Oregon Music News

Photo by Jim Leisy

With its concert on Friday evening (July 23) at Kaul Auditorium, Chamber Music Northwest placed an emphasis on pieces that explored the theme of dynamic contrasts. The program consisted of music by Mozart, Brahms, Schumann, and newcomer Paul Schoenfield. While Schoenfield’s work (co-commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest) was the wildest, all of the works revealed plenty of sonic variety, and all received superb performances.

Photo by Jim Leisy

The concert started with Mozart’s Sonata in B-Flat Major for Bassoon and Cello in a performance that featured bassoonist Milan Turkovic and cellist Gary Hoffman. They excelled in tip-toeing through the delicate passages, yet kept a refined sensitivity that was not stuffy or fluffy. They balanced their sound impeccably and executed accelerandos and ritardandos as if they were one person, and the last movement had a genuinely playful spirit.

From the get-go, Schoenfield’s Sonata for Violin and Piano underwent an intense performance by violinist Cho-Liang Lin and pianist Jon Kimura Parker.This four-movement work, co-commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest, gyrated wildly, skittering through an opening sequence that quoted snippets of Beethoven, Chopin, Schoenberg, Webern, Schubert and other composers as well as popular ballads like “Oh my darling Clementine.” Highlights included Lin impressively scaling stratospheric heights and grooving with Parker in a jaunty ragtime style. And that was all in the first movement. The second hit pay dirt with clashing sonorities, including some phrases in which the tone from Lin’s violin would just die on the vine in a magical, fleeting way. The lyricism of the third movement was arresting, but I lost the thread of the music in the fourth movement. It seemed to spread in many directions, but it didn’t evade the audience, which responded to the final notes with enthusiasm.

In the hands of clarinetist David Shifrin, violist Toby Appel, and pianist Hyeyeon Park, Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen (“Fairy Tales”) for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano showed plenty of dynamic contrast. The ensemble wonderfully accented the Sturm und Drang-like passages, which steered the audience dramatically away from the pleasant sections and the phrases that emphasized tenderness and harmony. Park, in particular, deserved high praise for playing. She has a knack for sensing her colleagues every gesture, tempo and volume changes, and her playing lifted the level of music making.

Brahms’ Trio in C Minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello received an outstanding performance from Parker, Lin, and Hoffman. Their full-bodied sound had depth and urgency. Their attacks were sharp and exciting. The melodies warm and dazzling. At one point in the second movement Appel created a dark, almost musky tone that was matched perfectly by Hoffman. Parker played with terrific sensitivity, and the ensemble enhanced the overall effect of the music, sending the audience members home with a smile in their eyes.

Photo by Jim Leisy

For the past 30 years, David Shifrin has steadily built Chamber Music Northwest’s summer festival into a nationally-recognized brand, known for its top-tier artists, innovative programming, and the development of young artists. Shifrin, besides being Chamber Music Northwest’s artistic director, is a virtuoso clarinetist, who performs regularly at the festival and maintains a busy schedule throughout the year. (Interesting tidbit: Shifrin was the principal clarinetist of the Cleveland Orchestra when he was just 23 years old.)

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of Chamber Music Northwest’s summer festival, which runs from June 11 through July 25 with a cornucopia of performers, new venuse, and works, including several brand new pieces. Last week, I talked with Shifrin about how he plans the festival with its diversity of artists and musical works, and keeps his sanity.

Putting together a schedule that involves so many different artists and ensembles over a period of five weeks is a massive undertaking. How do you accomplish this feat?

Shifrin: Figuring out the festival happens on a number of levels. I have a core group of musicians, and I check with their schedules and try to work around them. We have to work a couple of years ahead of time for some artists. It’s hard to find slots in the schedule of André Watts, Vladimir Feltsman, Slyvia McNair, and the Emerson String Quartet. Most musicians are very busy during the summer, because of all of the festivals.

There’s also a balance that we have to find between the musicians that we want at our festival and the repertoire that we have planned. Sometimes I start with programs that I feel that I’d like to do and see who can play them. Sometimes I start with the musicians that I want at the festival and see what they are willing a capable of playing. I also try to have an overview of several years cycle of the cannon of chamber music that should be repeated. I’m also looking at interesting, new pieces to do, and overlooked works, and pieces that will feature certain artists, and then I try to weave all of these considerations each year into a season that is interesting for the audience on different levels. So the selection of pieces and artists is a bit of a puzzle that is ongoing.

By the first of each calendar year, I have to absolutely decide what is going to be on the five-weeks and 25-plus programs of each summer festival.

