Tag Archives: mendelssohn

Arts & Entertainment, Music

What We’re Hearing This Month: Classical Music Picks For April

Portland Cello Project (Photo: Tarina Westlund)

Spring is in full bloom around Seattle, from the University of Washington’s famed cherry trees to the patches of tulips poking up in home gardens around town. With these seasonal transitions come musical changes as well; local ensembles and concert venues look towards warmer weather this month with music of growth, rebirth, and summer sunshine.

April 8 — Trio con Brio Copenhagen performs as part of the UW World Series. Comprised of two Korean sisters and a Danish pianist, the ensemble performs classics by Beethoven and Mendelssohn as well as a piece by Danish composer Per Nørgård.

April 11 – 19 — Pacific Northwest Ballet‘s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream combines Mendelssohn’s beloved score with gorgeous choreography by 20th century master George Balanchine. PNB completes the magic with whimsical pastel-hued sets and costumes.

April 12 — A Russian composer of Jewish heritage, Maximilian Steinberg completed his 1927 choral masterpiece Passion Week just before Stalin’s ban on religious music went into effect. As a result, the piece was never performed. Choral ensemble Cappella Romana sheds light on this lost work with world premiere performances in Portland (April 11) and Seattle (April 12).

April 20 — Portland Cello Project rolls into town with the folk singers of the Alialujah Choir, a fellow Oregonian ensemble. The cellists and vocalists bring an eclectic mix of tunes to the stage at the Triple Door.

April 22 — Cellist Joshua Roman is back in town with a new program of musical gems for Town Hall audiences. The Town Music series artistic director is joined by Lithuanian pianist Andrius Zlabys for music by Stravinsky, Schnittke, and others.

April 24 & 26 — Seattle Symphony concertmaster Alexander Velinzon takes the stage for Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major. Afterwards, the spotlight shifts to the symphony in Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

April 26 — Guest harpsichordist Alexander Weimann leads the Seattle Baroque Orchestra in “Delirio Amoroso”, a program that explores George Frideric Handel’s visit to Rome. Hear Italian music of the early 18th century alongside pieces the young Handel composed during his stay in the capitol.

April 29 — Intrepid violinist Hilary Hahn has covered vast musical territory in her career, from Baroque sonatas to contemporary composers. Her UW World Series solo recital features a medley of works by Mozart, Schubert, Schoenberg, Telemann, and others.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Choral Arts’ praise of Mary

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Richard Sparks would be proud of the choir he formed and nurtured. Since 2007, Choral Arts has continued to bloom under the direction of Robert Bode, winning several prestigious prizes over the past three years. Saturday night it displayed its excellence in a program of works of chants and songs in praise of the Virgin Mary.

Fifteen songs spanned the 16th century to today, from Palestrina and Hans Leo Hassler to contemporary works with four composers present, three of whose works were written on commission from the choir. The three instances of chant could have been from much earlier.

The twenty-seven singers are close knit and uniform in tone quality, using little vibrato in this program. The sopranos sounded as clear as choirboys in a British cathedral, so that the harmonies in the pleasantly resonant acoustics of St. Joseph Parish Church on Capitol Hill were true to the composers’ intent.

There were many highlights, but perhaps the heart of the program came with the premiere of John David Earnest’s “Vergine Bella.” This gorgeous work caught up the listener from the start, the choir softly singing the first phrases in English on one note, while guest tenor Ross Hauck came in soaring above them in a beautiful melody, singing unseen and in Latin. The words were from Petrarch, the basis of the work taken from a setting of the same words by 14th century composer Guillaume Dufay.

Earnest, the choir’s composer-in-residence, came from New York for this. Present also were composers John Muehleisen, Rick Asher, and Melinda Bargreen.

In the program, Bode grouped more than one work with the same title together, and others he spread out. He placed Muehleisen’s “Alma Redemptoris Mater” beside the same words set by Palestrina, which could be considered daunting to today’s composer, but Muehleisen, well known to choir-going Seattleites, created a fine piece which is almost a prayer, ending on a soft high note.

Asher’s “Behold the Handmaid,” in its premiere, had as text a poem by Bode. Centered around Mary’s emotions and realizations of her role, from receiving Love to surrendering it, it was ably mirrored by Asher in the music.

I don’t review my friends and colleagues, so suffice it to say Bargreen’s fine “Stella Splendens,” a Seattle premiere, was a worthy addition to the program.

