Tag Archives: chamber music

Arts & Entertainment, Music

For Summer, a Chamber Music Feast at Benaroya Hall

James Ehnes
James Ehnes

Starting a few days earlier than usual, the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival opened Saturday night at Nordstrom Recital Hall with some new faces and music. Under violinist James Ehnes, who succeeded Toby Saks as artistic director a year ago, the festival is branching out with more music for winds or brass. The opening night’s concert reflected this with works by Honegger and Enescu for trumpet and piano. (The next concerts are tonight and this Wednesday, July 3, beginning with recitals at 7 p.m., the concert at 8 p.m.)

Before these, however, came one of those moments which remind one of how sublime a chamber music performance can be in the right hands.

From the three trios of Beethoven’s Op. 1, his first published work, violinist Ida Levin, cellist David Requiro (a festival newcomer) and pianist Inon Barnatan performed No. 3. It was one of those magical times when the rapport between the players, their musicianship and sensitivity, their awareness of the environs in which they played all came together to create something rare and memorable. It engaged the listener from the first notes.

There was also the marvel of realizing what Beethoven achieved at the tender age of 21. This trio in C Minor is a turn in the path of classical music, a step towards the, as yet, unknown of classical ideals veering towards a more romantic style, a change from what Haydn and Mozart had been creating in their chamber music.

There is little that is truly uncomfortable in Haydn’s and Mozart’s chamber music. It’s exquisite, elegant, imaginative, profound at times, with depth, but rarely goes beyond what would then be considered decency in allowing emotions to show. Not so Beethoven, who uses sudden changes in mood, tensions versus calm, unmasked feeling and drama in his trio. It is also a wonderful vehicle for the pianist, who has the lion’s role.

Here, too, one can sense Beethoven’s fascination with discovering the limits of what could be done with what was still a very new instrument in 1791, an all-wooden piano with a light key action, quick sound decay and the ability to change dynamics. Today’s nine-foot concert grand piano is a very different animal, heavily braced with metal, with heavier key action and a long decay. Yes, there are differences in the stringed instruments, also, with their now usually metal strings and bracing inside the body to enable higher tension and louder sound, but nothing like so much as with a piano.

Beethoven has the pianist racing from end to end of the instrument with lightning fast runs and expressive dynamic changes, and it says volumes for Barnatan that he encompassed his busy role with lightness, ease, excellent articulation, and without ever drowning out the violin and cello.

Such was not the case in the earlier concert recital, in which pianist Andrew Armstrong and clarinetist Ricardo Morales performed Brahms’ Sonata in F Minor. Armstrong could play with expressive gentleness when called for, but often in louder passages he gave it such volume that the clarinet sound was mostly drowned.

Jens Lindemann, trumpet

He played the same way in Honegger’s Intrada (1947) for trumpet and piano, and in Enescu’s Legende (1906) for the same instruments, but here he was more than matched by the clarion sound of Jens Lindemann’s trumpet. An angular piece, the Honegger is often dissonant, a bit jazzy or jaunty, quite short, while the Enescu is more impressionistic, almost a lullaby at times. Both require a gifted trumpet player, which they had in Lindemann, a newcomer to the festival (as is Morales). Nevertheless, both works served to show that the trumpet can be too loud an instrument for a small concert hall.

The performance ended with Brahms’ familiar Quintet in B Minor for clarinet and strings. Here it was possible really to savor Morales’ butter-smooth, effortless, eloquent clarinet playing. He was joined by Ehnes and Stephen Rose, violins; Rebecca Albers,viola; and Brinton Smith cello; both these last two also newcomers, who from their prominent parts in the variations movement leave one eager to hear more of them.

The entire festival this year is dedicated to the memory of two women who did a great deal to further the aims of the Chamber Music Society, Helen Gurvich and Arlene Hinderlie Wade.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

JACK Quartet Blazes Through Seattle With Adventurous New Music

JACK Quartet (Photo: Rachel Papo)

In the spring of 2011, the JACK Quartet arrived in Seattle for the first time, treating the city to two very different performances. For the first, an intimate, sold-out event at the Sorrento Hotel’s Top of the Town ballroom, the quartet performed Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas’ improvisational String Quartet No. 3 in complete darkness. The next day, on the stage at Town Hall, the four New York-based musicians brought the crowd to its feet with blistering renditions of works by Ligeti, Xenakis, and other modern composers, all performed passionately with hair-raising technical precision.

