Tag Archives: schubert

Arts & Entertainment, Music

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

Soprano Mary Mackenzie performs Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” at Town Hall Seattle on June 24

This June, Seattle’s ending the concert season with a bang, in the form of a month-long flurry of world premiere performances. Seattle Symphony, Town Hall Seattle, and Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra are among the ensembles and venues joining in on the new music fun. As the 2014-15 season draws to a close, celebrate another year of local classical music with brand-new works as well as perennial favorites.

May 30 – Jun. 8 — Our classical music critic Philippa Kiraly dubs Pacific Northwest Ballet‘s Giselle as “one of the company’s best”. Read her review and discover why this production is a must-see.

Jun. 6 — Sir Mix-A-Lot at the Seattle Symphony? The orchestra’s Sonic Evolution concert is (baby got) back, celebrating the Seattle music scene with new orchestra pieces inspired by local luminaries. Seattle band Pickwick joins Mix-A-Lot and the symphony for this unique program.

Jun. 7 — Premieres abound at Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra‘s season finale concert. Hear brand-new works by Binna Kim and Tyler Kline, as well as West Coast and North American premieres by Alex Baranowski and Gabriel Prokofiev (grandson of Sergei Prokofiev).

Jun. 8 & 14 — Northwest Chamber Chorus concludes the concert season with “Vices and Virtues”, a musical journey that explores the qualities that make us all human. The wide-ranging program features everything from Baroque classics by Bach and Monteverdi to music by living composer Alice Parker.

Jun. 13 — Seattle Modern Orchestra tackles the theme of “Musical Commentaries” with three pieces that pay tribute to the legacy other composers. The program includes a recent work by UW professor Joël-François Durand as well as music by 20th century composers Franco Donatoni and Earle Brown.

Jun. 15 — Piano and harpsichord maestro Byron Schenkman concludes the inaugural season of his concert series with a performance of Schubert’s Trout Quintet. Schenkman is joined by a quartet of local musicians for this beloved chamber music masterpiece.

Jun. 19 & 21 — With his ballets The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky cemented his legacy as one of the great composers of the 20th century. In a near-superhuman feat, the Seattle Symphony performs all three of these masterworks in a single program.

Jun. 24 — The month of world premieres continues at Town Hall Seattle. The Town Music series features new works by Raymond Lustig, Amir Shpilman, Wang Jie, and Artistic Director Joshua Roman. Also on the program: Soprano Mary Mackenzie sings Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire song cycle.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Violinist Hilary Hahn Shines at UW World Series

Violinist Hilary Hahn (Photo: Karsten Moran)

A few pieces into violinist Hilary Hahn‘s recital at the University of Washington, my companion leaned over and whispered in amazement, “Her tone is like clarified butter!” Indeed, Hahn’s sound is gloriously full and smooth — anything but gritty. When combined with her exacting technique and musical poise, it all adds up to the very picture of a master violinist at the top of her game.

A touring soloist since her teenage years, the 34-year old Hahn first gained attention for her interpretations of the classics, especially Bach. Recently, she’s expanded her musical horizons, pushing beyond the traditional classical canon. In 2012, she recorded an album of improvisations with German composer Hauschka, who’s known for his pared-down soundscapes featuring prepared piano.

Hahn’s latest recording project is In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores. The album features twenty-six short pieces commissioned from an illustrious list of composers including Nico Muhly, Jennifer Higdon, and Mason Bates. Hahn’s open contest to find the 27th encore drew a pool of more than 400 submissions from around the world.

Last week, Hahn visited Seattle for a UW World Series recital with pianist Cory Smythe. The April 29 concert at the UW’s Meany Hall for the Performing Arts paired repertoire by Mozart, Schubert, and Telemann with new pieces by living composers Antón García Abril and Richard Barrett, commissioned as part of Hahn’s encores project.

Speaking from the stage, Hahn introduced the pieces on the program, providing background and explaining her connection to each work. She’s an affable speaker, never talking down to the audience. Instead, Hahn’s intelligent commentary felt like an invitation to join her in her musical world.

