2020 FREELANCE REVIEWS
Seattle Symphony’s “Season Opening Reimagined,” with Lee Mills conducting.
(“Virtual” concert: Drive-in screening at Marymoor Park, Saturday, Sept. 19, of season-opening concert recorded earlier in the week]
By Melinda Bargreen
As a steady drizzle turned to rain, a long line of cars full of Seattle Symphony fans ventured down the wet and winding roads to King County’s Marymoor Park Saturday. Music presenters often overuse the phrase “a concert like no other,” but for once, that was exactly what we got: a Symphony concert recorded earlier in the week in Benaroya Hall, watched on the park’s big drive-in screens, and streamed through a dedicated FM channel into the car radios.
There’s never been an opening night like this one. The 35 participating orchestra musicians in the video, most of them masked except for the wind players, sat at an approved “social distance” from each other and from the orchestra’s associate conductor, Lee Mills. (According to Seattle Symphony publicist Dinah Lu, experiments with woodwind bags placed over the instruments to reduce aerosols, and bell covers for brass instruments, earlier proved unsatisfactory, and plexiglass barriers had been found to impede ventilation, heating, and air conditioning.) The vocal soloist, Whitney Mongé, performed at a safe distance from the players, on a 32-foot extension from the stage.
The sound quality was only as good as your car’s FM-radio setup. In our case, it was acceptable, but it would have been a lot better on our home sound system. (The concert is also available for streaming, free, at live.seattlesymphony.org.) But there still was a welcome sense of occasion at the drive-in, as fellow drivers tooted horns and flashed lights in place of applause and standing ovations.
Prerecorded video clips from several orchestra players, expressing their gratitude for support, amplified the audience’s connection with the distant orchestra. Particularly moving was the brief segment from music director Thomas Dausgaard, who has seen months of exquisitely detailed planning vanish in the wake of the coronavirus: “I am counting down the hours until I am back on the Benaroya Hall stage with you. We will be back together soon.”
Mongé, a Seattle-based singer-songwriter and guitarist, opened the program by performing four of her songs with Mills and the Symphony, in orchestrations by Andrew Joslyn. She has a warm, distinctive, and rather husky contralto, and her songs are easy on the ear. (One of them, “Crash,” is reminiscent of an old Stephen Stills song, “Love the One You’re With.”)
Mills and the orchestra offered a short, pleasant piece by American composer Mary D. Watkins, “Soul of Remembrance” (from “Five Movements in Color”). The finale, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, was a fitting capstone to the evening: a remnant from the canceled Beethoven Festival that was planned for this past June, before COVID-19 changed everything.
The opening-night performance, streamed through everyone’s individual car speakers, had nothing like the presence of a Benaroya Hall concert — and yet it rang with authenticity and energy. The usual standing ovation, with its sense of communal joy and appreciation, was missing, but the cars were rocking with honks, headlight flashes and a few shouts out the dripping-wet windows — a response the orchestra could not hear but was joyous all the same. So far, and yet so near.
These are the times when we are grateful for the gift of beautiful sounds, even at a distance, and for the reminder that great music will outlast any pandemic.
Preview: Seattle Symphony Orchestra Season Begins, September 2020
By Melinda Bargreen
Special to The Seattle Times
“A season like no other”: this promising phrase is a longtime fixture of enthusiastic season announcements each fall, from arts groups everywhere.
This time, however, the phrase is literally true. The 2020-21 concert season in Seattle will indeed be unlike any other, because the COVID-19 pandemic makes it, at this point, unsafe for musicians to perform together in close proximity onstage – or for audiences to gather for concerts.
What does this mean for our region’s orchestras, operas, chamber groups, and choruses -- and the music lovers who want to hear and see them? It means two things: online concerts with smaller forces (at least until the state reopens), and the tremendous exercise of imagination and hard work on the part of presenters.
