Last week, I attended several concerts at Portland Piano International’s Summer Festival and then wrote an article for Crosscut. You can read it here.

Although I did not attend Fredric Chiu’s concert, I did hear him present an unusual demonstration-lecture (July 19) in which he explained techniques for practicing without a keyboard. Chiu handed out a short piece by Mendelssohn (Opus 72, No. 1) to thirteen people in the audience. They studied the dynamics, rhythm, ornamentation, harmonic structure, and other elements of the piece before coming up on the stage and playing it. Each person only played a couple of measures and thereby completed the work from memory. It seemed to be a positive experience for all of the participants, though I think that most pianists would be careful to correct any mistake as quickly as possible.

Terry Teachout’s July 19th Wall Street Journal article has been sitting in my Google Reader in box for a few days.  Only today did I get around to reading it.  In the article, he takes to task Joe Queenan’s assertion that the listening public hasn’t liked anything since Schoenberg’s 1899 Transfigured Night.  I think most reasonable minds can agree that Queenan is wrong, and while the 20th Century was definitely a thorny one, there are plenty of examples of pieces of music that are likeable, listenable and modern.

For me the mention of the 20th Century conjures unkind thoughts.  I can’t explain it really.  It is completely irrational because the music of the last century figures prominently in my listening and in my own cd collection.

Queenan isn’t being intellectually honest when he tries to paint the entire 20th Century in broad strokes.  If anything the decline of Germanic hegemony over classical music helped music in the United States, Russia and elsewhere to explode.  Of course there are always composers who ignored the audience, who scolded puzzled listeners with edicts like Milton Babbitt’s famous “Who cares if you listen?“  But, most composers, even Schoenberg, struggled to reconcile the tension between the artistic and the approachable.  Looking back on the 20th Century, I think history will probably regard it as one of the most diffuse and exciting times in the evolution of classical music.

The other article I perused only recently is Anthony Tommasini’s piece in the NY Times on concert programming.  What makes an “adventurous” concert program?  As the article points out, “adventurous” is often taken as code for “contemporary.”

To encourage creative concert programming, Thomas Morris, under the banner of Carnegie Hall, is launching a nine day concert programming festival.  Over nine days, orchestras will present their most creative and adventurous program.  Participating bands will be judged on their originality.

While there is certainly merit in challenging orchestras to think differently about the concerts they program, Alan Gilbert expressed reservations about the idea.

“Anything that pushes orchestras to think in a creative way is useful,” Mr. Gilbert said. Devising such programs should be the goal of any orchestra, he said, especially the Philharmonic. But he added, “I’m not going to limit my most creative programming ideas to some festival.”

Like Mr. Morris, Mr. Gilbert emphasized that adventurous programming should not be equated with contemporary music. Programming is “about making interesting combinations,” he said, “not about tallying up the number of contemporary works and saying at the end of the year, ‘Look, we did 25 new pieces this season.’ ”

One of the orchestras routinely pushing new and interesting programs is Michael Tilson Thomas’s New World Symphony.  An interview with Jeremy Denk over the weekend reminded me of this fact.  During the interview, Denk noted that a concert is in the works where in the first half he will perform Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata and the second half will feature the same sonata, only orchestrated.  What an idea.  And, what a way to tease out Ives’s many layers of invention.

Rebecca Clarke

These glorious summer days are the perfect ambience for Seattle Chamber Music Society’s summer festival at Lakeside School, the lawn dotted with picnickers beforehand, and others arriving with chairs and rugs to listen to the concerts free, sitting on the slope outside St. Nicholas Hall with the music piped out through loudspeakers.

Friday night was no exception. The 7 p.m. recitals are free and, since they were moved from the small chapel last year to the bigger hall this year, many more of the outdoor concertgoers can and do go inside for these.

Friday the hall was practically full for Richard O’Neill’s and Jeremy Denk’s recital of Rebecca Clarke’s Sonata for viola and piano. It turned out to be the most exciting performance of the evening. Clarke, an Englishwoman and a well-known viola player in her day, was a contemporary of Amy Beach, and her viola sonata is one of her best known works. In late romantic style though not over lush, it should be even better known as it is finely wrought, with depth and imagination. Violist O’Neill brought his considerable skills and empathy to a performance warm and rich in tone and nuance, while pianist Denk matched him as an equal partner, both closely in mental tune with the other.

