PORTLAND — For lovers of wine and chamber music, an ideal event would offer both, and that’s the beauty of the Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival, which takes place in the charming countryside near Portland. Celebrating its 10th year (August 2-17), the festival brought outstanding concerts to three wineries. It’s always an inside affair with excellent acoustics — sometimes in the winery’s barrel room.
Founded by the wife-and-husband duo of violinist Sasha Callahan and cellist Leo Eguchi, the festival’s programming typically features a range of music for string quartet from the Baroque era up through brand-new works. Since its inception, the festival has presented 12 Beethoven quartets, seven world premieres, composers-in-residence, and fine wines paired with each concert program.
The Willamette Festival’s impressive list of composers-in-residence includes Kevin Day, Kareem Roustom, Reena Esmail, Osvaldo Golijov, Daniel Bernard Roumain, Jessie Montgomery, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Joan Tower. This year’s edition featured several works by Akshaya Tucker, an award-winning composer who is completing a doctorate in composition at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music.
I missed the world premiere of Tucker’s latest work, On Whose Head He Danced for string quintet (string quartet plus viola). It was commissioned by the Willamette Festival and performed during its first weekend at the Appassionata Estate.
The following Sunday (Aug. 10) at the Sokol Blosser Winery, I heard Breathing Sunlight for violin and cello, which Tucker wrote in 2017. It reflected her affinity for the classical music of India and her ability to fuse that sound-world with Western styles. Callahan and Eguchi quickly established a contemplative atmosphere before transitioning to a lighter, dance-like mood, and finishing the piece with a return to its introspective beginning.
Violist Charles Noble joined Callahan and Eguchi to play Tucker’s In Whose Mouth, the Stars (2019), which evoked a story from the Bhagavata Purana in which Krishna as a child was caught eating sand, but when he opened his mouth, his mother could see the cosmos. Sliding between notes, the trio generated a microtonal sense of infinity that was mesmerizing.
The ensemble added violinist Megumi Stohs Lewis to perform two movements from Family Photos (2021) by Kian Ravaei, who blends Iranian-inspired music with American-European sounds. Eguchi used his thumbs on the side of his cello to fashion a drum beat and then added a drone, which, with an occasional wail from his colleagues, gave “On the Tehran Tower” a distinctly Persian flavor. That contrasted sharply with the breezy, hymn-like “In Arcadia,” depicting the town in the Los Angeles suburbs where Ravaei grew up.
In the second half of the concert, the quartet (Callahan, Stohs Lewis, Noble, and Eguchi) delivered a stirring performance of Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 (Death and the Maiden). While the shorter pieces in the first half of the concert were nicely paired with a 2019 Blanc de Blancs and a 2023 Pinot Blanc, Schubert’s emotional tour-de-force was matched with a robust 2022 Pinot Noir.
A week later (August 17), I walked past casks of wine to the cave-like barrel room of Archery Summit Vineyards. The darkened hue of that space enhanced the ambiance of a festival concert that opened with three pieces by living female composers: Tucker, Caroline Shaw, and Shelley Washington.
Tucker’s Hollow Flame (2022) conveyed her reaction to the wildfires that have plagued much of the West Coast for the past decade or more. Violinist Lewis sustained a high, whistling tone that smoldered for a while before igniting, with the ensemble generating agitated phrases. Later, the sound subsided into a mournfulness and quietude that ended with an unresolved feeling.
Shifting to a lighter mood, the quartet played Shaw’s Entr’acte (2011). It started in a cheeky, jokey way that was similar to Haydn. A section of near-toneless glissandos and a sequence of sighing sounds caused some chuckles from the audience. Quirky, random pizzicatos suggested raindrops, and near the end the violins quickly soared as if flying away and vanishing.
The motoric sound of Washington’s Middleground (2016) evoked images of driving alongside a gentle prairie landscape. Now and then short slurs captured a folksy fiddling quality and the sense of a comfortable conversation between friends. Violist Noble superbly expressed a wistful solo, and the quartet exchanged a marvelous series of echoing calls.
Beethoven’s String Quartet No.7, Op. 59, No. 1 (Rasumovsky) was the main meal after intermission. The ensemble played it with verve, but there was some slippage here and there, which resulted in a bit of retuning. Nevertheless, the delightful mix of propulsive and playful qualities in the first two movements was delivered with distinction, and that contrasted very well with the unhurried solemnity of the third. The final movement unleashed a feeling of joy and was dispatched with elan.
The earlier pieces on the program were again paired with white wines: a 2024 Pinot Gris and a 2023 Chardonnay. For the meatier Beethoven, concertgoers were treated to a 2022 Pinot Noir.
One of the cool things after the concert ended was to view the lovely sunlit expanse of the Willamette Valley from the hillside vantage of the winery — an exceptional visual image that complemented the wine and the music.