Those qualities are evident in Seattle Symphony CEO Krishna Thiagarajan, who observes: “We’re very fortunate to be in a position to move forward with our upcoming season. Of course, we’ve had to re-examine and rework everything from programming to operations and logistics. We can’t have in-person audiences until the county safely reaches Phase 4 [of the Safe Start Washington reopening plan; King County is currently in Phase 2], but thanks to the wonderful musicians and staff here, live performances are resuming from Benaroya Hall in September."
Seattle Symphony plans to share live weekly concerts from Benaroya Hall -- albeit with a smaller number of musicians playing, spaced farther apart than usual -- via its new streaming service, Seattle Symphony Live.
The 2020-21 season will open Sept. 19 with a 7:30 p.m. “Season Opening Reimagined” orchestral concert featuring Seattle-based vocalist Whitney Mongé and conductor Lee Mills -- free for viewing on Seattle Symphony Live. The program, which includes works of Mozart and Beethoven and will be filmed earlier that week in Benaroya Hall), will also be shown at the Symphony’s first-ever drive-in concert screening, with listeners inside their vehicles at Marymoor Park. (Visit seattlesymphony.org/seasonopening.) Now that’s thinking outside the box.
Following the opener, each week the Symphony will stream a new performance featuring a shortened program (no intermissions) and a smaller, socially distanced orchestra. Among the guest artists: conductor Xian Zhang with pianist Jon Kimura Parker, in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (Sept. 24); conductor Shiyeon Sung and violinist Simone Porter in the Barber Violin Concerto (Oct. 8); conductor Joseph Young, pianist Tengku Irfan, and trumpeter David Gordon (Oct. 15); Rachell Ellen Wong leading Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” (Oct. 22); and Lee Mills conducting Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with concertmaster/soloist Noah Geller (Oct. 29). Further programming will be announced in regular updates.
Seattle Symphony Live annual passes start at .99 per month, on sale starting Sept. 8; donors and 2020–21 season subscribers will receive complimentary access to the streaming service.
“We’re excited to connect with not just our local community but a global one as well,” Thiagarajan says. “While reworking repertoire for this season, we’ve been able to program some of our community compositions that didn’t get to have their premieres last season. So it’ll be wonderful to share these special collaborations, which are at the heart of the Symphony’s goals as an organization, with a broader audience than would have been possible previously.”
The pandemic presents opera companies with unusual challenges: not only an orchestra in the more confined space of the orchestra pit, but also singers whose art is one of the most efficient known ways of transmitting the coronavirus.
Seattle Opera’s general director, Christina Scheppelmann, acknowledges that the show can’t go on as usual: “Opera companies offer the thrill of live performance —the desire for which has been a part of humankind for more than 2,000 years and will never go away. We cannot offer live performances right now, so we must think outside the box. For Seattle Opera, doing nothing was out of the question.”
The company is presenting free online recitals (on Facebook, YouTube, and the Opera website, seattleopera.org) by such singers as Mary Elizabeth Williams, Frederick Ballentine, Marcy Stonikas, and Jorell Williams. The recitals will be filmed in the singers’ homes or studios, as well as in McCaw Hall – now operating as Seattle Center Studios -- a recording studio for virtual events on the McCaw Hall stage. Paid content (Seattle Opera has 6,600 subscribers) will include access to recital versions of the operas “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci,” and a new “Elixir of Love” production designed for film, plus a joint recital by award-winning singers Angela Meade and Jamie Barton, with pianist John Keene.
Check out your favorite music presenter online, and chances are excellent that you’ll find a way to hear and see the musicians you enjoy – from a safe distance, at least for now. Some are free; some are paid-admission. Here are some standouts:
-- Meany Center: Meany On Screen, a free digital platform, offers Australia’s “Circa,” a new circus/dance/theater presentation (Oct. 16-23); acclaimed pianist Jeremy Denk follows Nov. 13-20, and dance troupe Ragamala Dec. 4-11. ( meanycenter.org)
-- Early Music Seattle presents violinist Rachel Barton Pine online, in repertoire from Bach to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”; 6 p.m. Sept. 13 (0, earlymusicseattle.org).
