Musicians are in fine form at festival

Wednesday night, perfect weather, lovely location on spacious grounds. It sounds like Seattle Chamber Music Society's Summer Festival at Lakeside School, doesn't it? But, no, the Lakeside festival finished last week. This is Overlake School in Redmond, where the festival continues for the second year.

MUSIC REVIEW

SEATTLE CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY

WHEN: Through Aug. 11

WHERE: Overlake School, Redmond

In the opening performance, Shai Wosner and Orion Weiss gave pure pleasure in Mozart's Sonata for two pianos in D Major. There was extraordinary rapport between the two. They played as one. In consequence there was no "clunking," as is common with two piano performances. Elegant, sensitive style and impeccable technique infused their identical approaches to phrasing and dynamics.

Only in a festival format can we hear live Ravel's Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet. It's hard otherwise to gather the players together, and rarely at such a polished level, as here. Harpist Heidi Krutzen, flutist Lorna McGhee, clarinetist Frank Kowalsky, violinists Erin Keefe and Steven Copes, violist David Harding and cellist Robert deMaine drew out its dreamy, color-washed feel from the first gentle notes of the winds together to the equally exquisite harp cadenza near the end.

In an inspired pairing, another atmospheric work for harp, flute and viola followed, with Krutzen, McGhee and Harding. Sofia Gubaidulina's "The Garden of Joy and Sorrow" uses all the resources of the instruments to create the sense of a garden alive with growth and fluttering creatures, yet it is really a garden of the emotions. Sliding harmonics on the viola (which sounded slightly like the notes of "Taps"), the harp key used as a plectrum and a piece of tape as a mute for glissades on that instrument, and multiphonics on the flute are all used to further the composer's intent, and the result was a wonderful mesh of instrumental colors.

Brahms' Quartet for piano and strings in C Minor completed the program in an unpersuasive performance. The strings felt separate from the piano, and while softer passages sounded beautifully shaped, loud ones suffered from an approach that hacked and stabbed at the music, detracting from rather than emphasizing its intensity. Performers were pianist Anna Polonsky, violinist Copes, cellist Bion Tsang, and a fine violist making his debut at the festival, Che-Yen Chen.

Freelancer Philippa Kiraly has been writing on classical music in Seattle since 1991.

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