Catching a Stellar “Trout” at the Summer Chamber Music Festival

Catching a Stellar “Trout” at the Summer Chamber Music Festival

Given the importance of the double bass in Schubert’s Quintet for Piano and Strings, the “Trout,” it’s surprising how few chamber works include it. It anchors the entire work’s carefree lightness, a state which embodied the performance given by violinist Augustin Hadelich, violist Erin Keefe, cellist Bion Tsang, bass Jordan Anderson, and pianist Parker. Continue reading Catching a Stellar “Trout” at the Summer Chamber Music Festival

Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival Opens Fortissimo

Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival Opens Fortissimo

So often, great pianists are not great composers, but Hamelin, definitely a great pianist, has the depth and the imagination and the knowledge to write music which has the components to make it last. Cathy’s Variations, written for his fiancée about five years ago has a gentle flowing melody for a theme, largely in classical-romantic style and tonality. Continue reading Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival Opens Fortissimo

<em>Approaching ecstasy</em> Pours Cavafy’s Poetry into Liquid Bones in Suits

Approaching ecstasy Pours Cavafy’s Poetry into Liquid Bones in Suits

There’s no question that Cavafy is a major poet, but his reputation had to wait until society caught up to him. Though he worked as a nondescript ministry clerk for years, Cavafy made of his poetry a treasure house of the erotic, sensual, visceral–every fleeting thing that shot through the body, he trapped not in amber but in ink, refusing (as Auden later wrote of him) “to pretend that his memories of moments of sensual pleasure are unhappy or spoiled by feelings of guilt.” Continue reading Approaching ecstasy Pours Cavafy’s Poetry into Liquid Bones in Suits