-- Music of Remembrance: Season opener is “To Life!”-- works about starting new lives in adopted homelands; Nov. 1-8 online (ticket info TBA, at musicofremembrance.org).
-- Pacific MusicWorks: Chamber works by 19th-century harpist Zoë de la Rue, with Whidbey Island Music Festival; Beethoven’s Cello/Fortepiano Sonatas, and a program of “Beethoven’s Scottish Songs”; tickets 0-0; online through Oct. 30; (pacificmusicworks.org).
-- Byron Schenkman and Friends: Six Sunday-evening baroque/classical concerts by keyboardist Schenkman and guests, with Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and “beyond”: starting Oct. 11, and streaming online for free (with “pay by donation” option) at byronandfriends.org.
Preview: All-Star Orchestra, with Gerard Schwarz conducting, September 2020:
By Melinda Bargreen
Special to The Seattle Times
As symphony orchestras struggle to deal with today’s restrictions and dangers of the coronavirus, KCTS-TV will present a “blast from the past”: two full-orchestra performances by the All-Star Orchestra, led by longtime Seattle Symphony maestro Gerard Schwarz. Recorded last year, they’ll air at 7 p.m. Sept. 20 and Sept. 27, as a welcome reminder of a time when it was possible to make music without masks and onstage distancing.
“Maybe next year we’ll be able to come together again,” Schwarz said in a recent telephone interview, “but for now, I feel just terribly for all the musicians who are unable to play together. At least we have these programs.”
The first All-Star concert, “From Italy and Hungary with Love,” airs at 7 p.m. Sept. 20 on KCTS, with Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony, Kodály’s “Dances of Galanta,” and Hovhaness’ “Prayer of St Gregory.”
The following week, at 7 p.m. Sept. 27, “Musical Miracles” will offer Handel’s “Water Music” and Haydn’s “Miracle” Symphony, plus Augusta Read Thomas’ “Plea for Peace.”
“I feel so lucky,” says Schwarz of the two concerts, “that we can actually offer these programs that are alive and real. Today, the virus protocols require special air filtration, masks and distancing for the players, with bags placed around the bells of wind instruments, and a special protector around the flute aperture to stop the spread of aerosols. It’s surreal -- a different world – but we will get through this.”
Schwarz is familiar to Seattle music lovers for his 26 years as music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, seasons that saw the building of Benaroya Hall and the establishment of a lengthy discography on the Delos label. He departed in 2011, and now is music director of the All-Star Orchestra, Eastern Music Festival, Palm Beach Symphony, and Mozart Orchestra of New York. Schwarz also is a composer, and a professor at the Frost School of Music (University of Miami).
The All-Star Orchestra, founded in 2012, draws its players from the principals and other top instrumentalists of the country’s finest orchestras – New York, Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Seattle among them. Thus far, the All-Stars have recorded 16 programs aired nationwide on 225 public television stations, and worldwide via internet streaming. The programs, available on DVD (Naxos label) and through the online Khan Academy, have won seven Emmy Awards and the Deems Taylor Television Broadcast Award.
Review: Seattle Chamber Music Society’s [Virtual] Summer Festival, July 29, 2020
By Melinda Bargreen
Special to The Seattle Times
Music lovers wait all year for those electric moments in the Nordstrom Recital Hall, when small ensembles of some of the world’s finest musicians gather onstage for the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s festival of great classics and bold new works.
This year, the coronavirus pandemic has forced the Society, like most other festival presenters, into uncharted territory: “virtual” concerts, streamed online. They’re recorded in the SCMS’ Center for Chamber Music in Seattle and in other locations, and accessed online by patrons who listen and watch from afar on their computers or other devices (which can be hooked up to TVs).
So how’s that working out?
First, it is futile to imagine that virtual concerts can replace the galvanic energy of being in the same room with musicians whose spontaneous intensity and virtuosity can make music lovers forget to breathe. Sharing in the moment that force field of live music is not something you can duplicate on a screen.
