Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center performs at Drew University

Perhaps the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center should include a genealogical chart in the program for Saturday’s concert at Drew University.

The familial and artistic relationships of the musicians are so intertwined that when they play there surely must be a unanimity of purpose, a fluidity of ensemble.

The Orion String Quartet, violinist Ida Kavafian and flutist Tara Helen O’Connor will play music of Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart and Boccherini, all of it composed during an 11-year span from 1790 to 1801.

But the connections between the players are almost as interesting as the music itself. To start with, the violinists of the Orion String Quartet are brothers Daniel and Todd Phillips. They share first-violin duties, thereby avoiding any risk of sibling rivalry.

O’Connor is married to Daniel Phillips and Kavafian is married to Orion violist Steven Tenenbom. That leaves cellist Timothy Eddy without a familial link and only his 28 years with the Orion String Quartet to fall back upon.

And Phillips and Kavafian have known each other since they were teenagers at a summer music camp.

O’Connor and Daniel Phillips met at the Bach Aria Festival at SUNY Stony Brook. O’Connor was sitting behind Phillips as they played a passage where the flute and violin are in unison.

“I was playing the part and then I realized that she was playing so exactly with me it was like she was inside my skin,” Phillips said. “We had something special before we even knew each other.”

O’Connor’s recollection of that day is almost identical, remembering how they matched each other through every turn of phrase.

“He turned around after we finished playing and he said, ‘Who are you?’ ” O’Connor said. “We hadn’t really met … When he first turned around my initial thought was, ‘Oh, was my B-flat low? Was I out of tune?’ ”

Of course nothing could have been further from the truth. Phillips refers to his wife as one of the greatest musicians of all.

“It’s a great privilege to play with her,” he said. “If we disagree, she’s always right.”

Their family playing extends beyond the concert hall. Over the holidays O’Connor and Phillips played transcriptions of Haydn symphonies with Phillips’ 95-year-old violinist father Eugene and his 87-year-old pianist mother Natalie.

Haydn figures in Saturday’s concert. The Orion will play the string quartet in G minor, “The Rider,” by Haydn, a composer Phillips believes is unfairly overshadowed by Mozart and Beethoven.

“He did all that stuff first, maybe better, and with a better sense of humor,” Phillips said, referring to how Haydn established the form of the symphony and the string quartet. “There’s so much invention and so much character in it.”

And while the earliest quartets might have focused on the violin, by the time of the G minor Haydn had developed a fully mature style.

“He gives every instrument a whole lot to do,” Phillips said. “It’s by no means a first violin with accompaniment.”

When Mozart added a second viola to the string quartet, he produced some of his most sublime music. He composed six string quintets in all; the Orion plus Kavafian will play the D major quintet, K. 593.

The addition of a fifth instrument “seemed to really spark his imagination,” Phillips said. “Arguably his quintets are more free and successful compositions than his string quartets.”

Mozart’s imagination was so unfettered that one chromatic passage in the last movement is so unique that the quintet’s first publishers changed it, thinking it must be a mistake. According to Phillips, up until about 30 years ago there were still recordings being made with the altered score.

Beethoven’s Serenade for Flute, Violin and Viola and Boccherini’s Quintet for Flute, Two Violins, Viola and Cello in G major represent lighter fare. There’s no one better to talk about them than O’Connor, whose hearty, infectious laugh punctuates her conversation.

“His music is classical,” O’Connor said of Boccherini. “It’s beautiful, it’s stylishly ornate.”

Boccherini, who was a cellist, wrote string quintets as well, but added a cello instead of a viola. Italian born, he spent most of his career in Spain and produced a number of beguiling quintets for guitar and strings.

The flute quintets are less known and Saturday’s concert affords a rare opportunity to hear one of them. They are meant to entertain rather than plumb great emotional depths.

“They’re sweet, they’re perfect, they’re small,” O’Connor said of the two-movement quintets. “He (Boccherini) knows the instruments really well and writes well for them.”

CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER

WHAT: Music of Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart and Boccherini

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: Concert Hall, Drew University, 36 Madison Ave., Madison

TICKETS: $55

INFO: 973-408-3917, chambermusicsociety.org