The concert itself, jammed full as every concert has been so far (there are a few tickets left for remaining performances at Lakeside and Overlake, the Redmond venue where five concerts are performed August 6-15), began with the Phantasie Quartet in F-sharp Minor for piano and strings by Frank Bridge. Written nine years before the Clarke, it is not one of Bridge’s best works. Only the bright and amusing Scherzo section seems wholly individual, though it was all ably played by violinist Jun Iwasaki, violist David Harding, cellist Ronald Thomas and pianist Alon Goldstein.

Thomas, a long term and welcome returnee to the festival, joined Lorna McGhee for “Assobio a jato” (”The Jet Whistle”) for flute and cello by Heitor Villa-Lobos. This, too was a highlight. It’s not a work we are likely to hear played professionally except in a chamber music festival like this one, so it was doubly welcome, though perhaps it should have been named “The Bird Whistle.”

The flute chirps, bubbles and dances its way all over its musical range through the work in feats of runs and chirrups, except for the much more somber second movement. The cello wends its own way stolidly underneath. Though seemingly unconnected with to what the flute is playing, the two parts fit together. McGhee encompassed this fast moving work with aplomb, while Thomas’s beautiful tone is always a joy to hear.

It’s only in recent years that artistic director Toby Saks has incorporated wind instruments into the festival except in occasional works with clarinet. Friday, however, we heard the Sextet by Francis Poulenc, with McGhee, oboist Nathan Hughes, clarinetist Sean Osborn, bassoonist Seth Krimsky, hornist Jeffrey Fair and pianist Denk. It’s a great piece, written in the 1930s and redolent of the art scene that had been fermenting in Paris for the previous couple of decades. Jazzy, sometimes flip, certainly upbeat most of the time, with a flowing variation movement in the middle which showcases each instrument in turn, this is another work which we don’t hear live as often as it deserves. It was given its full due by the players, who obviously enjoyed doing it.

Lastly, we heard Dvorak’s Quartet in D Major for piano and strings. While I didn’t hear live the memorable performance given last week of that composer’s quintet, this performance probably came close. Dvorak gives prominence to the cello all through this work, and Robert deMaine’s playing was frankly gorgeous. The rapport from the first measure seemed particularly good between the players, resulting in ensemble work of the first order from deMaine, violinist Stephen Rose, violist O’Neill, and pianist Adam Neiman.

Violinist Stefan Jackiw

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.

Simone Dinnerstein, a featured artist at Portland Piano International’s Summer Festival, has taken a most unusual route to become one of the hottest pianists on the planet. Just three years ago at the age of 33, Dinnerstein raised enough money to record Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” and produce a recital debut at Carnegie Hall. The resulting acclaim from the New York Times and other publications catapulted Dinnerstein into the limelight, landing her an agent and major contracts for concerts around the world.

I recently talked with Dinnerstein over the phone about her career.

It is just astounding that you to have a terrific artistic career without having won a piano competition.

Dinnerstein: I’m not the type of musician who excels in a competition setting. For a time, I thought that this would prevent me from having a career. Growing up as a pianist, I thought of winning competitions and following the regular kind of magic that happens.

Did you have a plan for all of this to happen?

Dinnerstein: Looking back on it, it looks as if I had a plan, but I didn’t. I was playing concerts a lot, and most of them were in small venues. Then I started to think that my career would continue in this sort of way, and that sort of thinking actually helped me to mature as an artist. Then I was accepted to an organization called Astral Artistic Services, which is based in Philadelphia. They help artists who are in transition between being students and having full professional careers. They wanted to present me in a big debut recital in Philadelphia. Then I found that I was pregnant. It was great but unexpected.

So, for the recital, I wanted to learn a piece of music that would be meaningful to me during my pregnancy. So I decided on the “Goldberg Variations.” After my son was born and after my recital in Philadelphia, I began to play a lot in alternative types of venues. Then I decided that I’d like to record the “Goldberg Variantions.” I raised the money for the recording from a few friends who had been supportive over the years. They all pitched in, and I made the CD, which I then sent to a few different people to get their feedback. Everyone was excited about it. Then we thought that it would be best if I played a recital of this music at Carnegie Hall. I had another sponsor who paid for the recital, and got signed by Columbia Artists Management, then a year later Telarc decided that they wanted to release the Goldberg CD, which I had originally recorded in 2005.