And yet: it can come pretty darned close, as you learn to immerse yourself in that online world. Today we experience so much on screens that many music lovers are already accustomed to hearing and watching performances online. There are advantages: online viewers can take a pause, or listen to one portion of the concert while saving the rest for later. You can hear and see the performance again (through Aug. 17, at least). Pre- and post-concert interviews with the artists add personal touches to the program.
A “virtual festival” also offers the chance to experience performances that would be impossible to achieve live – like Aaron Jay Kernis’ “Siren for Solo Flute, 7 Flutes, and Piccolo.” The incredibly nimble flutist Marina Piccinini played all the parts, recorded and captured simultaneously on the screen as if in a Zoom meeting. This performance, premiered on Wednesday evening, must be seen and heard to be believed.
And you can get to know new and challenging repertoire in a way not possible with one hearing. Wednesday’s concert, recorded July 22, featured four works by Kernis (whose Violin Concerto – composed for and recorded by James Ehnes and the Seattle Symphony – won two 2019 Grammy awards).
Hearing Kernis talk about his “Mini Kernis Festival” on Wednesday evening, with three world premieres among those four works on the program, was particularly illuminating and timely. His “Elegy (for those we lost),” composed two months ago in memory of the victims of COVID-19 and premiered by pianist Alessio Bax, could not have been more “in the moment” with its quiet lyricism rising to an anguished crescendo and subsiding again in resignation. Kernis’ “Un Bacio,” premiered with beautiful clarity by solo pianist Joyce Yang, proved an epic piece of substantial difficulty.
A lighter note was sounded in Kernis’ 2012 ”Feng Shui,” which the composer called “a benediction for the new physical home of the festival” (the Center for Chamber Music). With Kernis at the piano, tenor Nicholas Phan deftly negotiated some challenging settings of verses about the ancient art in which the forces of energy are balanced to harmonize individuals with their environment.
The program’s opener was a spirited and subtle performance of the Debussy Violin Sonata in G Minor by violinist Benjamin Beilman and pianist Orion Weiss.
And finally, there was Mozart: the “Divertimento for String Trio” (K.563), in a warmly spirited performance by Tessa Lark (violin), Cynthia Phelps (viola) and Ani Aznavoorian (cello).
And then, there was silence.
No rip-roaring ovation; none of the electricity generated between thrilling performers and a delighted audience. The virtual world, post-concert, can be a chilly place.
[Melinda Bargreen, a Seattle Times reviewer since 1977, is a composer and the author of two books, “Classical Seattle” and “50 Years of Seattle Opera”; she also writes for several publications. She can be reached at mbargreen@gmail.com.]
Preview: Northwest Virtual Music Festivals
By Melinda Bargreen
It all began so quietly.
In February, things were already starting to look promising for July’s annual Summer Festival of the Seattle Chamber Music Society. Executive director Connie Cooper remembers the subscription sales were posting “good numbers.” SCMS had just moved into their brand-new Center for Chamber Music in downtown Seattle in mid-March, when it became increasingly clear that “change was in the air,” as Cooper puts it.
“But we thought that in a couple of months, we would be past all this,” she says of the coronavirus.
By early April, festival leaders were engaging in serious talks, as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold and it became obvious that the intimate concerts in the 536-seat Nordstrom Recital Hall were no longer possible in July.
“What would the festival look like? Would the audiences feel safe? What was possible?” Cooper remembers earnest discussions with artistic director James Ehnes, staff, board members, and key supporters. They set a deadline of mid-May to decide whether to go forward with the festival, with its emphasis this year saluting Beethoven’s 250th birthday.
“Live concerts are what we do,” Cooper says. “We had to reinvent ourselves very quickly. We talked with our colleagues, and we were all in the same boat. Some of them pulled the plug very early; some waited to see if things would change. Our Center for Chamber Music space made it possible to have a virtual festival, because we had control [over the venue].”
Once the Seattle festival decided to go ahead, there were more decisions: Who among the 42 participating musicians (some based overseas) would be able to come; how strict COVID protocols would be implemented; how the current subscribers would convert to online viewers; and how to bring in new subscribers.