Last week, Seattle audiences returned for JACK Quartet’s second visit to Town Hall. A sizable crowd filled the Great Hall’s pews for the Tuesday evening performance, the final concert in Town Hall’s 2012-13 TownMusic series. In keeping with the TownMusic tradition of commissioning works from emerging composers, the program featured a new piece by composer Jefferson Friedman, who traveled from his home in Los Angeles for the premiere of his Quintet, written for two violins, viola, and two cellos. Acclaimed cellist and TownMusic artistic director Joshua Roman joined the members of JACK Quartet onstage for the performance.

Composer Jefferson Friedman (Photo: Liz Linder)

Full of emotional intensity, Friedman’s Quintet tackles the subject of grief head on. Written both “about the grieving process, and at the same time (as) part of it,” the work maintains a strong focus on expressing emotion while subtly traversing melodic, rhythmic, and timbral ideas. The addition of an extra cello to the traditional string quartet instrumentation beefed up the bass range considerably, bringing a sense of weight to the music and contributing additional momentum and energy that propelled the piece along.

The work zips between moods with transitions as sudden as a summer rainstorm. At the start of the piece, a singing viola solo is framed by humming — both high-pitched and low — from the other strings, as well as warm cello harmonies. Later, sharp stabbing bow strokes create angry lightning bolts of sound while fervent melodies are passed around the ensemble. An experienced chamber musician, Roman blended effortlessly with the quartet, especially in duet sections with JACK’s cellist, Kevin McFarland.

Polish composer Witold Lutosławski’s dazzlingly difficult String Quartet dominated the second half of the program. Born in 1913, Lutosławski was a major proponent of 20th century aleatoric composition techniques, which utilize chance and randomness to determine melodic, rhythmic, and timbral elements. Unlike traditional classical compositions, the String Quartet doesn’t specify how the four musicians’ parts fit together. Instead, the work is broken up into “mobiles.” Transitions between mobiles are made as an ensemble, but within each mobile the musicians are free to interpret how the parts should intersect.

For JACK Quartet, Lutosławski’s work provided an opportunity to showcase the well-oiled machine that is their ensemble dynamics. Every nuance in timbre and timing was perfectly coordinated between each of the four musicians — no small feat given the large number of musical ideas that the piece tosses around. At the cliff-hanging climax, the performers traded vehement bow strokes, building up tension like a glass about to overflow. Teetering on the brink, the musicians began to back down one by one, in a painstakingly gradual release. A single, resigned note from cellist McFarland finally pulled the plug, releasing the web of tension and causing a near-audible sigh of relief to sweep across the room.

The concert began with two works representing rhythmic complexity from opposite ends of the musical timeline — one from 1400, and the other from 2008. Composed at the turn of the 15th century, Rodericus’ Angelorum Psalat contains some of the most complex examples of rhythm and vocal harmony of its time. JACK Quartet violinist Christopher Otto’s arrangement of the work for string quartet sounded surprisingly fresh and modern. After a meditative introduction by first violin and viola, pizzicato harmonies in the second violin and cello added an element of buoyancy, accentuating the piece’s lilting rhythms.

In contrast, Brian Ferneyhough’s Exordium exemplifies 21st century rhythmic exploration. Written in 2008 to commemorate composer Elliott Carter’s 100th birthday, the nine-minute piece is comprised of 43 tiny movements full of scratches, screeches, and glissandos, many performed in unison. The piece poses a bevy of challenges, particularly of the technical variety. Ever heard a string quartet squeak in unison, while staying perfectly in tune and varying dynamics at exactly the same rate? JACK Quartet delivered on this promise.

In his introductory speech, Roman revealed concert details for the 2013-14 TownMusic season, including an appearance by composer Caroline Shaw, winner of the 2013 Pulizer Prize for Music. She’ll be performing with the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. Other highlights include performances of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, and three new TownMusic commissions. Stay tuned for the full season announcement from Town Hall.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Beethoven’s “Archduke” Visits Wallingford & Town Hall

Alexander Velinzon
Alexander Velinzon

Seattle Symphony concertmaster Alexander Velinzon has an insanely busy schedule, but he still makes time where possible to play chamber music. Friday night saw his first appearance with Simple Measures, the group which recreates the meaning of the word “chamber” in chamber music: music written to be performed in intimate venues, originally concerts in privately owned salons.

The major work on the program was Beethoven’s Piano Trio in B-Flat, the “Archduke,” which he performed with Simple Measure’s founder, cellist Rajan Krishnaswami, and pianist Mark Salman. (The concert is repeated this Sunday at 2 p.m., downstairs at Town Hall.)