Like her speaking, Hahn’s playing is a reflection of her personality. Calm and collected, Hahn brings a sense of understated warmth to her music. Her playing always feels firmly planted on the ground, radiating emotion instead of gushing passion.

Standing alone on Meany Hall’s immense stage, Hahn began Telemann’s Fantasia No. 6 in E Minor by creating an atmosphere of calculated melancholy. Though she took small liberties in tempo throughout the solo work’s four movements, these moments all made sense and felt completely natural. After listening to Hahn perform Telemann, it’s easy to understand why she first made her name as a Bach player. Her understated brand of musical expression brings a graceful emotionality to the Baroque style.

Spanish composer Anton Garcia Abril’s Third Sigh blends a variety of musical styles. Some harmonies recall Bartok’s beloved Hungarian folk tunes, while others evoke jazzy Gershwin tunes. Commissioned by Hahn for In 27 Pieces, Third Sigh begins with a flurry of extended violin trills that evolve into soaring melodies. At times giddy, at times grave, the work strings together beautiful phrases that flow one after another. It’s all very nice-sounding, but in the end doesn’t seem to add up to any greater statement.

“Sweet” and “tender” aren’t adjectives typically associated with Arnold Schoenberg’s work. Yet Hahn and Smythe’s performance of the Phantasy for Violin and Piano was full of unexpected sweetness and fleeting tender moments. “It’s not about each note,” said Hahn in her introduction to the piece. “It’s about the gesture. It can be spiky, but it can also be lyrical and ethereal.” There were certainly plenty of spiky moments as Hahn and Smythe exchanged volleys of notes. The musical conversation between the duo could have been enhanced by a sharper tone in the piano.

Violin and piano found an ideal balance during Mozart’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major. The two-movement work began cheerfully, with Smythe’s bubbling piano lines providing a foundation for Hahn’s buoyant tone. Here Hahn’s playing was the picture of Mozartean elegance, combining the composer’s refined musical style with a dash of wit. In the theme and variations of the second movement, the duo highlighted dramatic changes from major to minor key.

Hahn and Smythe concluded with Schubert’s Fantasia in C Major for Violin and Piano, the most emotionally vulnerable performance of the evening. Here Hahn was at her most dramatic, effectively managing the ebb and flow between storm and sunshine. One impeccably-timed pause cut perfectly into a particularly angst minor key passage like a gasp of breath, seeming to bring time to a halt before dissolving into a sunny major key. Though Smythe’s sensitive accompaniment worked well in lyrical sections, he could have stepped up to better match Hahn’s energy in stormier passages.

Following on the emotional high point of the Schubert, Hahn and Smythe concluded with an encore by British composer Max Richter. The final track on In 27 Pieces, Mercy is a sweetly sentimental work that brought out yet another side of Hahn’s musical personality. Her rich violin tone took on just a hint of longing and raw emotionality, a parting gesture that left me intrigued and wanting to hear more.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

A Remarkable Young Quartet in Modigliani

1 Comment

Photo by Jerôme Bonnet.

Photo by photo Jerôme Bonnet.

Modigliani Quartet 1 (photo Jerôme Bonnet) thumbnail
Modigliani Quartet 2 (photo Jerôme Bonnet) thumbnail

The Emerson String Quartet came to mind more than once during the performance by the Modigliani Quartet at Meany Theater Tuesday night. It was not just that the ten-year-old French group of four close friends began as a quartet right after school (maybe in school), nor that within a year of forming it began to win prestigious prizes. It was the musicianship, the close communication that seemed effortless, the fresh outlook and thoughtful interpretation, and the undeniable topflight quality of performance that made the connection.

At the UW International Chamber Music Series Tuesday, the Modigliani began with the last quartet, “No. 3 in E-Flat Major,” by Juan Crisostomo Arriaga, an immensely gifted younger Spanish contemporary of Schubert who died at 19. Not at all a lightweight composition, Arriaga’s work fits into the pantheon of the late Haydn Quartets and of Mozart. The second movement owes something to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, with its birdsong imitations in the first and second violins and a splendid storm created with tremolos and eerie lulls.