“I knew we did not want to give away concert viewing for free,” Cooper says, “because this would diminish their value.” Establishing an online paywall was another technical challenge – and there would be more.
The original concept was to stage the concerts in the new Center for Chamber Music, live-streaming them to the screens of subscribers. But on the first day of the 12 concerts, July 6, it became clear that the Internet platform was “just not robust enough to support the videos,” Cooper says. “They did not meet our timeline or quality standards. We moved to Vimeo, another platform.”
Festival staffers also realized that trying to present the filmed concerts in “real time” was too complicated. They decided on a one-week delay, giving them time to create intermission features and interviews between the musical selections. Every concert would be streamed a week after the musicians had performed it in the Center for Chamber Music; viewers could access the concerts on demand through Aug. 17.
The musicians’ health and safety are paramount concerns. Cooper explains that the “tight protocols” start with COVID testing with University of Washington virologists upon the artists’ arrival, and also for the staff, production crew, and piano tuner. These tests are repeated weekly. Daily rituals include temperature-taking, sanitizing high-touch surfaces, and quarantining with musicians, staff, and production crew.
“As far as we know,” Cooper says, “we are one of very few festivals actually bringing the musicians to the city and doing live videos.
“Is this live music? It’s not livestreamed in the moment, but the musicians view it as live, because there are no stops and starts as there are in a recording session: everything is played straight through.”
Subscriptions to all the concerts online cost 25 per household. The first performance, performed on July 6 and streamed on July 13, had 854 views in 17 states, Canada, the UK, France, the Netherlands, and South Korea. Average watch time was 27 percent of the video, but the content was available for more than a month afterward.
“We are lucky that our artists took risks to come here,” Cooper reflects.
“And potentially: this is not the only time we’ll be doing this. The music continues.”
Up in the San Juan Islands, the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival was undergoing the same levels of angst, as the June 1 “go/don’t go” deadline for their festival artists approached. Artistic director Aloysia Friedmann and her “kitchen cabinet” of advisors met frequently.
“The easiest solution was ‘we cancel, we give up’,” Friedmann remembers. “That’s not me. But thanks to our board members William and Valerie Anders, we were able to pay half our artists’ fees for this year. We became aware of a new concert platform, ‘OurConcerts.Live,’ that would livestream the concert programming, which was changed from an earlier plan to the Miró String Quartet performing the complete string quartets of Beethoven. We had important advice and support from philanthropists David and Amy Fulton, who recommended (award-winning video producer/director) John Forsen,” Friedmann says.
The Orcas Festival concerts will be broadcast live, not prerecorded, and may be viewed up to 24 hours after each performance. The 12-evening concert series is scheduled for through Aug. 8 on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 5:30 p.m. A festival pass (all concerts) is 20; single tickets are 0.
After each livestream, the performance will remain online for on-demand viewing for 24 hours for ticketholders. The complete Beethoven cycle is broadcast live from the Quartet's home city of Austin, TX, and the video feed is produced in real time, with multiple camera angles and high-quality sound.
A final bonus concert on Aug. 13 will feature live music from Orcas by a dozen festival artists (including Friedmann and her pianist husband, Jon Kimura Parker).
“Luckily we have such gifted and willing musicians, and so many camera enthusiasts and specialists in technology,” Friedmann says. “I’m so hopeful that this connectivity will work!”
SEATTLE CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY’S SUMMER FESTIVAL: Concerts, recorded a week in advance of viewing, stream online on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays through Sept. 7. Among the featured artists: the Ehnes Quartet, violinist Augustin Hadelich, pianist Boris Giltburg. Subscriptions are 25 for all 12 concerts (5 per individual concert); seattlechambermusic.org.