There are so many pianists out there. It is really hard to make a difference. But your playing has been lauded as something unique.

Dinnerstein: I think that I’m becoming more mature in my playing and try not to think of other people expectations of how something should be played. I just think about the music itself and what it means to me. Whenever I listen to other musicians who I admire, I find that they have a personal response to the music, and they have internalized the music – not necessarily following a certain tradition, but finding the way the music works for them. When I made that recording, that’s what I had in mind – how the music sounded to me.

The Telarc recording of your recital in Berlin last year will be released to the public on August 26th. How do you go about determining where or when a recording should be done?

Dinnerstein: I was scheduled to play a recital at the Berlin Philharmonie, and that’s considered one of the great concert halls of Europe. I had never played there before, but I knew that it’s an amazing acoustical space. With Berlin’s history and all, I thought that it would be a great place for a recording, especially with the fact that I was playing a program of German and American music. Telarc decided that it would be a great idea to record that recital. So the CD is of that recital in Berlin.

In that recording, you play Philip Lasser’s 12 Variations on a Chorale by J. S. Bach “Nimm von uns, Herr, du treuer Gott” (“Take from us, Lord, Thou faithful God”).

Dinnerstein: Yes, Philip’s piece is very beautiful and very deep. He has taken one of Bach’s very dark chorales. Phillip has a unique voice. You can hear strains of French impressionism in this piece. You also hear wide-open American harmonies and a little bit a jazz as well.

How did you discover Philip Lasser’s music?

Dinnerstein: I discovered him when I played a cello sonata that he wrote for my friend Zuill Bailey. We played it together, and then I met Phillip Lasser, and Phillip said that he had written these twelve variations and he gave the score and I looked at it and could tell right away that they were right up my alley. I loved them and could hear them in my head – how I would want to play them. So I started performing them about a year ago and thought that they would be perfect my recital. It’s great to have some new music in your repertoire.

Philip’s music is pretty tonal; so a lot of people can relate to it well. I just premiered set of variations that he wrote for me and a violinist. People were really involved in the music. Some contemporary music has a lack of beauty, but Philip’s is wonderful.

In your upcoming concert at the Portland Piano International Summer Festival, you will be playing some music by Aaron Copland and Anton Webern.

Dinnerstein: Yes, I’m starting the concert with an early work of Copland, his “Piano Variations,” which is from his atonal period. That piece will sound different to some people who are not familiar with this period of his music. Some of it is very jazzy and foreshadows some of the popular music that he wrote later on.

After that I play the Webern “Variations,” a short, incredibly beautiful piece. Even though it’s a 12-tone piece, it’s very romantic and it almost comes out of Brahms.

Then I’ll play Bach’s French Suite No. 5, which will be followed by the Lasser Variations, and then the Beethoven Sonata No 32, Opus 111. All in all, this is the same program that I played in Berlin, but I couldn’t fit all of the pieces on one CD, so I had to leave out the Copland and Webern. The Beethoven has a lot of dissonances in it and is very contemporary sounding. Starting with the Copland and ending with the Beethoven works very well.

How do you fit being a touring artist and a mom at the same time?

Dinnerstein: It’s very challenging, but many women in other careers have similar challenges. If I were a lawyer it could be even more challenging, every day I would be gone for most of the day. In my career, I do travel, and I might be away from home for half of the month, but then when I’m home, I’m home all the time. It’s really nice that my husband, Jeremy, and son, Adrian (who is six years old) can travel with me sometimes. My husband is a teacher at my son’s school, so they are on the same schedule. They aren’t going on this trip because I’m playing at too many places. This past mid-winter break, they came with me when I toured with the Dresden Philharmonic in Florida and Puerto Rico. That was wonderful.

When I’m at home, I practice during the day while my son is at school, then I practice again when he is asleep at night – usually from 8 to 10 in the evening. But I also volunteer at his classroom. So, I’m busy. There’s not a lot of down time. I get to rest on the airplane.