The Modigliani played much in the style of the time: clean, with emotions and energy inside an elegant frame. As a group, the musicians are spare with their vibrato, using a little for expression but often none. Only cellist Francois Kieffer used it continually thought the program.

The last Beethoven Quartet, “No. 16 in F Major,” composed two years later than the Arriaga, is clearly more forward looking, but at the same time, Beethoven here created almost a distillation of his musical ideas, so it is sparer, more concentrated than some of his earlier works. Although in F Major, its extraordinary third movement, profound and unhurried most of the time, was not joyful in the Modigliani’s hands, while the last moody movement, with its repeated emphatic chords, gave the feeling of Fate knocking on the door. It was a riveting performance, but not more so than the Debussy which followed.

The four are playing superb instruments, from a Mariani viola of 1660 with a deep velvety sound to a Goffriller cello from 1706, and violins by Gagliano (1734) and Guadagnini (1780). The musicians have found out how to draw the most responsive sound from them, beautiful, rich and warm, with attack and emphasis where the music demands it, but with no forcing, dragging or pushing to its creation.

They used more vibrato but, again, more as an ornament than as a continual style in Debussy’s only quartet, in G Minor. Where the music required it they merged their voices, while at other times sounding distinct and individual, as though having a conversation, whether in the many plucked-string sections or the muted third movement. The music sounded fresh minted, fresh washed, with its colors glowing.

It was not a capacity audience for this astonishingly gifted quartet, but the listeners at Meany were as quiet as one ever hears them until the end, when they brought the quartet back for two encores — the first a minuet with two trios, Schubert’s D 89, again elegant and sprightly; the second a complete change of pace, a Shostakovich polka which left everybody laughing.

For more of the cultural goings-on in Seattle, connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You won’t regret it, we promise.

Arts & Entertainment

Vienna’s Choirboys Charm Benaroya Hall

Courtesy of Vienna Boys Choir

Five hundred and fifteen years ago, the Holy Roman Emperor decreed singing boys amongst his musicians in Vienna, and the Vienna Boys Choir was born. Ninety-five years ago the boys branched out from singing only for the imperial court, and since then have toured the world in four choirs, one of which, the Bruckner Choir, performed at Benaroya Hall Sunday evening.

They sing all kinds of music now, and the 24 boys with their young conductor and choirmaster Manolo Cagnin sang largely classical and sacred music in the first half and lighter fare in the second, all of it from memory and in up to four parts.

Last time they came I was a little disappointed, but not so this time. The boys, between ages 10 and 14, appeared to be mostly from the younger end of the range, but their training showed. Singing music from Orff’s Carmina Burana, plus works by Schubert and Victoria, Mascagni, and Haydn among others in the first half, they displayed clear tone, decisive enunciation and synchronization as well as well-nigh perfect harmony in exquisite sound.

What I did miss was more expression. They used dynamics as directed, louder or softer, but I didn’t hear nuances of phrasing as much as I’d have liked, and this was not helped by their deadpan facial expressions throughout. However, this is probably how they are required to behave, along with their stance: feet slightly apart, hands by their sides, totally unfidgety.

Several boys sang solos, large and small, all done well, but two boys stood out. One had a singularly beautiful timbre to his voice, heard clearly as he sang the mezzo line in A.L. Weber’s “Pie Jesu.” The boy who sang the upper line appeared to be one of the youngest in the group, but he had a surprisingly big voice for his size, reaching the highest notes easily. His voice sounded well supported, and this impression was enhanced towards the end of the program when he sang solo in Johann Strauss, Jr.’s “By the Beautiful Blue Danube.” We are used to this as an instrumental waltz — not arranged as it was here with all its fast swirling notes. But the choir sang it with complete ease, with ornamentation and articulated arpeggios sung beautifully by this one child.

This was extraordinary bel canto singing with fine vocal technique, delivered in a boy’s pure soprano. He could easily have sung the role of, for instance, Rosina in The Barber of Seville, or as we heard just recently, Marie in The Daughter of the Regiment. He is lucky to live today. Three centuries ago, he would have been castrated to keep his voice as it is.