A small venue makes it possible for anyone in the audience to see the interplay between the musicians, the way their eyes are continually not only on the music but each other, watching tiny body movements to judge exact entries, sensing changes in tempo, dynamic, or phrasing (of course, this also takes for granted their discussion and practice beforehand). And, which is typical in chamber music, how much the musicians are enjoying themselves.

This was true Saturday at the little chapel at the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford, where Velinzon and Krishnaswami seemed to be having a blast, the two playing together as though they’d done it all their lives. Asked afterward, Krishnaswami said they’d had five rehearsals only, but that there had been an instant musical rapport between them.

Simple Measures plays in coffee houses like Q Café in the Interbay area, community centers like the one in Mount Baker or, as on Saturday, in the chapel: places where people can come casually dressed, bring the kids, listen to the musicians warming up and practicing bits of the program, chatting until the performance starts. Simple Measures may be deliberately casual, but the musicianship is not. Now in its eighth season, it has gained a reputation for excellent performance and fine musicians are delighted to perform with it.

This season’s three programs have been planned around, respectively, Rhythm, Melody, and Harmony. The program always comprises several short excerpts in the first half, and a complete work for the second, in Saturday’s case the “Archduke.” For this Harmony program, Krishnaswami chose examples of Baroque, Classic, Romantic, impressionistic and modern harmonies, the performers giving brief explanations in a mini-Music Ed 101, and asking the audience after each piece for their impressions.

Velinzon gave an eloquent performance of an unaccompanied Adagio from Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Major, not attempting to recreate Baroque style, but coloring the piece with different shades of vibrato, and demonstrating beforehand how the melody connected the chords and how the bass line descended.

One of the most beautiful works, the impressionistic Allegro from Ravel’s Sonata for violin and cello, had the two instruments interchanging range with the cello sometimes on top. The two performers sounded closely attuned to each other, so that phrases passed from one to the other had a matching floating approach or emphasis, a delight to hear.

The gifted clarinetist Sean Osborn, a regular with Simple Measures, appeared for just one terrific item, the first movement of Bartok’s Contrasts, which had the clarinet flying in spirals before it dies away at the end in modern harmony with violin and piano.

Classical Mozart, Hindemith pushing the harmonic envelope, and Romantic Arensky also made appearances in this very well designed group of short pieces.

Unfortunately, as with so many true chamber music performances today that include piano, the intimacy of the space was overpowered in performance. A grand piano is a massive instrument with big volume potential, suitable to be heard at the far ends of big concert halls. The piano lid is open to its furthest extent to allow more sound out and to direct it towards the audience. This is all very well at Benaroya Hall (2,500 seats), or even at Meany Theater (1,300 seats), but there’s no need for maximum volume in smaller locations.

Do we really need all that sound at Town Hall (900 seats), Nordstrom Recital Hall (540 seats) or at the Good Shepherd Chapel (150 seats)? Surely not. It would help if pianists decreased the height of the lid to four or six inches, or had it down altogether in music which requires a lighter pianistic presence. After all, string players tailor their vibrato to the requirements of the music. Why not pianists also?

Modern stringed instruments are capable of louder sound than Baroque strings, but that is dwarfed by the difference between pianos today and the early pianos used by Mozart and Beethoven. So playing in a trio for piano, violin, and cello, like Beethoven’s “Archduke,” in a tiny venue like the chapel, a grand piano with the lid up creates an imbalance of sound.

This isn’t to say that pianist Mark Salman didn’t play with sensitivity Saturday night. In softer passages, his playing was clear, his touch gentle, all the notes well phrased and present, his ensemble excellent. The “Archduke” andante movement in particular was gorgeous and balanced between all three instruments. However, whenever the dynamic markings went higher than mezzo forte, Salman’s fingers seemed to grow steely and he played at a triple forte level. One could see in his shoulders the force with which he hit the notes. The piano sound dominated the music at these times.

Nevertheless, the concert as a whole gave considerable pleasure, as demonstrated by the applause at the end.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Exploring Melody with Soprano Jennifer Foster and Simple Measures

Simple Measures can pop up anywhere, as this streetcar video above proves. This program repeats tonight at 6:30 p.m. at the Mt. Baker Community Club. The next Simple Measures concerts are April 19 and 21. 

