Time was, maybe 17 years ago, when Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival was full of well known classics. We could confidently expect to hear Brahms, Beethoven, and Schumann, Mozart and Haydn, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak. Sure there was, is, plenty to choose from among much-loved works. Some amongst us grew restless, wanting to be more challenged by the music and have our minds expanded, and SCMS responded by building a program one year full of these more adventurous work. The audience stayed away in droves.
The Five is a feature I intended to start back in July. The feature was supposed to start with the musicians of the Seattle Chamber Music Society. It never able to take off because of the scheduling challenges presented by an always changing line up of musicians.
I wish I could say the idea for the Five is wholly mine, its not. One of my favorite sections in BBC Music Magazine is the column Music That Changed Me. Every issue ends with a musician — famous or not — sharing with readers the three to five albums or pieces of music that changed them.
Each time I finished reading Music That Changed Me I felt like I had been exposed to the inner musical sanctum of whoever the BBC editors had chosen to pen the column that month. In April it was the conductor Antonio Pappano. He shared with readers the first time he ever heard Tristan und Isolde. Pappano described Tristan as a dangerous piece of music and like Liszt under your fingers. I think music lovers appreciate insights like this more than the same old profile pieces that you and I have read hundreds of times.
Named after the five Russian composers – Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky Korsakov, Borodin and Balakirev, The Five is a blog twist on BBC Music Magazine’s Music That Changed Me. Periodically, I will ask musicians five questions about pieces of music that are important to them or impacted them in some way. Their answers will be published here for your reading pleasure.
It’s been more than a week since we learned of George Shangrow’s untimely death. In that time the tributes for this Seattle original have been growing with each day. Orchestra Seattle’s website has been turned into a rolling memorial.
My favorite is from Kerry Fowler who wrote:
“I was a bit nervous the night before my audition for Orchestra Seattle, when I tuned in to KING-FM to hear the end of Beethoven’s Fifth. When it was over, I heard George announce, “Even after all these years, I still get tingles listening to that movement.” I thought, “Now that’s someone I want to play music with.” I wasn’t disappointed.”
On Saturday, the matriarch of Seattle’s critical class Melinda Bargreen, penned a tribute to Shangrow. It is well worth a read if you want a window into George’s essence as a person.
If you prefere to remember George in person, there is a memorial service scheduled for 2 PM August 22, 2010 at the University Christian Church which is open to the public. I would suggest getting there early as more than 200 people have rsvp’d on the Facebook page for the event.
Memories can be short and distorted, but it seems to me, as the Seattle Chamber Music Festival enters its final week of the summer, this season has been if not the best than one of the best in its nearly 30-year history.
Two things are certain. The move from the dull acoustics of St. Nicholas Hall at Lakeside to Nordstrom Recital Hall has been an unqualified success, not only in terms of box office but musically, aided in part by the vastly improved acoustical presence of the hall. There is no question Nordstrom can turn shrill in the upper registers, especially the violin, if musicians are not careful. In the early days, they were not and the hall got a bad reputation. But other musicians, more capable and more sensitive, found ways to make the hall what it is today. All concert venues have their individual profiles which musicians must take into account. Festival concerts at Nordstrom had a ring of freshness, vibrancy and clarity they did not have previously. This improved acoustical status seemed to encourage musicians to play even better than they did at Lakeside. Continue reading Seattle Chamber Music Festival enters final week of 2010 season
Seattle Chamber Music Society’s summer festival has headed to The Overlake School in Redmond for its final five concerts, the first of which took place in those beautiful surroundings Wednesday night.
But first, the Society’s associate artistic director, James Ehnes, came out to give a tribute to the late George Shangrow, citing his long time support for the festival. In his honor Ehnes then played the largo movement from Bach’s Sonata No. 3 for unaccompanied violin. Continue reading A tribute to Shangrow and an evening of remarkable music making
George Shangrow, one of Seattle’s finest musicians and musical personalities, died last night in an auto collision. Shangrow was driving to give a talk at the Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival when a teenager crossed the center lane of the highway, crashing into Shangrow’s car, killing him.
