Cover image: composer Giya Kancheli (Photo © Isabelle Françaix)
It’s always a great pleasure for symphony musicians to have the opportunity to play chamber music, a place where they can use their own opinions and judgement as to how the music should go. In an orchestra, they must always defer to the conductor. Last Friday night, at the ‘Beethoven & Kancheli‘ concert, four different groupings of Seattle Symphony members played different works at Nordstrom Recital Hall. (Two works included this week’s soloist in the Masterworks series, pianist Jeremy Denk. Denk has been a regular at the Seattle Chamber Music Society concerts and Nordstrom is no new venue for him.)
The concert started with an unfortunate performance of Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1, but the evening improved from there until a very fine performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 4 at the end.
The Smetana suffered from a highly aggressive approach, particularly by the two violinists, but also to a lesser extent by the violist and cellist. Although there are plenty of passages where the music requires attack and loud dynamics, the notes don’t need to be dug out of the instrument with as much scratch as tone. Every forte came across as a triple forte, yet all the musicians could and did play with a beautiful softer tone and nuance in many other passages, allowing the richness of sound to come through. This substantial and attractive work deserved better.
Twenty years ago, the Bridge Ensemble, a piano quartet which begun and flourished here for several years giving some memorable performances, commissioned and gave the premiere performance of Giya Kancheli’s piano quartet “in l’istesso tempo.” One of the ensemble, cellist David Tonkonogui, died untimely a few years later, and Friday’s performance, which was dedicated to his memory, included two others of the original group, violinist Mikhail Shmidt and violist Susan Gulkis Assadi, plus Denk and cellist Meeka Quan DiLorenzo.
It’s a work of sadness and mourning for the destruction by war and bloodshed in today’s world. The musicians played with heart, the sound rising to anguish at times, though the piano was sometimes out of sync with the strings. Sometimes, also, when the piano was required to play a sudden very loud chord, it seemed too loud, but perhaps that was because the piano lid was fully raised. With a nine-foot grand piano is such a small space as Nordstrom, it really is not necessary to have the lid more than partially raised.
Jeremy Denk, pianist and 2013 MacArthur Fellow (Photo: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation/CC-BY)
Violinist Simon James and Denk gave a first-class performance of Schnittke’s Violin Sonata No 1. With its 12-tone technique it could have seemed alien but the musicians had clearly internalized it and were able to put its appealing qualities across to the audience. The music sang, the humor came through, including some reminders of “The Soldier’s Tale” by Stravinsky and a catchy folk song.
Lastly came a memorable performance of the Beethoven Quartet. Violinists Brittany Boulding Breedon and Mae Lin, violist Sayaka Kokubo, and cellist Eric Han made the case that less is more, in that they rarely played overly loudly and they released the sound from their instruments instead of forcing it. The result was a performance which sang with nuances and shaping, and a generally classical approach. Delicacy, fast clean runs, lightness, liveliness and perfect synchronization between the players characterized it; and though it is in a minor key, the music is cheerful.
