There was hardly an empty seat in the house for Wednesday night’s concert at Nordstrom Recital Hall, the sixth performance in Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival lineup. (The next concert, Friday, July 12, features works from both Schumanns, Smetana, and Dvořák.)
Previous concerts this year have had more adventurous programming than in the past, indicating artistic director James Ehnes’ musical bent and including music by Honegger, Enescu, Martinů, Jolivet and others. They’ve been remarkably well attended, a notable achievement in how the Society over the years has educated its listeners. Twenty years ago, you couldn’t have brought in an audience to hear works like these, but over time founding director Toby Saks gradually inserted less well-known composers, different works, all of which has led to Ehnes’ success with these more challenging pieces.
Wednesday, however, returned to a more conventionally comfortable listening experience. The audience doesn’t need to have its ears stretched every time and this was a well-designed program with plenty of interest.
Pianist Adam Neiman gave the free pre-concert recital with works by Arensky and Ginastera, the first being six charming vignettes each with a different character, the latter Ginastera’s Sonata No. 1, an exploratory work always flavored with his South American heritage. Neiman, a festival oldtimer and fine musician, played with his usual finesse and expression, as he did later in the last work on the concert program, Tchaikovsky’s Trio, Op. 50, with violinist Andrew Wan and cellist Julie Albers.
Albers’ bright, warm sound and Wan’s sweet, open tone complemented Neiman’s playing in Tchaikovsky’s tribute to his deceased friend Nikolai Rubinstein; a work of enjoyed reminiscence rather than current grief. Unfortunately the performance stopped abruptly in the middle of the second and last movement when smoke began pouring through vents, and players and audience rose as one and walked out. It turned out later that it came from a dumpster on fire across the road, not inside Benaroya, but the smelly smoke would not have made it feasible to stay inside the hall.
Prior to this, the concert included the String Quartet in E-Flat Major by Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, sister to Felix. Lest anyone think hers was a pale imitation of her brother’s genius, this work would disabuse them. Fanny was a skilled, imaginative composer, original in her ideas, and it’s a great shame that women’s lib wasn’t around then. Hers is a voice that was severely constrained by the age she lived in and we are lucky that at least some of her work has survived.
The second of the four movements of this quartet is arrestingly unusual. It has an elfin quality, but unlike Felix’s fairies hers seem more like elves with nefarious purposes and agitated moments. There’s a section where one can hear intimations of Bach in counterpoint and canon. From the very first notes of this performance, the striking rapport between the players imbued their playing: their stylistic approach, their matching tone, their togetherness, the whole quality of their musicmaking.
Violinists Augustin Hadelich and Nurit Bar-Joseph seemd to breathe together in their many identical rhythmic phrases, violist Cynthia Phelps and cellist Bion Tsang brought to the performance their usual warm, relaxed tone. It was a superb performance.
What was equally striking in the following work, Beethoven’s last sonata for cello and piano, Op. 102, No. 2, was that pianist Anton Nel and cellist Ronald Thomas, did not seem to be on the same page in regard to balance and stylistic approach: really surprising, given these excellent, veteran performers, both long-time favorites at the festival. The whole first movement felt uncomfortable because of this. Nel’s bright, decisive playing contrasted with Thomas’s caressingly warm, mellow expressiveness. The piano at times sounded obtrusive, even drowning Thomas’s playing, despite its resonance and depth. Yet Nel also played with expressiveness, just not in the same way.
Luckily, these issues resolved or at least became much less noticeable in succeeding movements, but overall it wasThomas’s contermplative playing, rarely loud, of this sonata which remained in the memory.
Six more concerts remain in this festival, plus a free outdoor concert and family concerts, and one can even hear them free lying on a blanket in a park under the stars for several performances. Check them out!
