prim and starched for a Magyar romp .

Three melodies of Amy Beach deserved exposure via Steinhardt’s purly legato. Fritz Kreisler selections raised the sentiment quotient enormously, but without bathos or stickiness. A Victor Herbert trifle concluded this gratifying performance on the Da Camera Society’s Chamber Music in Historic Sites series.