ORCAS ISLAND CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL: July 16-Aug. 8, live broadcasts of Beethoven quartets by the Miró String Quartet on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are available via OurConcerts.live beginning June 25 at 10:00 a.m. and priced 0 for individual concerts, 0 for tickets to six of the concerts, and 20 for access to the complete series, which also includes an "OICMF Encore Evening" livestreamed concert on August 14. www.oicmf.org
OLYMPIC MUSIC FESTIVAL VIRTUAL SALON CONCERTS: Aug. 2- Sept. 6, with 5 p.m. broadcasts of concerts on Sundays, and 7 p.m. talks on Wednesdays. Performers are artistic director/pianist Julio Elizalde, violinist Stella Chen and cellist Matthew Zalkind. Free concerts and talks will be streamed to the front page of the website, www.olympicmusicfestival.org, via YouTube.
ICICLE CREEK VIRTUAL CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL: Two remaining concerts, at 5 p.m. July 31, and 5 p.m. Aug. 1. Livestreamed from Canyon Wren Recital Hall (Leavenworth, WA), with pianist Oksana Ejokina, violinist Hoorig Poochikian, and others playing Mozart, Grieg, Poulenc, Enescu, and more; free “tickets” at www.icicle.org.
Review: J. S. Bach Cello Suites, recorded by André Laurent O’Neil (baroque cello and violoncello piccolo).
Edition Lilac 200320 (2-CD set)
By Melinda Bargreen
[for EarRelevant.com]
Inspiration, testing ground, source of endless beauty: J.S. Bach’s six Suites for Solo Cello occupy a unique pinnacle in the music world. From their earliest days, most cellists live with the Suites, developing strong feelings about interpretation and the most subtle, minute details of performance. Bach’s Suites are intimate companions, testing grounds, and a way to measure the depth, personality, and skills of the performer.
The Atlanta-based cellist André Laurent O’Neil, now 53, has released his 2015 recording of the Bach Suites on a John Morrison baroque cello (ca. 1800), and a 2006 Wang Zhi Ming violoncello piccolo (for the Suite No. 6).
Remarkable for its tonal variety and also for the cellist’s imaginative approach to phrasing, this set is consistently interesting and engaging, no matter how familiar these well-traveled masterpieces might be to the listener. No musical line is ever repeated or ornamented quite the same way. There’s always something expressively new for the ear to find and the mind to reflect upon. The repeats feature different ornaments, different dynamics and phrasing, so that each suite seems continuously to evolve. Nothing is left to chance, and yet the playing sounds spontaneous, never overly studied.
Vibrato is almost absent; it is used very sparingly as a rare expressive device, along with a wide variety of articulations and a masterly sense of dynamics. O’Neil’s control at the lower end of the dynamic spectrum is impressive indeed. In the quieter movements, such as the Sarabande of Suite No. 5, he refines the sound right down to a mere thread without ever losing control of the forward pulse of the phrases. The cellist often varies the instrument’s colors by playing the same passage on different strings during repeats, always an effective expressive tool.
O’Neil brings several decades’ worth of experience and serious study to these recordings. His influences over the years include Anner Bylsma (whose Bach Suites O’Neil heard as a high-school student); O’Neil’s teacher at Yale, Aldo Parisot (who evidently did not share his student’s passion for the Suites); Dmitry Markevitch (who introduced him to the baroque cello); Norbert Zaubermann (who inspired him and taught him Bach’s scordatura tuning for the C Minor Suite); and finally Jaap ter Linden, with whom O’Neil studied for three years at the Royal Conservatory at The Hague.
In his liner-notes essay, O’Neil observes that he used Anna Magdalena Bach’s manuscript as the primary source, and that his “efforts to recreate Bach’s sound world” include his instrument’s historical setup, with gut strings and baroque-period temperament. While O’Neil’s is a fairly strict textual interpretation for the most part, there are a few exotic touches (including a surprise accidental or two in the Prelude of Suite No. 5, and some liberties in Allemande of No. 6); these, however, are not at all jarring. What shines through these unhurried and ruminative performances of the Suites is O’Neil’s obvious love and deep understanding of these iconic works. The focus is always on Bach.