After you finish your West-coast tour, what else do you have coming up?

Dinnerstein: Later in the summer, I’m playing at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago. Then I’ll be in Germany at the Stuttgart Bach Festival, and then at Bremen Festival to play with Kristjan Järvi’s Absolut Ensemble. We are doing this thing called Bach Re-invention, which is a newly written concerto that takes Bach through several different kinds of genres. There’s a dj who is part of the orchestra, then we do a tango, then some Arabic-influenced music, but it’s all based on Bach’s inventions. I’ve never done anything like this before, and it involves improvisation, which is very new for me.

After that I’ll do my third Telarc recording. It’ll be Mozart’s Piano Concertos 21 and 23 with a fantastic new orchestra called The Knights. It’s a New York-based orchestra, and we’ll do the recording without a conductor. They are a very young and vibrant ensemble, and I’m very excited about the project. I want the concertos to sound like chamber music. One of the things about this orchestra is that they are incredibly good at listening to each other. I saw them do Beethoven’s “Pastoral Symphony” and they all knew what the other orchestra members were playing, because they were looking at each other.

I’m playing some nice recitals. I’ve got one at the Kennedy Center, another at Wigmore Hall in London, and playing at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. I’m learning Chopin’s first piano concerto for a concert with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony and Beethoven’s second with the New Jersey Symphony.

Wow, you are busy! Thanks for giving us your time!

Dinnerstein: You are most welcome. See you in Portland.

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Simone Dinnerstein plays at the Portland Piano International Summer Festival on Saturday, July 19th at 7:30 pm at the World Forestry Center. Dinnerstein will also give a masterclass on July 20th at 2 pm.

For more information, see Portland Piano International or call 503-228-1388 for tickets.

James Bash, a regular contributor to this site, spoke with Arts Journal founder Douglas McLennan in a Cross Cut piece.  The Q&A covers a lot of ground but some of McLennan’s most interesting thoughts come at the end of the piece.

McLennan asks:

People in Seattle say that we are one of the best regional orchestras in the country. That may be true, but when you look at the dynamic cities in the U.S. — the places where things really happen — you don’t think of that for Seattle or Portland when you think of the orchestra world. Why is that? What is the missing ingredient that prevents that from happening?

Read the piece to see why McLennan thinks this is true.

Cellist Maya Beiser

Walking to Benaroya Hall this past Thursday night I experienced first-hand the difficulty in holding a summer music festival, in Seattle, indoors. I am grateful the Seattle Symphony started Summer Fest. As I have mentioned before, it is impressive, that in less than year Thomas Philion, and orchestra staff put together a diverse collection of events and attracted Mark O’Connor to oversee the series. Summer Fest is an event Seattle needs. If Minneapolis can have a summer festival (called Sommer Fest), anchored by the Minnesota Orchestra and lead by Andrew Litton, then so can Seattle.

The challenges facing Summer Fest in the future are two-fold. First, and most important to me, how can more classical music be integrated into the overall festival experience?

Philion was right in a Cross Cut article where he said “Classical audiences are segmented just like any other musical type. There are people who like pops instead of the serious programming, people who prefer chamber music and don’t care to invest in orchestral music as much. We want to reach all of those different segments.” But, Philion can’t forget the most important classical music listeners of all: those who prefer to listen to classical music as part of something else.

And, second, can a better venue be found that will allow beautiful music and beautiful weather to co-exist? This later challenge is probably the most important especially if there is a large number of people who would like to listen to classical music while they are doing something else.

Find a venue where people can sit on blankets, drink “Three Buck Chuck,” and chat with friends and the Seattle Symphony could slog through all of Zemlinsky’s orchestral music and still draw a crowd. When Conlon foisted Zemlinsky on Chicago audiences over a period of time, the crowds still came.

Thursday’s weather was a bright, warm, nearly perfect summer evening in Seattle. The program featured music that was practically tailor made for an outdoor performance. Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring was sandwiched between O’Connor’s Six Caprices and his Concerto for Violin and Cello For the Heroes.

