Chamber Festival Unites Strangers

This past Monday, I noticed something about the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s summer festival. It’s a family affair, or at least people in the audience think it is. I can’t blame them. You attend enough concerts, see and hear the same performers year after year, at some point you are bound to think of Jeremy Denk, Stefan Jackiw, Ronald Thomas and others as more than just musicians pushing through Schumann, Mozart, Ravel and Chausson.

“Here come our favorites…Jeremy, Ronald and Stefan.” The woman behind me with saucer shaped glasses and a husky voice announced. Denk’s expressive performance style, Jackiw’s handsome looks and Thomas’ stoic facade, relieved ever so slightly by a patterned bow tie probably remind this woman of family, friends maybe even her own children. Only a few days earlier, a woman near me attempted to explain unsuccessfully to her friend how Jeremy Denk gazes when he plays the piano.

At intermission, pianist Alon Goldstein took a few minutes to chat with people on a blanket. During the performance of Maurice Ravel’s Piano Trio, Andrew Armstrong an accomplished pianist, who only a few days earlier took a recital audience through Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, boyishly sat against a far wall in the recital hall. The musicians that perform during the festival are like insanely talented relatives who only come around on special occasions.

Shouldn’t playing come before gazing? I decided long ago that foot tapping, face furrowing and occasional grunting should be expected. Don’t walk in on me when I am listening to music in my study or you might witness a very bad, rhythmically challenged, and tone deaf writer conducting his iTunes library. I can’t help it, music does it to me.  It doesn’t mean I am doing anything right.

But when James Ehnes, Robert deMaine (I wonder if Robert is excited about Leonard Slatkin coming to the DSO?) and Adam Neiman fired a jolt of electricity through Ravel’s only piano trio, bringing the capacity house to its feet, I had to wonder if people were applauding because they liked the playing or just liked the looks of what just happened on stage?

Ravel’s A Minor Trio is an impressive composition for a notoriously difficult collection of instruments. The trio is a crayon box of instrumental color, and uses just about every available trick: tremolos, glissandos, and arpeggios. Ravel’s textures are dense and rich. Ravel pushes each instrument to the very edge of what is acceptable. Even with these taxing difficulties, Ehnes, Neiman and deMaine played the piece with unbridled consistency.  DeMaine was exceptional in the cello passages Ravel worked hard to make stand out from the violin and piano.  Neiman too did his part.  The dark treble notes that come back through out the work were enlivened with extra morbidity.

Earlier in the evening, Stefan Jackiw, Ronald Thomas and Jeremy Denk whipped through Ernest Chauasson’s G Minor Piano Trio. Sandwiched between a Mozart piano concerto compressed for string quartet and Ravel’s trio, Chausson’s early work is persuasively lyrical. Jackiw demonstrated his flair for sweeping romantic gestures in a recital performance of Robert Schumann’s A Minor Violin Sonata. Likewise, Denk showed a feel and understanding of Chausson’s music.

The disappointment of the night was Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major which was performed in a version for string quartet and piano. The main problem was Alon Goldstein’s plodding playing. The result was like adding ankle weights to a hummingbird.

The night ended as it began, with the audience feeling a connection to the people on the stage. I think it’s okay the lady behind me has her favorites, even if she is maybe a bit too casual with her affection. I don’t mind that women, mostly older, swoon when their eyes lock on Stefan Jackiw. Or that I could identify with Adam Neiman’s studious playing and imagine him methodically studying a score, pushing his glasses up every so often, like I would if my job were performing in front of crowds of strangers.  The power of music is a wonderful thing.  A melody can do amazing things; it makes even strangers friends by the end of the night.