This is a tremendous loss for Seattle’s classical music community. Shangrow was a charismatic, sometimes awkward advocate for music that wouldn’t make it to the concert stage otherwise. His performances of Bach, Monteverdi, and Handel’s Messiah with Orchestra Seattle drew a cult following.
Rest in peace, George. You will be missed. Orchestra Seattle has posted a statement on their web page. KUOW has a nice piece on Shangrow.
A clip of George doing what he did best: conducting Handel’s Messiah.
Annalena Persson (Isolde) and Margaret Jane Wray (Brangäne). Rozarii Lynch Photo
By R.M. Campbell
Wagner’s monumental “Tristan und Isolde” is not a stranger to Seattle Opera: it has never been approached lightly. The opera is too important, too central to the Wagner canon, too demanding to be treated with anything less than awe and respect. The last time the company mounted the opera, in 1998, it had an all-star cast (Jane Eaglen and Ben Heppner singing the roles for the first time together ) and a production team, headed by stage director Francesca Zambello. The set, designed by Alison Chitty, was as massive as the opera itself. Magnificent really, especially the first and second acts.
Despite concerns and trepidation over its move from the bucolic ambiance of Lakeside School to the urban Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya, Seattle Chamber Music Society’s summer festival there has been an undoubted success.
It managed to fill, mostly, over 100 seats more than Lakeside has for each concert and recital. It has brought in a variety of new audience members, including tourists dropping in. And the concerts have been enthusiastically received, despite the sometimes sabotaging effect of the hall’s dry acoustics and the really poor quality piano provided.
While the picnicking area in the Garden of Remembrance suffers from traffic noise, the decibel level in the Nordstrom lobby during intermissions makes some concert goers try to duck out downstairs or by heading to the main Benaroya lobby, and the free lemonade and coffee are missed, these are just peripheral losses. Continue reading Seattle Chamber Music Society wraps up Seattle festival, heads to Redmond
Greer Grimsley as Kurwenal in Seattle Opera’s 2010 Tristan und Isolde. Photo by Rozarii Lynch.
By Philippa Kiraly
It was Speight Jenkins, general director of Seattle Opera who persuaded bass-baritone Greer Grimsley that he should sing Wagner. That was for the 1994 production of “Lohengrin,” and Grimsley has sung in nearly every Wagner production here since.
Talking with him as he prepares to sing Kurwenal in “Tristan and Isolde” which opens Saturday at McCaw Hall, you are immediately struck by his speaking voice, as sonorous as his singing one.
Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony’s survey of William Schuman’s complete published symphonies has been packaged and is in stores now in a convenient boxed set (Naxos, 8.505228). This is a set that is years in the making. I picked up the first few disks for pennies when the Queen Anne Tower Records was clearing out its stock at least three years ago.
The Third Symphony is especially good. Recorded in 2005, it benefits from improved sound over Leonard Bernstein’s version with the New York Philharmonic. I gave both recordings a listen in advance of this year’s season ending performance of the piece this year. Schwarz’s recording of the piece gets a thumbs up from me. It is a more focused performance than Bernstein’s. This helps listeners swim rather than slog through Schuman’s complicated textures.
The other symphonies come off just as well. For me the shorter orchestral works are the real discoveries, causing me to wonder why these works aren’t performed more often. Orchestra Song (which I am listening to right now) is a charming three minute work featuring every section of the orchestra including a wonderful trumpet solo by (I am assuming) David Gordon. A new recording of the Violin Concerto would have been a nice addition too.
The set is nicely packaged and nicely priced, though the documentation is limited to the notes that came with the original CD’s. Would it have been too much to ask of Naxos to include an essay or statement from Schwarz on why Schuman’s music means so much to him?
Gathering Note 