Instead of being outside, the concert was held inside at Benaroya Hall. The hall and the Taper Auditorium are magnificent. The moldings are modern but designed to replicate Boston’s cathedral to classical music, Symphony Hall. The interior is covered in warm, wood paneling. And the acoustics are alive; allowing the music to spring forward; making every seat in the house a good one. During the many rainy, cloudy months in Seattle, the hall is a place that is alive, compared to the gloom outside. Normally, Taper Auditorium is a perfect venue. But not this night.

I have only heard fragments of O’Connor’s music. His Fiddle Concerto and Appalachia Waltz are it. In both cases, I was struck with the O’Connor’s effortless command of American folk influences. It wasn’t surprising then to hear these same influences at work in his Six Caprices and For the Heroes.

Both the Six Caprices and the concerto are significant works for the composer. As O’Connor explained from the stage, the caprices launched his career as a composer/performer; the concerto is the fiddler’s response to the 9-11 attacks.

When O’Connor launched into the first caprice, I was enthralled. By the sixth, I strained to stay focused. The caprices are fast, nimble show pieces requiring dexterity and skill. O’Connor was faultless. But, after you’ve heard two or three there really wasn’t reason to hear the rest. Individually, the caprices were interesting but together they were tedious.

The other major O’Connor piece on the program was his Concerto for Violin and Cello. O’Connor titled this piece For the Heroes and is his response to 9-11. Unlike On the Transmigration of Souls, a piece composed by John Adams after 9-11, For the Heroes is unabashedly optimistic and folksy. O’Connor explained that in those days, weeks and months immediately following the tragedy O’Connor committed himself to conjuring the best from America and his own music.

For the performance, O’Connor was helped by Maya Beiser. Beiser is a cellist with eclectic tastes. She has collaborated with the likes of Louis Andriessen, Brian Eno and Steve Reich. She freely mixes multimedia elements into her concerts and actively performs on film sound tracks including this summer’s bomb The Happening and last year’s The Great Debaters.

For the Heroes should be seen as a vehicle for the composer’s own virtuosic talent.  The intent is to wow. Like Paganini and Chopin before him, O’Connor’s writing was brilliant and eventful for his own instrument and to a lesser degree so for the cellist, and merely passable for the orchestra. For long stretches of time, the orchestra sat idle. When the orchestra did play, the orchestra was confined to accompaniment.  The antagonism typically found in a concerto was reserved for Beier and O’Connor.  Even here, the mood was chummy.

Even if the music had its faults, the performance was as stimulating as a double shot of espresso. Beiser and O’Connor charged through the movements, obviously enjoying every note. Carolyn Kuan, was an able conductor. Although, at times, she allowed the orchestra to smoother O’Connor and Beiser.

This concert deserved to be played outside.  The program’s American, rustic influences and carefree mentality are perfect match for blue skies, crisp air, and the casual listening.  Enjoying O’Connor’s music doesn’t require significant mental investment; only a willingness to be dazzled.

Over on Cross Cut, Thomas May has a lengthy article discussing the changes taking place with the Seattle Symphony to reach out to a segmented listening audience.

In the article Philion says:

“We want to position the orchestra a little differently during the summer season and experiment with what kind of programming we might be able to do in the future,”

Summer is definitely the time to diversify.  But, diversifying could be as simple as just playing Mozart outside.  Back in my hometown, the Quad City Symphony performs one concert every year on the banks of the Mississippi.  It’s not really a festival, but the simple change of venue, paid tremendous dividends for the Quad City Symphony.

At one concert, I remeber an official crowd tally of 10,000 people.  For Davenport and the Quad City Symphony these are HUGE numbers.  For some perspective, Davenport is a town of only 90,000 people.  For that one night, more than 10% of Davenport’s population and probably close to 5% of the Quad Cities’ entire population is listening to classical music.

