Seattle – Page 7 – Gathering Note

Seattle Chamber Music Society wraps up Seattle festival, heads to Redmond

By Philippa Kiraly

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.
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Grimsley sings Kurwenal again in Seattle Opera’s new production of Tristan

10 Tristan rl 300 — 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.

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Mozart to Barber Wednesday Night at Festival

By R.M. Campbell

There has been so much to admire in the concerts that I’ve attended at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival this season at Nordstrom Recital Hall, it seems redundant to say so yet again. But it is the truth.

As always there are musicians making their festival debut. A more significant new element is the hall, a vast improvement on the dreary acoustics of St. Nicholas Hall at Lakeside School where the festival most of past few decades. This is the festival’s first season at Nordstrom. The more one hears at Nordstrom — the clarity and vibrancy of sound — the more one appreciates the virtues of the new venue. When the festival leaves Seattle next week for Overlake School in Redmond, there will be no lapse in acoustical values. The hall is excellent.
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A lot of good and some bad close out third week of SCMS festival

By the third week of the Chamber Music Society’s festival the excitement of opening week is gone. We’ve heard enough expertly crafted chamber music to carry us through to the fall. A number of musicians have come and gone by the third week. The third week is also when repertory experiments takes place. The chamber pieces which use wind, brass, and double bass tend to show up around this time. New commissions also show up from time to time here too, away from the intensity of opening week.

The third week is especially problematic for writers. Our adjectives are exhausted and an endless supply of Romantic melodies and classical formalities are dancing through the parts of our brain we use to listen to music. We’ve heard a lot of music with even more to come.

This year the third week of the festival ended with back to back evening concerts. Friday’s concert embodied some of the best and the worst of the festival so far. Franz Berwald’s Septet glowered for 20 minutes to start Friday’s concert. It’s a piece without much of a point even when it is played well as it was on Friday night. I would have preferred to hear Jeff Fair (horn); Sean Osborne (clarinet); Seth Krimsky (bassoon); Jordan Anderson (bass); Ida Levin (violin); Che-Yen Chen (viola); and Jeremy Turner’s (cello) use their considerable talents in different repertory.
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Schwarz’s Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano to be premiered next week

By Peter Klein

We all know about Gerard Schwarz, conductor. Lately, we’ve been hearing more and more about Gerard Schwarz, composer.

Schwarz’ latest work, a “Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano” (Horn Trio for short), will receive its world premiere at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival on Monday, July 26 at 8:00 PM in Benaroya Hall. Schwarz and the three performers will give an introduction to the work in a free recital at 7:00 PM.

The Seattle Symphony’s Music Director is by no means new to composition. As a teenager, he studied with the noted American composer Paul Creston. Later teachers included Roger Sessions, Jacob Druckman, Milton Babbitt, Vincent Persichetti and Pierre Boulez. But as the trumpet and then the baton became the focus of Schwarz’ career, his composing took a three-decade hiatus. Until recently.

“All of a sudden, I’m into it again. And it’s getting to be exciting,” said Schwarz, speaking by telephone from the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, NC, where he is Music Director.
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More superb chamber music: Bridge, Stravinsky, and Schubert

By Philippa Kiraly

Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival is a joy in the midst of July’s usual musical dearth. Concerts come up three times a week, each with stellar performances and programs which are never boring. Even very familiar pieces receive illuminating performances which bring out facets not perceived before.

Friday’s performance at Nordstrom Recital Hall was a case in point. Frank Bridge is a composer we don’t often hear. He worked at the beginning of the 20th century in England, at a time when the only towering figure in English music was Edward Elgar. Bridge’s chamber music is well worth a hearing.
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Must hear Martin, Kodaly and Dvorak at Wednesday’s SCMS concert

In an alternate (maybe even perfect) universe unfamiliar composers and works would be cat nip for curious ears looking to expand their musical horizons. Dissonances would pleasantly shake listeners. We’d tap our toes to awkward rhythms and take pleasure in sorting out difficult melodies. Seats would be filled. People would be turned away at the door only to hear an enlivened retelling of the experience from their friends luck enough to get inside the concert hall. An excited audience reaction would launch outlying repertory into the mainstream.

Judging by Wednesday’s Seattle Chamber Music Society concert – which featured Zoltan Kodaly’s Op. 7 Duo for Violin and Cello and Frank Martin’s Piano Quintet – the alternate universe I proposed is still a long way off. Too many seats sat empty and the audience’s response, while effusive (a standing ovation after every piece) seemed obligatory – polite.
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Borodin and Ravel start week two of the SCMS summer festival; Armstrong returns to the piano

The second week of the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s summer festival began with Andrew Armstrong’s return to the piano. An infection caused by a bug bite or some other intruder sidelined the pianist, putting him in the hospital even. Although Armstrong was missed by the loyal festival attendees, other pianists, including the incomparable Craig Sheppard, filled in for their ailing colleague.

Armstrong made his return playing the piano at the pre-concert recital tackling Bela Bartok’s demanding Second Sonata for Violin and Piano with James Ehnes. Armstrong followed this performance by playing the piano part for another violin sonata — Beethoven’s Violin Sonata Op. 30, No. 1. Violinist Andrew Wan, a festival newcomer, joined him in the performance.
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Gilbert & Sullivan classic better than ever

By Philippa Kiraly

I’ve seen Gilbert & Sullivan’s “H. M. S. Pinafore” a dozen or more times, and each time I find myself enjoying it as much as ever, finding heretofore unnoticed sentiments as pertinent today as 132 years ago, and seeing different performers discovering new angles to their roles and bringing them to prominence.

Much of the latter is often due to a skilled stage director, and Christine Goff, in her ninth season undertaking this role for Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society, has proven herself as fine as any in the job.
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SCMS Summer Festival at Benaroya: Mendelssohn’s Octet and Grieg’s Cello Sonata

By Philippa Kiraly

It seemed odd to go to Benaroya Hall, specifically the smaller Nordstrom Recital Hall, for a Seattle Chamber Music Society Summer Festival concert but, well, we will get used to it. The Society was no longer allowed to use the Lakeside campus with its lovely grounds and peaceful ambience, but it also needed a larger auditorium to accommodate the increasing numbers of people who have flocked to the festival each year.

Judging by Friday’s packed audience at Nordstrom—the first festival performance I’ve attended this summer—the change is working. There were new faces among the many regulars, and executive director Connie Cooper said that some were tourists coming in off the streets after seeing notices of performances. (The outdoor ambience continues at The Overlake School in Redmond in August.)
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