Chamber Music Northwest opens 40th season with festive yet uneven concert

by James Bash on June 23, 2010

Chamber Music Northwest put anniversaries on a high note, starting its 40th season with a concert that celebrated the 100th birthday of Samuel Barber and the 200th of Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann. This year also marked the 30th anniversary of the festival’s artistic director David Shifrin and executive director Linda Magee. In her prefatory remarks before the concert, Magee mentioned that they have put together 792 concerts over the years. It might be difficult to find another team anywhere else in the nation that has collaborated on as many chamber music concerts.

A very full house at Kaul Auditorium on Monday evening (June 21) greeted the first set of performers with enthusiasm. Festival veterans violinists Ida and Ani Kavafian, violist Steven Tenenbom, and cellist Peter Wiley opened the concert with an outstanding performance of Barber’s Quartet for Strings. The ensemble superbly mined the moods of this piece, contrasting the quiet and almost nocturnal passages with those that were agitated and filled with angst. The foursome put some real torque into the climatic part of the famous adagio section of the second movement, all of which arrived at a prayerful resting place by the end of the piece.

Next came the eminent pianist Vladimir Feltsman, who curiously chose to play Chopin’s Barcarolle in F-sharp Major in a loud, demonstrative fashion. That interpretation might have worked if Feltsman had found some pianissimos along the way. He was successful in building tension, but the passages in which the music is released to flow freely never arrived.

Feltsman had more success in his performance of Chopin’s Ballade No. 3 in A-flat Major. He found more natural tempos, played some passages fairly softly, and created dramatic moments that gave the piece more shape and appeal. He received thunderous applause from the audience which did not relent until he reappeared on the stage to take an extra bow.

After intermission, all five musicians delved into Schumann’s Quintet in E-flat Major for Piano and Strings. The piece started out of the gate with soaring lyricism and well-played passages that evoked the Sturm-und-Drang passion of the Romantic era. But in the second movement Feltsman overplayed his hand with too much volume.

A miscommunication between the players at the beginning of the third movement of the Schumann caused an automatic reset – a rarity among musicians of this caliber – but they redoubled their effort and played with conviction through the rest of the piece. In fact, their decrescendos while slowing down together in the first theme of the last movement were outstanding.

Sometimes even the best musicians can have an off-day. Ah, that’s part of the thrill of live music. I heartily recommend that you explore this summer’s offerings at the Chamber Music Northwest Festival. There are only 24 more concerts left!

James Bash

James Bash writes articles for a variety of publications, including magazines such as Opera America, Open Spaces, Opera, MUSO, International Arts Manager, American Record Guide, Symphony, Opera Canada, and PSU Magazine. The newspapers include Crosscut, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Oregonian, The Columbian, The Portland Tribune, The Register-Guard, and Willamette Week. James has also written a number of articles for the Oregon Arts Commission. James was a fellow to the 2008 NEA Journalism Institute for Classical Music and Opera. He is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America (mcana.org) and lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kathy.