Q Café in Interbay is not what you’d consider the usual venue for chamber music: a big space (for a café) with a concrete floor, a dais in one corner, coffee machine and cash register in the opposite corner, ancient couch on the side. For Friday night, however, the tables put away, casually dressed people of all ages filled the café chairs now arranged in an arc surrounding the dais, and on it were four musicians and a singer.

The occasion was one of Simple Measure’s concerts. Several times a year, the little organization, founded and headed by cellist Rajan Krishnaswami, puts together a small group of some of Seattle’s best musicians plus guests to perform a concert program in various places not usually associated with classical music. Q Café is a regular, as is Mount Baker Community Center, also the Chapel at Good Shepherd Center. The programs have a theme, this season’s being Rhythm, Melody and Harmony, and Friday’s concert was on Melody.

Normally at performances, there is silence between musicians and audience. Not so here. Krishnawami’s premise is that chamber music should be a more informal gathering with discussion flowing and demonstrations given.

Jennifer Foster, soprano
Jennifer Foster, soprano

For the first half of the program, three members of the Seattle Symphony—violinists Cordula Merks and Mae Lin, and violist Mara Lise Gearman—plus cellist Krishnaswami, joined soprano Jennifer Foster from Connecticut in a varied group of art songs. Cellist and singer conversed about them before performing, pointing out musical moments or style to watch for.

Two songs in late romantic style by Arthur Shepherd to poems of Rabindranath Tragore, two to Shakespeare by Lee Hoiby and a couple by Villa-Lobos gave clear evidence that the art song form is still alive and well.

Foster is an excellent exponent. An art song, as was once explained to me, is an opera in three minutes. Without moving much Foster had to be the characters, and she did this admirably with facial expression as well as vocal.

The two songs by Hoiby had been written for her with her consultation, this being only their second performance. She was ducal in his “If Music be the Food of Love,” words spoken by Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night, and later, for instance, she became a helpful little girl, then a tired old woman in Villa-Lobos’ “A menina e a cancao,” (“The Girl and the Song”). The two Brazilian songs asked for only violin accompaniment: complicated, tricky, and easily accomplished by Lin with Foster.

For the second half of the program, it’s typical for Simple Measures to perform an entire chamber work. Friday, this was Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, preceded by the Schubert song it was named for. The song is quite brief, with Foster first the Maiden pleading to keep her life, then Death, reassuring the girl that it isn’t so bad to go with him. The song lies low for Foster, but she used her well-trained voice with excellent support in her low register to sing it effectively.

It’s always a pleasure to hear the quality of Symphony musicians playing individually. This fine performance showed off the artistry of Merks as the first violin to whom Schubert gives a starring role in this quartet. Her tone and touch as well as her musicianship show why she is such an asset to the music community here.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

At Winter Chamber Music Festival, Britten and Reich Mingle with Beethoven

James Ehnes
James Ehnes

The Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Winter Festival opened last Friday with an expanded schedule, two weekends of concerts instead of the previous one — it continues January 24 though 26. It also begins to show the stamp of James Ehnes in his second year as artistic director. Saturday night’s concert included familiar composers Beethoven and Schumann, but also the first of three works celebrating the centenary of Benjamin Britten, and a work by Steve Reich.

Nearly two decades ago, then-artistic director Toby Saks attempted to broaden programming from a menu of familiar classics, and the audience that summer stayed away in droves. After that she began cautiously to include a less-familiar composer here and there, usually with a little paragraph up front describing how appealing it was and easy to take in. Gradually the programming has become more adventurous, and it’s good to see Ehnes stretching the boundaries even further.

By far the most fascinating work on Saturday’s program was Reich’s Different Trains, for string quartet and tape. Played by Ehnes and Emily Daggett Smith, violins; Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola; and Jeremy Turner, cello (the last two both newcomers to the festival); it has Reich’s minimalist hallmarks. These fit the premise of the work, which describes in three sections the sound of trains in America before WWII, in Europe during WWII, and after the war. The taped music is played by another quartet, the Smith (a British group), with spoken snatches from various people.

The words were hard to hear during the performance, and though the audience had them in the program, the lights were too low to be able to follow. At times, the live musicians, mostly cello or viola, played in exact cadence and rhythm with the spoken words on tape, and at the same pitch as those words, an extraordinarily difficult thing to do without being able to see the speaker and gauge the exact moment of speech. It must have taken a considerable amount of rehearsal as both players were perfectly in synch with the words.