Of the remainder, it’s hard to single out one over another of the many musical gems gathered by Bode, from a 17-year-old Benjamin Britten’s “Hymn to the Virgin,” to Arvo Pärt’s “Magnificat,” to Grieg’s and his compatriot Trond Kverno’s “Ave Maris Stella,” to Schubert’s and Mendelssohn’s “Ave Maria,” both these latter sung by Hauck.

British composer Giles Swayne struck a different note with his “Magnificat,” in which he used rhythms and sounds of a Senegalese working song at both start and finish, its energetic rhythm conjuring up active people singing praises as they moved.

The one less-than-great area of the choir’s singing came in their rendering of chant. The music for chant is often repetitive with a simple melody, frequently with much of the phrase on one note. Its richness and expressiveness come from the music being sung freely according to the flow of the words, the dynamics following the words’ emphasis as well. Choral Arts’ chant sounded pedestrian, the rhythm plodding, the accenting the same throughout. This presumably was Bode’s choice, but it was less than successful in imparting the meaning of the words. Otherwise, the concert was an absorbing delight from beginning to end.

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Arts & Entertainment, Music

HJ Lim Drops the Hammers on Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto

Pianist HJ Lim
Pianist HJ Lim

On the face of it, Thursday’s Seattle Symphony concert at Benaroya (repeated this Saturday) had a wonderful program with a gifted young soloist and well-known conductor. It should have added up to a superb evening of music-making.

Alas, the young pianist, 25-year-old HJ Lim (her preferred spelling) chose to take Mendelssohn’s musical ideas for his Piano Concerto No. 1 and, instead of allowing the sensibilities of his era to shine through,  imposed hers on top. This was not Mendelssohn as he would have recognized it.

Starting with an aggressively forceful start and very fast, Lim’s playing insistently reminded the listener that the piano is a percussion instrument. This impression came back many times during the performance, but in between she created a beautiful tone with a sensitive touch, particularly during the second movement.

It was a flashy performance of tension and dramatic emotion, more suited to 1931 than 1831 (the date of the concerto), including deeply exaggerated stretching of tempos during solo sections. Lim has undeniably excellent technical ability, but Mendelssohn’s work comes in the early years of the Romantic era and her interpretation was out of that particular ball park. Guest conductor Jun Märkl ably kept the orchestra together with Lim even in her most idiosyncratic moments. The audience loved it and she performed as encore her own arrangement of the Korean song Arirang.

The concert began with Stravinsky’s charming Suite from Pulcinella, in which he took music of Pergolesi and transmuted it to something purely Stravinsky, but with all the elegant Baroque melodies shining through. Märkl and a reduced orchestra (half the musicians are playing for Seattle Opera’s Cenerentola which starts tomorrow), gave it sparkle, vigor, and clear articulation. At one moment it was lilting and unhurried; at another brash, almost rude; at another fast and lively. Solos dot this lightly orchestrated work, ably played by all, but notably from concertmaster Alexander Velinzon, principal cellist Efe Baltacigil, and principal oboe Ben Hausmann

The work admirably suited Märkl’s style of conducting. He moves like a fencer, graceful and balanced; and quick, precise and decisive in his indications to the musicians, very much in charge of every detail.

He used the same style in Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 in E-Flat Major, which he conducted without the score. He gave it plenty of vitality, with a portentous beginning and then good contrasts with more lyrical parts, though sometimes his approach seemed a little heavy, and in the second movement he asked for some oddly overlong hesitations which changed the flow of the music. He brought elegance to the third movement and an exciting finish to the fourth.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Violinist Augustin Hadelich Delivers “Extraordinary Performance” at Seattle’s Chamber Music Festival

Augustin Hadelich, violinist (Photo: Rosalie O’Connor)

The second week of Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival wrapped up Friday night with half the performance being two-piano works, and the other half string octets, one of each being classical, one of each being 20th century, a good study in contrasts.

But first, the recital. This year, these free half-hours by one or two musicians introducing and performing their own choices have been some of the most absorbing performances of the evening, and Friday’s was no exception. It featured violinist Augustin Hadelich and pianist Orion Weiss in Stravinsky’s Divertimento for Violin and Piano, followed by Tchaikovsky’s Valse-Scherzo, Op. 34, not played here before.

On the face of it, this seems straightforward, but in his comments Hadelich announced this was a frivolous program, explaining that Stravinsky transcribed various works by Tchaikovsky to create a ballet, The Fairy’s Kiss, and in the process mischievously “Stravinskified” the Tchaikovsky. He and Weiss were about to perform first the Stravinsky version of one work, complete with “mistakes” where the performers get apparently out of sync before trying to recover, and then the original Tchaikovsky from which it was taken.

