SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Beethoven, Janáček, Shostakovich, and Schubert:  Seattle Chamber Music Society, The Overlake School, Redmond, Washington, 8.8.2008 (BJ)

In her capacity as artistic director of the Seattle Chamber Music Society, Toby Saks makes wonderful programs for her summer festivals at two area schools, and the evening under review was no exception. Counting both the pre-concert recital and the concert proper, the music ranged from latish Beethoven to late Schubert, with a time-loop in between that brought us pieces by Janáček and Shostakovich.

Beethoven was represented by the subtle and charming G-major Violin Sonata, Op. 96, which opened the proceedings in a performance by Ida Levin and Anton Nel that satisfyingly blended lyricism with brilliance. The first half of the main concert juxtaposed Janá…ek’s Violin Sonata with the passionate one-movement C-minor Piano Trio, Op. 8, that Shostakovich wrote at the age of 16, two decades before the better-known E-minor work for the same instrumentation.

As is the custom at these concerts, an array of different performers are on hand for the various works programmed. In the Janáček, a rewardingly introspective piece if not quite as concentrated as the composer’s only piano sonata, Nel returned to partner the young violinist Erin Keefe. Together they fashioned a reading of powerful commitment, and Keefe showed an impressive ability to vary her tone eloquently within the confines of single long-held notes. Then it was Levin’s turn to come back on stage and join cellist Amit Peled and pianist Adam Neiman in a performance of Shostakovich’s Trio that did full justice to the music’s bipolar alternations of youthful chromatic breast-beating with an irony that foreshadowed key elements in his mature style.

Schubert’s C-major String Quintet concluded the evening, this time with a complete new slate of performers–violinists Scott Yoo and Joseph Lin, violist Richard O’Neill, and, as the cellists, Robert deMaine and Toby Saks herself. They showed a refreshing readiness to follow the expressive arc of this supremely great music with a flexibility of tempo that frequently enlivened its textures and rhythms; their urgent forward motion in parts of the first movement seemed at first blush to surpass any reasonable understanding of the direction “Allegro ma non troppo,” but as the movement progressed the validity of their interpretation imposed itself with irresistible cogency (though they earned a black mark in my critical book for disregarding Schubert’s instruction to repeat the exposition).

The stormier passages in the ineffably lovely Adagio might have benefitted from a more voluminous tone in the second cello part–Ms. Saks’s playing is more focused on clarity and refinement than on mere brute power–but in the floating outer sections, under the clearly dedicated leadership of first violinist Yoo, the effect of the ensemble’s sheer concentration and sense of poetry was riveting. The last two movements were no less successful: in the finale, the group played the graceful second theme with an aptly succulent relish, though interestingly their stress at the end of the first phrase was all laid on stretching the actual last note rather than on aerating the lilting upbeat that precedes it. A splendid evening of great music, then, worthily played and enthusiastically applauded by a capacity audience.

Bernard Jacobson


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