Do you use an Excel spreadsheet that helps you figure this out? Or a big white board? Or multiple sheets of paper in a dog-eared notebook?

Shifrin: I don’t use Excel very much, but people on our staff at Chamber Music Northwest do. I work very closely with Elizabeth Harcombe and with Linda Magee, and they help me to collate all the information. We have to take our budget into consideration each year. There are artists fees, travel, and housing to take into account as well.

I am very proud of the fact that Linda Magee and I have worked together for 30 years and brought in every season under budget – sometimes very close! You never know what airfares are going to be from year to year, and it’s a challenge to anticipate artists fees and housing costs, but we’ve done very well to keep it within our boundaries and still make the festival interesting and rewarding.

If you look at a season and decide that each concerts needs an average of nine musicians, then I can determine that one concert can be a trio concert, another

Within the repertoire that we work with, we have thousands and thousands of pieces to choose from. They reach back four hundred years to brand new pieces – some of which have just been completed. A couple of weeks ago, we just received the score for the new Sheridan Seyfried piece, which looks wonderful. A few weeks before that, we got the music for Steven Stucky’s Piano Quintet.

When we commission a new work for a world premiere, we are always familiar with the style of the composer and the performers who will play it. But it’s real exciting to hear where chamber music is going.

When I started planning the festival 30 years ago, I had various pieces and performers written on scraps of paper that I could move around. On adjustment in a piece or a player could change of whole Rubik’s cube for the festival. I still work on paper in the monthly calendar format. To see it all on paper helps to organize my thoughts.

The first concert kicks off the festival with a celebration of the 200^th birthdays of Schumann and Chopin, and the hundredth birthday of Barber.

Shifrin: Yes, I wanted a framework that would celebrate those birthdays, have some familiar works like the Brandenburg concerti, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, plus some pieces that would show off a variety of instrumental offerings; so I looked for pieces that would feature winds, strings, and keyboard. One of the structural concerts of the festival will be the two-piano concert on July 17^th with Anna Polonksy and Orion Weiss. That’s a special anniversary too, because it will be the one-month anniversary of their wedding. These two virtuosos are getting married in June.

That’s great!

Shifrin: I also try to have some vocal music. The human instrument is the most natural thing to do with chamber music, and this year we will have one of the most extraordinary human voices on the planet in Sylvia McNair in concert on July 10th. She loves the music from the American Songbook – the music of Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and others – that is so accessible. She has a real flair for this music, and she’s the same Sylvia McNair, whose Mozart opera arias I play for my clarinet students as a lesson in how to make a portamento, how to make phrase, how to make a beautiful sound, and how to connect two notes. Sylvia McNair’s concert is another cornerstone of the season.

We also have André Watts coming on July 19^th and 20^th to play some of his favorite chamber music. We have Milan Turkovic, the greatest bassoon player in the world coming in from Vienna, Austria to play in concerts during the week of July 19^th through the 25^th.

Arnold Steinhardt, who is now a free agent after a career of 46 years with the Guarneri String Quartet, has a concert on June 26^th. That performance will also feature his brother Victor as a composer and pianist.

Receiving its Northwest premiere is a piece for violin and piano by Paul Schoenfield on July 23^rd and 24^th.  Cho-Liang Lin and Jon Kimura Parker will play that work. Schoenfield was a pianist at Chamber Music Northwest when I started playing here in the 1970s, and he has gone on to become one of leading composers in the world.

How did you discover Sheridan Seyfried? He’s a pretty young composer.

Shifrin: I learned about Sheridan through Ida Kavafian, who teaches at the Curtis Institute where Sheridan studied. Just two years ago, Chamber Music Northwest did a special program on the 4^th of July, and we wanted to include something different. Ida told me that Sheridan could write an interesting, fun piece for that concert. And indeed he did. He integrated retrograde versions of the Star Spangled Banner and American tunes into a contemporary yet accessible piece for a piano quartet. It was such an enormous hit that Alice and Michael Powell, who are both on our board of directors and wonderful sponsors of the festival, were knocked out by Seyfried’s music. Afterwards Alice came to me that this year would be a special birthday for Michael, and she would like to celebrate it with a new piece by Sheridan. So that’s how the commission came about. Sheridan and I spoke about the instrumentation, and we wanted to feature the Opus One Piano Quartet with Ida, Steven Tennebom, Peter Wiley, and Anne-Marie McDermott. But Sheridan wanted to add a clarinet because he had that sound in his head. Then Sheridan came back later and said that the piece needs another violin part; so we added Ani to the piece. So Opus One plus two will perform this new piece, called the Sextet for Clarinet, Piano and String Quartet which will be played on June 28^th and 29^th. It looks like a terrific work with some driving, rhythmic, jazzy outer movements and a slow, beautiful inner movement.

