I always love going to the Kaul Auditorium for Chamber Music Northwest’s Summer Festival. It’s part of a ritual that I associate with the best music and best weather of the year. I like to park in the north lot and take ten minutes for a leisurely amble amongst brick buildings old and new. I look for birds as I cross the softly lit Blue Bridge over Reed Lake. Herons croak, ducks forage, swallows squeak, and a hundred crows pass silently overhead on the way to their roosts downtown, dim shapes against the gloaming. Walking underneath the verges of the august beech tree in front of the auditorium signals that I am here, once again, for a celebration of some of the greatest music humans have ever produced.
Preeminent Piano: Beethoven, Ligeti and Goodyear was the theme on July 20. Stewart Goodyear’s long-awaited world premiere, The Torment of Marsyas, opened the evening, with the composer at the piano and Amelia Lukas playing flute. This work tells the story of the satyr Marsyas, who challenged the god Apollo to a cutting contest, with the victor to dish out a punishment of his choice to the vanquished. In the end Apollo wins, and goes a bit overboard, deciding that Marsyas should be flayed alive for his hubris. In the tale, Marsyas played a flute and Apollo a lyre of some sort. The composition was not meant to replicate the competition between the two, but according to Goodyear, was “a rhapsody from the view of Marsyas, as well as a showcase for the flutist.”
The opening was a simple, clear statement from the flute, but soon things grew more complex and wild. Playing squealing harmonies and burry, buzzing notes, Lukas began pulling from her bottomless bag of tricks, like Mary Poppins pulling the lampshade from her carpet bag–”what?” you ask, “there’s more?” The piano started grumbling as the thing got underway in earnest. Stark and open texturally, they played dazzling unisons at blinding speed. There were also long, affecting cantando sections for solo flute. The middle was very much in the style of an interchange; there was seldom ‘accompaniment’ by the piano as such.
Lukas and I spoke about the cadenza that ended the work: the gruesome death of Marsyas. ”Stewart wrote such a beautiful cadenza in terms of melody and form,” she said, “with a lot of room for emotion and interpretation, that it was second nature to me to just bring the drama! The flute is so intrinsically linked with the breath, so I focused on leveraging that aspect, suggesting some additional techniques to add color and texture to what Stewart had written: note bends to evoke sighing and surrender, air sounds to indicate gasping for air, and finally, whistle tones interspersed among the last notes to point to an ethereal, loosening of the spirit from the human form. My goal was to evoke a sense of absolute desperation and anguish.” In that she was eminently
successful; the groaning aspirations were pitiful, the anguished whistling tones ethereal; they hovered at the cusp of audibility, sounding almost as if they came from the ether as the doomed satyr expired. Goodyear’s composition was completely riveting; a worthy addition to the millenia of art that this tale has engendered.
Györgi Ligeti’s Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano (1982) was next, with Radovan Vlatković playing the horn and CMNW co-artistic directors Soovin Kim and Gloria Chien on violin and piano. They played discordant polytonal lines; Kim had long, fascinating themes for double-stopped violin. It was like three sad people talking at once—sometimes lapsing into maudlin comedy, like a half-hearted joke that only the joker understands. From a textural standpoint it was engaging; fascinating, even, but I would never call it lovely.
The “Scherzo” of the second movement was very lively; an ostinato from the low piano underlay much of this explosive, energetic movement. If the first movement was a sad commentary, the “Lamento: Adagio” was the sound of grieving. Vlatković’s horn playing was especially noteworthy. From warbling statements–where, with a lesser player, one might expect to hear the horn break–to long, incredible sustained low notes, pure, clear and powerful like a melodious foghorn, he displayed an amazing elan in his playing. Chien was banging away like Armageddon under a welter of differing statements from the horn and violin; somehow, they sounded like more than three musicians.
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The second half consisted solely of Beethoven’s mighty Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major, Op. 106 (“Hammerklavier”). Chloe Mun attacked the opening fanfare as if she were playing a concerto, competing with an orchestra for attention. Her pedaling was very exact, which yielded melodic lines in the soprano which were a bit drier than sometimes played, which was not a bad thing. While Beethoven has never been accused of being the world’s greatest melodist, this sonata especially has never, to me, offered as much melodic satisfaction as some other well-known ones (such as the “Pathétique”, or the “Waldstein”, for instance).
However, Mun adroitly brought out what was there. She played the fantastically difficult hopping, trilling fugal subject of the “Allegro risoluto” with boldness, never letting the voice-leading be subsumed by the dense chordal structure; her crisp martellato scalar passages were an especial joy to hear.
Convergence
I returned for Keyboard Convergence: Quintets, Quartets and Solos on Monday the 22nd. The opening piece was Beethoven’s Quintet for Piano & Winds in E-flat Major, Op. 16. Featuring Paul Lueders, oboe, Afendi Yusuf, clarinet, Vlatković on horn, Keith Buncke, bassoon and Mun on piano, they played the opening fanfare with gentility and sweetness, like a soothing piece of candy for the ears. This must surely be the most upbeat “Grave” in history; it is not often that one hears a bassoon twitter as joyously as Buncke’s in this movement. The piano being the star of this work, Mun had many an opportunity to sing in mezzo-staccato dialogues with the various winds.
In the “Andante Cantabile,” the oboe called out plaintively from the texture, and Mun reveled in the sweet simplicity of the piano lines. A mellifluous aria from the horn was a real treat from this measure. Exceptionally grounded—rooted in bedrock-solid musicianship—this movement was glorious. The famous third movement swelled and receded with jocular abandon. Mun played the fantastic arpeggio theme without too much seriousness—it was as if the winds kept asking a question, which she answered somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
Instead of the programmed Petrushka suite by Stravinsky, Stewart Goodyear next played Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7 in B-flat Major, Op. 83. This sonata is one of Prokofiev’s “War Sonatas” that were supposedly representative of his feelings after Stalin tortured and murdered his close friend, theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold, as part of the purges in 1940.
Goodyear brought out the darkness expertly, playing with what felt like tightly focused rage. An angry left hand with a somehow ebullient right charged right out of the gates of the “Allegro inquieto”; Goodyear played a tender cadence, infused with pathos, that contrasted with the fiery opening. The voice leadings here are tricky—it would be so easy to muddy them, but Goodyear’s lines were explosively clear, played in a finger staccato so rapid and precise it beggared the imagination. The “Andante Caloroso” was sentimental, almost a barroom theme. Based on a melody from a Schubert lied reflecting on grief, it was almost self-deprecatory at times, yet Goodyear infused it with quiet dignity. Requiring tight-knit fingerwork and tricky cross handing, the off-beat, bell-like ostinato in the bass was somehow ominous. Goodyear fearlessly attacked the fiendish “Precipitato,” his fingers practically tying themselves into knots as the hands stacked one on top of the other; the movement was menacing and yet somehow joyous at the same time.
Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op 47, finished out the night, performed by Chien, violinist Claire Wells, violist Burchard Tang, and cellist Clancy Newman. Through large portions of the work, the big, bold chords from the strings gave the impression that it was really a duet for piano and strings. The tension built gradually as the opening movement’s “Sostenuto” suddenly exploded into life. The “Allegro” was all fun and forte—the simple joy of playing a beautiful phrase, and a veritable orchestra’s worth of sound made this work fun to hear. Chien’s confident playing was the glue that held the whole thing together.
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Similarly to the rather joyous “Grave” in the opening Beethoven, the “Scherzo” here also belied its name, being somewhat moody and somber. Newman’s playing on the cello stood out in the variety of expertly employed techniques: a nice raspy saltando in the “Scherzo”; a beautiful pizzicato theme in the “Andante Cantabile.” It almost felt as though he were playing for himself in this third movement; introspective and intimate, a virtuosic cellist playing what he felt like playing at home alone of an afternoon, rather than trying to impress an audience.
The finale began with a delightful fughetta based on a spritely subject, full of fun and vigor; a huge, Romantic interplay of textures and themes. The humming interchange between Tang and Chien rang out momentarily as the whole piece began galloping toward the horizon, pausing briefly as if taking a collective breath before the coda. Small moments like that breathy pause are what make CMNW’s Summer Festival; one of the million little things that go into the presentation of a masterpiece.
