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Seattle Chamber Music Society Winter Festival–Mozart, Beethoven, Lutoslawski, and Brahms: Stefan Jackiw, Amy Schwartz Moretti, and Lily Francis, violins; Richard O’Neill and David Harding, violas; Ole Akahoshi, Bion Tsang, and Toby Saks, cellos; Anton Nel and Gilles Vonsattel, pianos; Sean Osborn, clarinet; Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall, Benaroya Hall, Seattle  22 & 24.1.2009 (BJ)


The bulk of the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s offerings is contained in two summer festivals, but for the past decade a short series is also presented in the smaller auditorium at Benaroya Hall to provide a welcome shot of good chamber music in the depths of winter. The concerts under review were the first and third of this year’s four, and though only the latter one was billed as “A celebration of the music of Johannes Brahms,” one of that composer’s most delectable chamber works featured on the first program also.

Following the Society’s usual practice, the Thursday concert was preceded by a short recital by two of the musicians participating in the evening’s main program, Stefan Jackiw and Richard O’Neill. Still in his early 20s, Jackiw is one of the most gifted among the numerous talented young violinists now before the public. In Mozart’s remarkably inventive and tuneful G-major Duo for violin and viola, K. 423, he and O’Neill deployed their talents with consuming intensity and masterful technique, and Jackiw delighted the audience when, having accidentally swept his part off the stand towards the end of the work, he played on with complete sang froid and without–the phrase for once applies literally–missing a beat.

Again in accord with SCMS’s tradition, a variety of performers were heard in the concert that followed. For Beethoven’s G-major Piano Trio, Op. 1 No. 2, violin duties were taken over by Amy Schwartz Moretti, herself no mean performer. She was partnered by cellist Ole Akahoshi and pianist Anton Nel in a performance of crystalline clarity and, especially in the mischievous finale, fetching wit. Next we heard Lutoslawski’s Dance Preludes, which also drew incisive humor, if not the most luxuriant tone imaginable, from clarinetist Sean Osborn and pianist Gilles Vonsattel. This is a pleasant enough work, though I personally find its provocatively enigmatic manner less than completely satisfying.

Completely satisfying is exactly the phrase to describe the second half of the program, in which the second of Brahms’s two string sextets, Op. 36 in G major, was played by violinists Jackiw and Lily Francis, violists O’Neill and David Harding, and cellists Bion Tsang and Toby Saks (the Society’s artistic director). All six played splendidly, achieving a performance that was expressively searching, stylistically well-judged, and as seductive in tone as this precociously wise and mature music demands.

Then came Saturday’s all-Brahms program. This was nicely balanced between the first half’s large-scale works, the Third Violin Sonata and the Second Cello Sonata, and the shorter pieces after intermission–the C-minor Scherzo for piano and violin from the “FAE” Sonata composed in collaboration with Schumann and Dietrich, the Four Piano Pieces, Op. 119, and a cello-and-piano arrangement of four of the Hungarian Dances.

Joining forces for the works featuring violin, Jackiw and Nel played the D-minor Sonata skillfully enough, but it was in the Scherzo, or “Sonatensatz,” that their collaboration really caught fire, vividly capturing both the juddering rhythmic dislocations that repeatedly undermine the basic 6/8 pulse, and the lyrical afflatus of the subordinate theme, which Brahms never allows to bloom for long. For the F-major Cello Sonata, and his own version, via Joachim’s violin arrangement, of the Hungarian Dances in G minor, D minor, B minor, and G minor, it was Bion Tsang’s turn to join Nel on the platform, and they realized both the questing paragraphs of the sonata and the less ambitious but charming periods of the dances beautifully. Nel, meanwhile, had given us a fine performance of the Op. 119 pieces. He may not be the greatest pianist in the world (after all, how many people are?), there being occasionally a certain want of depth to his tone. But there is never any lack of depth in his sensitive grasp of expressive meaning, and this, allied with unfailing textural clarity and grace of phrasing, results in performances that are always musically compelling.

Bernard Jacobson


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