PERSPECTIVE — Boasting two eminent chamber music festivals, the Pacific Northwest could fashion a rivalry between Seattle and Portland much like the rabid soccer fan base in those cities. But the classical music scene features cooperation rather than competition between the Seattle Chamber Music Society and Chamber Music Northwest. Their summer festivals provided a smorgasbord of music by top-tier talent with a bit of sharing in commissioned works and artists.
Founded in 1982, the Seattle Chamber Music Society presents all of its mainstage summer concerts in Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall, a beautiful 536-seat venue located inside Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony. With excellent acoustics and sloped seating, the space offers an exceptional experience, and the Chamber Music Society offers a live online option with six camera angles and intermission interviews.
Established in 1971, Chamber Music Northwest presents its mainstage festival concerts at Kaul Auditorium (760 seats) and the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts (550 seats). The organization also uses smaller venues for its New@Night series, and it sponsors performances for young professionals and an institute for exceptional teenage string musicians.
While the Seattle and Portland presenters actively fund new works, the Seattle Chamber Music Society just started doing so in 2007 and only has 16 commissioned and co-commissioned pieces under its belt. Chamber Music Northwest has been at the game since its founding and can now list 140 works it has funded. This year, the two entities teamed up with the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival to commission Ethan Soledad’s Poems from Angel Island, and there is every reason to think that more collaborative efforts are in the offing.
Because it takes three hours to drive from Portland to Seattle when the traffic is light, this reviewer, who lives in Portland, was only able to attend the Seattle concert on July 20. The program featured the world premiere of Martin Kennedy’s Verses for Piano Quintet, which was underwritten by the Chamber Music Society commissioning club.
Played with intensity by pianist Paige Roberts Molly, violinists Erin Keefe and Alexander Kerr, violist Paul Neubauer, and cellist Raphael Bell, the opening movement, “Dansa,” sparkled with chime-like pronouncements from the keyboard. The mood calmed down quite a bit during the second movement, “Aubade,” as soothing melodic lines from the strings gained the upper hand. An insistent, repetitive line from the piano and aggressive strings gave the final movement, “Fable,” an industrial flair, although the composer’s program notes indicated that the increasing number of fortissimos were meant to reflect a stiffening moral rectitude à la Aesop’s stories.
Mozart’s String Quintet No. 5 in D major, K. 593, received an elegant performance by violinists James Ehnes and Amy Schwartz Moretti, violists Che-Yen Chen and Matthew Lipman, and cellist Edward Arron. They created refined moments with crisp and incisive playing, easily transitioning to relaxed sections and teasing the audience with a bit of light-footed, Haydnesque humor before wrapping up the piece with a couple of elevated fugues.
It seemed that violinist Andrew Wan had to quiet his nerves at the beginning of Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in G minor. His sound was a tad flat. He corrected that fairly quickly and conquered the mercurial twists and turns of this difficult piece with élan. Steven Osborne’s superb pianism supported Wan with sensitive dynamics.
In Portland, I attended Chamber Music Northwest’s New@Night series that took place at BodyVox Dance Center. The concert kicked off with Clancy Newman’s Golden Blues, an homage to vintage horror films such as Vertigo, The Twilight Zone, and Psycho, its brief riffs from each score entwined with a slightly bluesy overlay. Violinist Isabelle Ai Durrenberger and cellist Newman wove the passages with a playfulness that was inspiring.
Angélica Negrón’s The Violinist related the amusing dream of a young woman who had to play the Brahms Violin Concerto with the New York Philharmonic even though she had never touched a violin before. Alexi Kenney evoked a swirl of nightmarish and witty sounds, masterfully accompanying the spoken text, which came from a recording.
Mixing the pulse of electronic dance music with Persian classical music, Kian Ravaei’s Ecstasies for Flute and Electronic Music seesawed restlessly between two seemingly disjointed worlds, accompanied by an unrelenting light show. None of that deterred flutist Tara Helen O’Connor from delivering a constantly shifting stream of notes. The audience rewarded the sonic barrage with a standing ovation, but most of the piece struck me as rhythmic noise.
Kenney returned to the stage to perform Paul Wiancko’s X Suite. This seven-movement work was augmented by projected photographs from a contemporary sculpture garden. Most of the sculptures had smooth, reflective surfaces that matched up well with the abstract style of the music, which used all sorts of extended techniques that Kenney commanded with precision and intensity.
The next New@Night concert on July 16 was held at The Old Church in downtown Portland. The relaxed ambience received a jolt at the outset of Ethan Soledad’s Poems from Angel Island, in a world-premiere performance that received a scintillating account from the Opus13 Quartet and pianist Yoko Greeney.
The title of the piece refers to poetry written by Chinese immigrants while they were held at the Angel Island processing station. Conveying the distraught emotional content of three poems, which were translated and printed on a sheet for concertgoers, Soledad’s music soared, dived, and incisively evoked heartrending experiences.
With violist Aiden Kane replacing Albin Uusijärvi, who broke his collarbone while playing freestyle Frisbee earlier in the week, the ensemble (violinists Sonoko Miriam Welde and Edvard Erdal, violist Kane, cellist Daniel Thorell, and pianist Greeney) delivered an impressive explosion for the opening statement of “From Endless Sorrows, Tears and Blood Streak.” Afterwards, the strings shredded their way through volatile passages before closing with a stutter of notes. In “Random Thoughts” the mood changed to images of drifting clouds that were sprinkled with notes from the keyboard. The final poem, “Cages of Jade,” switched between tension and looseness, slipped into desolation, yet concluded with a tinge of hope.
Violinist Carolin Widmann put on a virtuosic display with several selections from 5 Capriccios für Violine by Helena Winkelman. Widmann excelled in edgy, furiously fast passages, then quickly switched to placid phrases. She made the most difficult passages look like a walk in the park.
Inspired by bird song and folk song, Andrea Tarrodi’s String Quartet No. 2 (Madárdal) had an inviting, rustic quality. The Opus13 Quartet, with Kane filling in as violist, generated chirps and feathery pizzicatos. Phrases with no vibrato and bird-like calls emanated as if from a distance, and a flock seemed to take off with tremendous acceleration during the final measures of the piece.
On Chamber Music Northwest’s mainstage series at Kaul Auditorium on July 19, the Viano Quartet teamed with bassist Nina Bernat for the world premiere of Alistair Coleman’s Ghost Art Canticles. Inspired by a chapel-like building designed by Ellsworth Kelly, Coleman wrote music that echoed Bach’s but offered a refreshingly different vibe. The “Sunburst” movement opened with a motoric fusion of plucking, glissandos, and lightning-fast passages. “Evensong” countered it with meditative chords that suggested taffy being pulled. “Perpetua” ended the work with uplifting momentum.
Finnish composer Olli Mustonen’s Nonetto II wowed the audience with an exceptional blend of new and old sounds. The music seemed to start with a phrase from a familiar earlier work but altered it in a way that made it completely new. The ensemble (violinists Benjamin Beilman, Welde, Erdal, and Hao Zhou, violists Ai Durrenberger and Kane, cellists Tate Zawadiuk and Thorell, and bassist Bernat) lit up the hall. The piece marvelously transitioned from a mix of probing and lighthearted phrases to a sublime melody that was embellished with elegant ornamentation and then surged ahead and rocketed to a riveting finale.
The concert concluded with a fiery performance of Mendelssohn’s String Octet by the same group (minus Bernat). Their sound got a little out of balance now and then, but the enthusiasm was contagious.
The world premiere of Sean Shepherd’s Latticework launched the concert at Kaul Auditorium on July 26. Dedicated to and played by violinist Leila Josefowicz and cellist Paul Watkins, Latticework fashioned a dueling soliloquy that constantly changed course, including some very fast passages that suggested two fish wiggling furiously upstream. In the second half of the piece, the music became more of a conversation, tinged with a bit of humor; after long sets of chords, it settled into a calm, quiet ending.
The Divertimento from Stravinsky’s 1928 ballet The Fairy’s Kiss received a glorious performance by Josefowicz and pianist Gloria Chien. Stravinsky ingeniously wove Tchaikovsky’s melodies in new ways that got Josefowicz’s bow hairs flying. Playing from memory, she delved into the piece with fierce determination, supported with great sensitivity by Chien. The stunningly wild ending inspired thunderous applause.
Brahms’ String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major closed the evening with a stellar turn by violinists David McCarroll and Soovin Kim, violists Beth Guterman Chu and Burchard Tang, and cellists Zlatomir Fung and Paul Watkins. The constant change in the pairing of instruments and the exchange of thematic material was spellbinding. The performance culminated in a robust and flashing finale.