The musical interpretation of American trains at the start sounds cheerful and organized, subtly changing to a more disorganized, more cacophonous, more worrisome sound of the trains in Europe, complete with sirens. From the words, they are clearly the trains going to concentration camps. And then the last section in a major key, cheerful, repetitive, almost dittylike. Absorbing to hear, the whole was a tour de force on the part of the musicians.

Preceding that and a complete contrast came Beethoven’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in A Major, in a moving performance played with feeling and grace by cellist Julie Albers and pianist Jeewon Park. Albers draws a warm, floating tone from her cello and played with serenity where indicated and with excitement and swift fingers in the allegros.

Britten wrote his Elegy for Solo Viola at the age of 16, as a high school student who did not fit in. English school boys could be ruthless to anyone who didn’t conform, and Britten did not. He doesn’t say who his Elegy is for, but it’s a lonely-sounding work. Britten was a violist which may account for his choice for instrument, but the content of the work was unusual for a teen in 1929, atonal, not at all melodic, and without recognizable phrasing, at least at first hearing. He had been exposed to Bartok and Schoemberg by his composition teacher for five years, Frank Bridge.

A violist with a big sound, Toby Appel performed it sensitively on Saturday. He also joined pianist Max Levinson for Schumann’s Maerchenbilder (Fairytale Pictures). Though their ensemble work was excellent, Appel’s playing while warm and rich often was not as clean as it could be and occasionally a hair off pitch.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

What We’re Hearing This Month: Classical Music Picks for October

Welcome to October! This month is jam-packed with classical music events in the Seattle area, enough to have our critics scrambling from concert to concert every week. There’s plenty for everyone to enjoy, from early music to new music. Here are a few of our top picks for the month ahead, though this only scratches the surface of this month’s cornucopia of offerings.

Seattle Symphony Principal Cellist Efe Baltacıgil (Photo: Mainly Mozart)

Oct. 4, 6 -7 — Seattle Symphony Principal Cellist Efe Baltacıgil celebrates the start of his second season in Seattle with a performance as featured soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme. Also on the program is Mussorgsky’s A Night on Bald Mountainand Sibelius’ Symphony No. 1.

Oct. 4 – 6  — Modern dance masters from the Paul Taylor Dance Company will be joined by the Seattle Modern Orchestra for three performances of The Uncommitted, a dance piece featuring the music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Also on the program are two other pieces choreographed by Taylor. The performance is part of the University of Washington’s World Dance Series and will be held at the UW’s Meany Hall.

Oct. 5 – 7 — Thanks to the Northwest Sinfonietta, American and Cuban orchestras will perform together in the U.S. for the first time since the Cuban Revolution in 1959. The NW Sinfonietta will be joined by members of Cuba’s Orquesta de Cámara Concierto Sur for a three concert series. For this historic event, they’ll perform works by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona as well as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Oct. 13 – 27 — Seattle Opera presents Fidelio, Beethoven’s only opera. This atmospheric work tells the tale of Lenore, a woman who disguises herself as a man to free her husband from a political prison.

Oct. 19 — Seattle Symphony kicks off its new “Untitled” concert series with “1962”, a program of works by 20th century masters Cage, Scelsi, Feldman, Xenakis, and Ligeti. The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) will join members of the Symphony for this late-night performance in the Benaroya Hall Grand Lobby. The action begins at 9:00 pm with a performance of Gabriel Prokofiev’s Concerto for Turntables and the Orchestra.

Oct. 20 — Early music ensemble Pacific Musicworks performs Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 at St. James Cathedral. This is a great opportunity to hear one of the composer’s most cherished works in one of Seattle’s most glorious sacred spaces.

La Catrina Quartet (Photo: UW World Series)

Oct. 22 — The chamber music mavericks at Classical Revolution are back! This time, they’ll be taking over The Royal Room in Columbia City for their monthly chamber music jam. This month’s event centers around chamber music for the piano, taking full advantage of The Royal Room’s Steinway B instrument.

Oct. 25 — Legendary composer Philip Glass returns to Kirkland Performance Center for an evening of music with Foday Musa Suso, a master of the African Kora.

Oct. 27 — Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra kicks off the 2012-13 season with a performance of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. Violinist Denise Dillenbeck joins the orchestra for Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Also on the program are works by Tchaikovsky and Massenet.

Oct. 30 — La Catrina Quartet brings their signature blend of Latin American and standard repertoire to the University of Washington’s Meany Hall. They’ll perform works by Haydn, Revueltas, Ponce, Frank, and Dvorák.