By Lyn Bronson
When Chamber Music Monterey Bay (CMMB), or as it was originally known: “The Chamber Music Society of the Monterey Peninsula,” first started in Carmel forty-three years ago, the season’s programs were fairly predictable. There would be during the season several programs consisting exclusively of string quartets and perhaps one program with a string ensemble that included piano. The rationale behind this was that piano trios and piano quartets were considered more the provenance of amateur Haus-Musik, while the string quartet was for the true chamber music “connoisseur.” Not everyone agreed with this assessment, and a famous violist, who was a member of the Kolisch Quartet, once defined a string quartet “as four players on stage having a wonderful time, with the audience bored out of their minds.”