I know that some folks have a problem with Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone pieces, but projectile vomit is not something that I usually associate with his music. Yesterday evening (Saturday, July 12th at Kaul Auditorium), I attended a special Chamber Music Northwest concert that celebrated the 30 years of performing that cellist extaordinaire, Fred Sherry, has given at the summer festival. Sherry and his ensemble were deep in the waters of Schoenberg’s “String Quartet No. 3″ when I heard a noise and felt something warm and wet on my back. I couldn’t quite believe it at first and sat stunned for a few seconds before turning around to see who could have spewed their supper all over the back of my shirt. I saw a woman who seemed to have collapsed towards the back of her seat - perhaps in relief of having delivered a direct hit on a music critic who was poised to pen something profound about Schoenberg’s music. Right after I got up out of my seat another woman got up to wave me away from the scene, so I - plastered with the residue of an oatmeal dinner - made my way as quietly as I could to the bathroom. I thought of going home directly, but I had a meeting with David Brewster, the publisher of Crosscut.com, set up during intermission. Fortunately, a savvy CMNW team member gave me a CMNW polo shirt to wear and a plastic bag for my shirt. That was good enough for me, so I laughed off the situation and heard the rest of the concert with no more fuss.

Back to the music!

The first piece on the program was the “Fantasias Nos. 3 and 4 for String Sextet” by Orlando Gibbons, one the foremost composers of Jacobean England. The Fred Sherry Quartet (Sherry plus violinists Jennifer Frautschi and Jesse Mills and violist Richard O’Neill) collaborated with violist Paul Neubauer and cellist Michael Nicolas to apply a silky tone to this Renaissance-early Baroque piece. The music was very pleasant, especially when the sextet down-shifted to delicate and soft passages. But pleasantness aside, this kind of music had no climax and didn’t seem to go anywhere in particular.

Next came the Schoenberg “String Quartet No. 3,” which Sherry prefaced by remarking that Schoenberg had connected this piece to a picture that used to hang above his bed when he was a child. The picture was of a pirate captain who had his head nailed to the mast of his ship. That got some chuckles from the audience.

This four-movement work started off with some intriguing sounds in which part of the quartet would pluck all sorts of seemingly random notes while the other players skittered about. From one moment to the next the instruments were like a scramble of disconnected voices in a dark forest. I recall the second movement ending with a brief and eloquent question and the third movement contained some interesting pairings of the violins versus the viola and cello.

Well,up until I was disrupted, I would have to say that the Sherry Quartet nailed this number.

After intermission, I got to hear Charles Wuorinen’s “Sextet for Two Violins, Two Violas and Two Cellos.” This works completed in 1989 as a commission from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and dedicated to Sherry, who was at that time the artistic director of the CMSLC.

The ensemble played this work with thrilling conviction. There were lots of stinging attacks, sudden stops, slightly languorous moments, and furious swells. Sherry seemed to enjoy every minute of the music making. He tore some horsehair from his bow, because he was playing so hard. Then ensemble won over the audience, which responded with tremendous applause.

The last work on the program was a world premiere of “A Set of Arrangements for Two Violins, Two Violas and Two Cellos” by Jesse Mills. Members of Sherry’s Quartet chose four selections from this diverse set. The “Russian Maiden’s Song” contained a sweet, yet melancholy melody that ended very poignantly. “Moving Past” featured Mills with some bluesy/jazzy sounds. I loved the thick viola parts in “The Stormy Morning” and “The Inn.” And “Funiculi, Funicula” had the perfect zing to end the evening.

Still, the next time I hear some music by Schoenberg, I’ll have to bring an extra shirt.
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PS:
At noontime today (Sunday), I received a sympathetic phone call from Linda Magee, executive director of CMNW. I asked her if the woman who spilled her beans on me was ok. Magee replied that her staff offered to get a doctor for the woman, but she didn’t want one and told them that she felt fine and would ride her bicycle home.

Courtesy of Arts Journal, the Denver Post has a piece on musician salaries.

It can be particularly difficult in a market like Denver. For example, the Colorado Symphony musician’s core 43-week salary hovers around $47,000 a year, about the same as similarly sized orchestras, such as the Oregon Symphony in Portland.

But section musicians in comparable cities with older, larger orchestras and more established reputations make considerably more. The basic annual salary at the St. Louis Symphony, for example, is $73,500 for a 42-week season, and in Baltimore, it’s $76,700 for 52 weeks.

More typical here are musicians like Paul Nagem, principal flutist of the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, where annual salaries for most members range from $9,600 to $11,500 for 103 concerts and rehearsals. Because the position is not full time, he has no choice but to take on an assortment of other jobs as well.