Category: Seattle Chamber Music Society

At the beginning of each Seattle Chamber Music Concert a disembodied voice instructs audience members to not record or photograph the performance and asks people to turn down their hearing aids. For a variety of reasons it’s a request I find humorous. On the one hand I remember bearing witness to plenty of embarrassing episodes where grandparents cranked up the sensitivity of their hearing aid to hear something on the television only to have the hearing aid’s high-pitched buzz agitate every dog in the neighborhood. What harm could a hearing aid do? Is it really necessary to ask people to turn down their hearing aid?  Turns out, it is.

Wednesday’s Seattle Chamber Music Society concert was marked by steady playing from the musicians, average repertory, and a hearing aid run amok during Beethoven’s Ghost Trio.

Continue reading Not even a malfunctioning hearing aid can throw off Beethoven’s “Ghost”

Jeremy Denk gave the concert of a lifetime on Saturday evening (July 18) as part of the recital series offered at the World Forestry Center as part of the Portland Piano International Summer Festival. This was a one of those rare performances that made this listener feel more alive, more aware, and more appreciative of everything in the world. And Denk accomplished this with a very demanding program (that he changed earlier in the week) that consisted of Ives’s Sonata No. and Bach “Goldberg Variations” (BWV 988). Continue reading Ives and Bach receive transcendent treatment from Denk

The lawn was packed Friday night at Lakeside School, as people took advantage of yet another hot summer night to listen for free under the stars to the sixth Summer Festival concert of Seattle Chamber Music Society. There have been years when more nights were cool and wet than dry and warm, but not this year.

Inside St. Nicholas Hall, it was as packed, but thankfully cooler as the performance got under way with Haydn’s Trio in E Flat major from 1785 with violinist Augustin Hadelich, celllist Edward Arron and pianist Craig Sheppard. The first two are new to the festival this year, Hadelich, 26, being one of this year’s winners of an Avery Fisher award, one of the most prestigious prizes for young musicians (many of those winners play in the SCMS festival, which has one of the most dazzling line ups of young musicians in the country).

Continue reading A viola takes the limelight at Friday’s SCMS concert

Exemplary string players have rarely been in short supply at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, but in recent years they have become abundant, many brought to the festival by James Ehnes, a first-class violinist himself as well as associate artistic director of the festival. The names of the violinists roll off the tongue, including Stefan Jackiw, Erin Keefe, Soovin Kim, Amy Schwartz Moretti, Stephen Rose and Scott St. John. This year Augustin Hadelich, in his debut festival season, joined the list,

Three of them played Wednesday night at Lakeside School: Hadelich, in Prokofiev; Ehnes, in Beethoven, and Kim, in Chausson. They informed the musical proceedings with their tonal presence, intelligent musicality and keen collaborative insights. Not surprisingly they have the technical resources to make the most of the music at hand. None sounds like the other so uniformity is never an issue. At Wednesday’s concert, there was much to say for the single violist — the admirable Richard O’Neill – and cellists Edward Arron and Robert deMaine. And, of course, the pianists Anna Polonsky, Jeremy Denk and Adam Neiman.

All together an evening to remember.

Continue reading Prokofiev, Beethoven and Chausson well-played Wednesday night at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival

Every year, Seattle Chamber Music Society’s summer festival is a shining event in Seattle’s musical life. It would be hard these days to say it’s better than last year, or the year before, or the year before that, because the quality has been stellar for years now and it’s almost never that there is a bad night or even a bad performance.

This year is no exception. Monday, the beginning of the second week’s performances, included the premiere of Christopher Theofanidis’ “Summer Verses,” the third annual commission from the SCMS commissioning club. Sensibly, the recital was taken up with commentary on the work from Theofanidis with illustrations from its two performers, violinist James Ehnes and cellist Robert deMaine, the complete performance taking place in the concert. itself.

Continue reading Another stellar SCMS concert at Lakeside

Reviewing the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s summer festival is a difficult task. It is, I would say, the most reliable series of classical music performances in Seattle. The performers are top-notch, drawn from orchestras, universities, and solo rosters. They have to be this good, of course, because they are playing something different with a new, ad hoc ensemble each night. Usually, musicians have only a few days to prepare. Along with the excellent performers, the thrice weekly programs are as dependable as sighting Mount Rainier on a summer day. There are heavy doses of Schubert, Brahms, Mozart, Shostakovich, and others. The interesting stuff is usually reserved for the free recitals that happen an hour before.

Friday’s performance ended the first week of the festival. The first two nights sold out easily and the third night was a near sell out. Thirty minutes before the free recital began there were only seven seats left. Including the recital, the concert was a three and a half hour odyssey through the music of Faure, Mozart, Schubert, and Ernest Bloch.

After 28 years are there any superlatives left to describe the performances in this festival?

Continue reading No lemons at Friday’s SCMS performance; only lemonade

There was much to admire at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival Wednesday night at Lakeside School — from violiist Augustin Hadelich’s recital at the beginning of the evening to a luminous account of Dvorak’s “Dumky” Trio at the end.

Born in Italy to German parents, Hadelich is making his festival debut this summer. He is playing every concert this week and next in a wide range of composers: Schumann and Schubert, then Brahms, Prokofiev and Haydn.  On Wednesday he appeared in recital, playing a brace of fantasies by Telemann, a solo sonata of Ysaye, in G, and a caprice by Paganini, “The Hunt.” His playing was exemplary. At his age — he is 25 this year — and with his credentials, one would expect his technical resources to be large. They are. But he is more than a master of notes. He has finesse, style and a grasp of period sensibilities. His Telemann was nothing like his Ysaye and Paganini.  That could not be said for a lot of his elders. His tone is not large but penetrating, his musicianship carefully constructed but seemingly free on stage. The Telemann had much to recommend it. Hadelich made the most of what the composer gave him. Telemann can seem, on occasion, a little ordinary. That was not the case with Hadelich. He made every phrase count, with each note in its proper place.

Continue reading A Full Evening of Superb Music-Making Wednesday night at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival

There was so much enthusiasm Monday night at the opening of the Seattle Chamber Music Festival’s new season, it would have been hard to detect even a hint of unhappiness or regret. The festival, which opened its doors 28 years ago with a modest two-week festival — grown to six weeks in two venues in the summer and a week in the winter at a third — is spending its last season at Lakeside School.

Continue reading Seattle Chamber Music Festival Opens its 28th season Monday night