Seattle Chamber Music Festival

Last night, July 5, we drove out to Lakeside to listen to some chamber music. The first piece we heard was by Ravel for violin and 'cello. We heard it while leaning against some large rocks out on the lawn. A piece I'll have to think about a bit. If I had written it, I think I would have worked on it some more. It was miked and piped to large speakers outside, so that must have had something to do with it.

Anyway that's not really what we came for.

The 8:00 show consisted of three pieces. The first was Robert Schuman's Trio for violin, Cello, and Piano Fmaj, Op 80.
The last (of three) was Brahms Quintet for strings also in Fmaj Op 88.
there is always something soporific and even depressing about Schuman. Perhaps simply knowing his life story. Or perhaps sympathy for the struggle composers faced before Sibelious (the music scoring software, not Jean)
In those days, they had to spend hours writing it out by hand very carefully following all the rules in hopes that it would sound alright if anybody ever played it.
When I spend two or three hours composing, I can check my backup files and find ten or fifteen revised versions. And, I've ALREADY heard all of it performed.
A whole lot of lazy people, like myself, are going to be calling themselves composers.

My wife complained that it was hard to stay awake.

Then we have Brahms. Lush Brahms. Brahms lullaby.
Brahms, even in his big symphonies, feels to me like a warm blanket.

The important piece was the centerpiece, listed as Charles Ives Sonata for Violin and Piano, No. 1 with Jeremy Denk at the piano and Scott St. John at the violin (it looks to me like he uses a foam pad instead of a typical wooden shoulder rest. Irrelevant, but that's the sort of thing I like best about chamber music, you can notice stuff like that)

What I heard, was Jeremy Denk doing a sophisticated Professor Peter Schikele explanation of Chuck Ives doing a reincarnation of P.D.Q. Bach.

An AMERICAN P.D.Q.

Reference to Ives as "our greatest" composer only added to the merriment.

Ask me sometime about the use of "humor" to mask artistic incompetance.

Anyway, all the artists performed impeccably and a grand time was had by all.

Those of us here in the Great Pacific Northwest are truly hap.