It was an extraordinary performance by both but particularly Hadelich who tossed off the difficult technical aspects with lightness and ease while maintaining the delight and fun in these works. Where else could we hear such a coupling, together with an explanation, and performed by two consummate artists who were completely in tune with each other and the music?

In the ensuing concert, Festival newcomer Inon Barnatan and Adam Neiman played Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K. 488, in a spirited, elegant performance absolutely together.

Jeremy Denk, pianist

Sounding less rehearsed, less insightful than one would expect from these two pianists, and not always quite together, pianists Jeremy Denk and Weiss gave a work new to the Festival, Debussy’s 1915 En blanc et noir.

According to the composer it was intended to be abstract, but the first, fast-moving, angry movement and the second dedicated to a friend killed in the war, are fierce indictments of war with trumpet-like blasts and interpolations of Luther’s hymn “Ein’ feste burg.” The last movement, dedicated to Stravinsky, has inklings of the aftermath of war. The performance brought out many of the moods which ebb and flow throughout, both gentle and forceful, the lugubrious start to the second movement with its elegiac moments and the quickfooted final one.

Shostakovich is normally the composer we associate with musical thoughts on war and its ravages, but his Two Pieces for String Octet, Op. 11, are more straightforward. He was eighteen when he composed the Prelude on the death of a close friend from typhoid, and a year later added a Scherzo as a companion piece. The performance, by violinists Hadelich, Ida Levin, Stephen Rose and Benjmin Beilman (another festival newcomer), violists Cynthia Phelps and Richard O’Neill, and cellists Ronald Thomas and Bion Tsang, brought out the declamatory and dirge-like nature of the Prelude and its eventual resolution toward some sort of peace, while the players gave the Scherzo its darker, frenetic side, vigorous, discordant, disturbing, and screechy.

The same group went on to play a work from just a century earlier but light years away in temperament: Mendelssohn’s String Octet, an amazing accomplishment for a sixteen-year-old. While the performers led by Hadelich achieved many moments of glorious songfulness, particularly in the dancing, quicksilver third movement, whenever the music reached a forte, they sounded too forceful for the music, turning the tone a bit ugly, particularly in the highest register.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Seattle Symphony Showcases Lively and Somber Classical Favorites

Glorious rays of Seattle sun couldn’t keep a sizable crowd out of Benaroya Hall yesterday afternoon. Even more surprising, the diverse audience was there to hear the Seattle Symphony and Chorale perform Mozart’s Requiem, a funeral mass. It’s one of the composer’s most somber, powerful works. In contrast, the other piece on the program, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, was more suited to the warm spring weather. Full of vivacious energy, this staple of the violin repertoire was performed by renowned violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. Seattle Symphony conductor laureate Gerard Schwarz returned to the podium for this program, which had a run of three performances this weekend.

Violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg

The concert began with Salerno-Sonnenberg’s electrifying performance of the Mendelssohn violin concerto. Striding onto the stage in an unusual, flashy outfit featuring a billowing blouse, tight black slacks, and chunky pumps, Salerno-Sonnenberg exuded the stage presence of a rock star. Her confident, spirited playing suited the virtuosity of the work. Occasionally, she seemed almost too energetic for the orchestra, especially during fast sections of the third movement. Symphony and soloist reached a happy middle ground in the slow, sensitive second movement. Here, the orchestra provided the perfect amount of support for Salerno-Sonnenberg’s soaring tones.

Mozart toiled on the Requiem, his final masterpiece, right up to his death at age 35. The work was posthumously completed by his student Franz Süssmayer. Yesterday’s performance featured four vocal soloists: soprano Jennifer Zetlan, mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby, tenor Benjamin Butterfield, and bass-baritone Clayton Brainerd.

All four vocalists gave stellar solo performances, particularly Brainerd in the Tuba Mirum movement and Zetlan in the Communio section. As a quartet, the soloists seemed to struggle with blending the natural timbres of their voices. Although Maultsby’s velvety voice complemented Brainerd’s sonorous tones, Butterfield’s sensitive tenor sounded reedy compared to the full voices of the mezzo-soprano and bass-baritone. At times, Zetlan’s rich soprano was barely audible next to the voices of the other three soloists.

The Requiem calls for a pared-down orchestra with a much smaller string section and fewer winds. Throughout yesterday’s concert, the smaller Seattle Symphony ensemble maintained excellent balance with the full Chorale. The moving Lacrimosa was particularly poignant in its blending of vocal counterpoint with melodies in the string section.

The performance of the Requiem was followed by another sacred choral work by Mozart, Ave Verum Corpus, composed less than a month before he began work on the Requiem.