The boys sang two other familiar Strauss pieces, “Voices of Spring” and the “Chitchat Polka,” as well as J.A. Freylinghausen’s “Oh Happy Day,” Abba’s “Thank You for the Music” and others, some lively, syncopated, jazzy and fun. Their English was fine, and they also sang in German, Italian, and Latin.

Conductor and choirmaster Cagnin, also young, conducted from the piano when he was not needing both hands for some very florid accompaniments. Unfortunately, his pianism is not up to the caliber of the choir. He often used more pedal than necessary; in Haydn’s “Insanae et vanae curae” (“Mad and Vain Worries”), for instance. His playing was often messy, and runs undifferentiated in faster passages. His conducting, however, was clear, as he used his whole body, coattails flying, wild curls tossing, long arms delicately or with grand sweeps indicating just what he wanted from the boys.

All in all, the choir lived up to its formidable reputation.

Want an encore? Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more  like this.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Choral Arts’ praise of Mary

1 Comment

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.

For more concert reviews and general excellence, connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and  be friends. 

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Byron Schenkman and Friends and an “Entrancing” Schubertiade

We have a plethora of top-quality classical music performances in Seattle in all genres but one. There are orchestral concerts, chamber music concerts, instrumental recitals, brass performances, sacred music and secular, and choral concerts large and small — we have one of the best choral traditions in the country here.

But what we don’t hear much of, live, is art song or lieder, the large literature of beautiful songs for solo singers written by composers from baroque days to today: Handel, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, Ravel, Gershwin, Poulenc, up to Ned Rorem, Lee Hoiby, and William Bolcom, just to name a few. And of course, the towering figure of Schubert, whose exquisite songs number at least 600.

Clara Rottsolk, soprano

This gap was filled briefly Sunday night, when Byron Schenkman and Friends put on an evening of music such as Schubert did, when the composer sat at the piano trying out his songs and and new compositions with friends in an informal gathering. In the intimate environs of “Downstairs” at Town Hall, with Schenkman at the piano, violinist Liza Zurlinden, clarinetist Sean Osborn, and soprano Clara Rottsolk together gave an entrancing version of a Schubert gathering.

The Sonata in D major for violin and piano, D. 384, introduced this listener to Zurlinden, a newcomer to Seattle with impressive credentials. These were born out by her approach to this lively sonata, in which she and Schenkman were closely in sync with phrasing and expression, and she used vibrato to shade rather than lathering it over every note. (It did sound as though they had not had much rehearsal, as at times they weren’t exactly together.)

Almost all the rest of the concert was given over to Schubert songs. Schubert really understood the voice, while Rottsolk has the perfect vocal quality for his music and the ability to put across the meaning of the words with her demeanor and facial expression as well as in her singing.

I don‘t remember who it was who said “An art song is an opera in three minutes,” but it’s true. The singer must put across in that time what takes three hours in an opera, and it is an art which Rottsolk has mastered. She sang several well-known Schubert lieder, including “Im Fruehling,” “Auf dem Wasser zu Singen,” “Ganymed,” and “An die Musik,” as well as a couple less familiar. Rottsolk’s voice glows, sometime softly, sometimes burnished. Her pitch sense is unerring, and her technique easy. It’s a lovely vehicle for these songs and I could have listened to a dozen more.

The piano here is as important as the voice. Schenkman is an unerring musician himself, and the pairing of the two made for a true collaboration.

Towards the end, Rottsolk took a short break while Schenkman gave a fine performance of the substantial Allegretto in E-Flat major, D. 946, No. 2, not published until Brahms found it later in the century. As the icing on the performance cake, Rottsolk, Schenkman, and clarinetist Osborn ended the program with “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen” (“The Shepherd on the Rock”), one of Schubert’s more glorious inspirations, which we rarely get to hear live in such a professional performance.

The concert was all too soon over and we are again faced with a dearth of lieder and art song performance. Perhaps Schenkman and Friends could schedule something like this every year (maybe not on a fine June night) to feed the perennial hunger of art-song lovers in Seattle.