Sharing the program with Seyfried’s new piece is Mozart’s miniature masterpiece, the Duo in B-Flat Major for Violin and Viola, which will feature Ida and Steve. Then we will finish with Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time,” which has become a staple of chamber music repertoire. It’s a unique piece of music with its intriguing color and rhythm and Messiaen’s unshakeable Catholic mysticism and faith and his interest in bird calls. So that concert works well in terms of playing time: two performers for the Mozart, all six musicians for the Seyfried, and four (minus the two in the Mozart) for the Messiaen.

I like the trio concert on July 19^th and 20^th, going from Bach to Brahms.

Shifrin: Yes, it shows off three centuries of the trio form. It’ll begin with the Bach’s Sonata in E Major for Flute and Continuo. In this case, it’s a wind sonata in which the bassoon will double and ornament the bass line and with the harpsichord and flute it becomes a precursor of the piano trio. In Mozart trio, the parts are explicit, and then later Brahms moving the form ahead. For three masters, it doesn’t get much better than Bach, Mozart, and Brahms.

There’s usually a story or thread behind each program, and we have pre-concert talks that gives a lot of background on the program.

Can you tell us more about the Protégés concerts?

Shifrin: I really like working with young artists. I started to play in Chamber Music Northwest concerts when I was still in my twenties, and I think that Ida was even younger. She was just out of school. We know what a tremendous opportunity playing at the festival was for us. Most of the players teach at conservatories and at universities with great music programs. We like to mentor young artists. They are the future. It’s great to have them debut alongside the veterans.

So the young artists will be featured in concerts at alternative venues like the Someday Lounge, the Mississippi Studios, and The Woods. Becky Anderson, who is a native of Portland, is one of the young artists in the protégés project. I’ve worked and performed with her several times, and I know the other young artists very well, also.

The Protégés Showcase concert on July 22^nd will feature the young artists and some of the festival veterans. We will play some gems by Matyas Seiber and Charles Loeffler. Richard Strauss’s Sextet for Strings is chamber work extracted from his opera Capriccio. Schubert’s great Trout Quintet is a festival favorite, and the young artists will play it with André Watts and Fred Sherry.

It’s an exciting time for the festival. We are really going to have a lot of fun.

Chamber Music Northwest has just announced its 40th summer festival with five weeks of concerts anchored by top-tier musicians from Lincoln Center. CMNW’s artistic director David Shifrin has lined up a promising series that extends from Monday, June 21 to July 25th. One of the artists I’m looking forward to hearing is soprano Sylvia McNair (see Week 3 below).

Chamber Music Northwest’s website contains the details. Here are some of the highlights:

Week 1:
Opens celebrating the 100th anniversary of Samuel Barber (with his famous Adagio for Strings) and the bicentennials of Schumann and Chopin. We mark CMNW’s own 40th year with a special commission by the Pulitzer-winning Steven Stucky, then shine the spotlight on the Steinhardt brothers and the Kavafian sisters, with members of Opus One.
Week 2:
Explores the intimate and powerful worlds of chamber music, from Messiaen’s revelatory Quartet for the End of Time to Debussy and Dvořák. We welcome back harpist Nancy Allen, offer a second world première by Sheridan Seyfried, and conclude with the incomparable Emerson Quartet joined by David Shifrin, in an evening to honor the timelessness of Mozart.
Week 3:
Experience an enormous range of music and ensembles, from the Romantic era to the 20th century. Brahms’ evocative Horn Trio offers contrast to Prokofiev’s colorful Overture on Hebrew Themes and Shostakovich’s early string octet. Then immerse yourself in one of the great voices of our time with an intimate evening with soprano Sylvia McNair.
Week 4:
Winds, strings and keyboards join together to revel in a Baroque extravaganza, including four of Bach’s monumental Brandenburg Concertos and Vivaldi’s masterpiece, “The Four Seasons.” Enjoy the delightful chemistry of two CMNW favorite pianists (and newlyweds!) Anna Polonsky and Orion Weiss, in great music for piano four-hands.
Week 5:
Ends with a full week of favorites, from Schubert’s sublime “Trout” Quintet, timeless trios from Brahms and Mozart, to an appealing new duo by Paul Schoenfield. Join us on Sunday for a special musical buffet to conclude our 40th year, and our anniversary cycle of all six of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos!