Summer “officially” got underway for me on July 12, as I attended my first Chamber Music Northwest Summer Music Festival performance of the season at Kaul Auditorium, where I heard the second performance of the concert Revelations. There were some changes: the program order of the first half was altered, and there were a couple performer substitutions. 

Instead of closing the first half with the Schubert lied they chose to open with it. Someone remarked it was like having dessert first, and I wholeheartedly agree. Soprano Hyunah Yu was joined by Yekwon Sunwoo on piano and the legendary David Shifrin on clarinet for Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock), D. 965.

With Shifrin you always know it’s going to be a treat, and during the intro, when he started out pianissimo and glided up to forte on the same note, like a glissando centered around dynamics instead of pitch, there it was, right out of the gate – a delight. Yu’s immersive coloratura, her word painting, her great and agile ascending leaps on himmel, yet landing ever-so softly on the high note – it made me close my eyes and wish I were there to listen to a whole evening of Schubert lieder.

Portlander David Schiff’s Divertimento from his opera Gimpel the Fool was first performed at CMNW in 1982; he has stated it is his most popular work, and it has been performed all around the world in the intervening years. The opera is based on the story of Gimpel, a baker in the shtetl who is the village idiot and is mercilessly mocked by the townsfolk, many of whom sleep with his wife behind his back. Schiff explained that in the first movement, the cello is meant to represent the voice of the rabbi, who imparts wisdom to Gimpel such as “better to be a fool all your life than to commit one evil deed.”

Though Schiff took pains to point out that the composition was not intended to be in “authentic klezmer” style, “Overture and the Rabbi’s Advice” began with a big, explosive klezmeresque chord. Shifrin on clarinet was joined by Alexi Kenney, violin, Clancy Newman, cello, and Yutong Sun on piano. Newman’s solemn intonation of the rabbi was rich and thoughtful, and much of the first movement was dominated by the cello, as Newman played festive dance tunes and sighed gently in the highest register of his instrument, like a catch in the human voice. “The Wedding Song” featured a popping staccato theme on the piano, and it was easy to visualize a wedding dance building from slow, deliberate steps into an ecstatic frenzy. There was a compelling bouncing saltando on the violin, skittering as it spat out five notes in rapid succession. 

“Pantomime and Bread Song” was also fascinating, as the clarinet was doubled by the cello, but at odd and unpredictable rhythmic intervals. The sonic effects of various doublings seemed to be a theme of this movement: violin and piano, clarinet and piano, each yielding cool sound combos. Shifrin’s ability to wring pathos and color from his instrument is well-known, but in “The Jester’s Song and Mazel Tov” he seemed almost entranced as the somber melody wound on, and eventually he dueled with a throaty violin, though who can say who won?

Shuffle

The world premiere of iPod Variations for Flute, Violin and Electronics by Kian Ravaei is based upon an interesting premise: the composer explained that as a kid he had an early iPod whose only “advanced” function was to shuffle his entire library, so he would listen to Nirvana followed immediately by Bob Dylan, and then by Persian music and then old jazz, etc., so he had always felt that that was the way everyone listened to music. In the program notes he stated that “I tried to condense ten years of listening into roughly ten minutes of music, paying homage to guitar-shredding heroes, jazz idols and electronic music masters.” Tara Helen O’Connor joined on flute, and Alexi Kenney on violin.

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The opening “Aria” was a charming, somewhat triste little duet for the acoustic instruments, and then they were joined by electronics until the final movement. The electronic selections weren’t actually sampled but were composed by Ravaei to invoke the feeling of the referenced artists. In the first variation (“Hendrix & Handel”) we got to hear the guitar master’s themes on harpsichord, and “Kurt and Koji” was a mini theme-and-variations based on the grunge idiom and video game music, after the late Kurt Cobain and the great Nintendo composer Koji Kondo. “Jaco and Jimmy” featured a funky bass line and Hammond Organ, and O’Connor got positively groovy on the flute, backed by Kenney’s double-stopped violin. In “Lotfi and de Lucia” Kenney put down the bow and held the violin like a mandolin, strumming chords, and there were evocative Persian inspired themes on the flute. “Byrd and Basie” may have been my favorite, with Renaissance choral vocalizing and trad jazz all in the same short movement—strange as it sounds, Ravaei made it work, and I was really getting the sense of his intention for this composition. “Dylan and Deadmau5” was like a hoe-down with some fine fiddling, and the closing “Aria da Capo” came in afterward like a lullaby, a simple, soulful reverie.

The second half consisted entirely of the Piano Quintet in F Minor by César Franck. The Opus13 Quartet (Sonoko Miriam Welde and Edvard Erdal, violins, Daniel Thorell, cello, and Isabelle Durrenberger sitting in for Albin Uusijärvi on viola) was joined by Yekwon Sunwoo on piano.

I had been very curious about the Franck; he seems to be a somewhat little-programmed composer, and I knew very little about him other than his reputation as a formidable organist. I was disappointed to discover that by and large I disliked this work, finding it simultaneously bombastic and boring. Which is no fault of the performers, but instead of a composition that seemed to me to have little purpose.

The gravitas of the opening “Molto moderato quasi lento” featured a back-and-forthing between piano and the strings, who labored successfully to produce a big sound wall. I began feeling that there was not very much meat on the bones of the composition almost right off the bat, despite some moments of beauty that came through the dense, almost symphonic texture. The piano parts seemed fun for the performer, and by the second movement, “Lento con molto sentimento” the texture had become sparser at times, which was somewhat of a relief. In the “Allegro non troppo ma con fuoco” a big tremolando theme was interesting, but mostly because it was something different from a textural standpoint; the music was more of the same loud, furious nothingburger. I found myself thinking that this thunderous, dense music would be my soundtrack if I were creating a monster in some old castle, with thunder and lightning crackling all around…It’s aliiiiive! (César Franck-enstein’s monster, anyone?)

This is a piece that required tremendous stamina from the performers: almost 40 minutes of what felt like non-stop fortissimo sawing, and I have great respect for the intensity and skill that went into performing it. It resonated well with much of the audience, but for me it was representative of everything that I dislike about Romantic excess. I initially thought I would seek out a recording to see if I could “get” it but ultimately decided not to do that to myself. I discovered a new application for Shakespeare’s “All sound and fury signifying nothing,” and I now understand why Franck isn’t programmed more often. None of which should suggest I didn’t thoroughly enjoy my evening, but hey. They can’t all be Dvořák.