{This review appeared in the EarRelevant website.]
Review: David Fung, “Mozart Piano Sonatas” (Steinway & Sons 30107):
By Melinda Bargreen
If there is a standard path toward piano stardom, David Fung has assuredly not taken it. Growing up in Australia, this musically gifted youngster began violin studies at 5 and piano studies at 8, before deciding to become a doctor. After two years of medical studies, he became the first piano graduate of the Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles, and then went on to Yale University and the Hannover Hochschule für Musik.
At 22 Fung entered the world of international piano competitions, where he won prizes at both the Queen Elisabeth and Arthur Rubinstein Competitions. (In the latter competition, Fung also was awarded the Chamber Music Prize and the Mozart Prize; the latter is an indication of the gifts he brings to the recording under discussion here.)
Fung’s new Mozart-sonata disc illustrates his individualism in several ways. First is the choice of repertoire: not the “usual subjects” chosen by pianists eager to make a splash, but instead, four sonatas whose charms are not always so obvious on the surface. Fung has chosen No. 5 in G Major (K.283); No. 4 in E-flat Major (K.282); No. 2 in F Major (K.280); and No. 17 in B-flat Major (K.570). These performances of three early sonatas and a later one will reward close and attentive listening, for the quantity and quality of details (some of them daring) that Fung lavishes on each movement.
Take the exuberant Allegro of K.283 (G Major), for instance: the first-movement repeat is different, a little more hesitant and then more boisterous, as if rethinking the first way. There’s lots of variety in Fung’s touch, with lines that sometime seem a little questing, and then a well-judged pause. A repeated theme sounds decidedly jauntier or more assertive than the first time around; there are slight hesitations here and there, but nothing feels manipulated or overly studied. While the performances feel spontaneous, it is evident that a great deal of thought has gone into every line of the music.
The playing, in short, is consistently interesting. Fung has more colors in his musical palette than many Mozarteans can command. The right-hand phrasing is especially eloquent, and his tempi are often quite elastic: surprising the ear by stretching the line just a little here and there in a manner that never seems exaggerated or unnatural. Fung draws a lot of drama from his instrument: silky, dulcet melodic lines become more assertive, even a little edgy, later on.
This also is a pianist who also can let go and have fun, as in the Presto finale of the K.283: the movement has an exuberant gaiety, with stormy passages giving way to playing that sounds good-humored. He can surprise listeners with the occasional “Wait for it!” pause when you’re not expecting one (as in, for instance, the Presto movement of K.280/No. 2). In short: it’s not “Mozart as usual.”
Each of the sonatas has a distinctly different character. The K.282 in E-Flat (No. 4) has an opening Adagio that is serenely contemplative, leisurely, and spacious, with lyrical melodies and a lot of clarity; the sustaining pedal is applied sparingly if at all. There are eloquent little spaces in a reading that is unhurried and explorative.
And, on the other side of the coin, then there’s the K.570 (No. 17) in B-Flat Major. It’s a study in the adroit building and subsiding of dynamics, and limpidly graceful melodies. The third movement – the last track on this recording – leaves the listener with Mozart at his most playful (occasionally rambunctious), and the lively good humor of this interpretation.
{This review appeared in the EarRelevant website.]
Review/Interview: “The Vanishing,” by Jayne Ann Krentz (Berkley Hardcover, 7, Jan. 7, 2020
By Melinda Bargreen
Special to The Seattle Times
By the time you read your morning Seattle Times, Jayne Ann Krentz has probably been at work for at least a couple of hours on her next novel. You don’t get to be a mega-bestselling author without a powerful work ethic and a speedy set of typing fingers.
Right now the Seattle writer is hard at work on a sequel to her newest novel, “The Vanishing,” in which two women with psychic abilities who witnessed a long-ago murder suddenly find themselves in deadly danger.
“I love the psychic connection between humans. I find myself coming back to it,” says Krentz of “The Vanishing.” “It gives me a way of deepening the relationships and giving them another level. I think most readers are able to step into a fantasy involving the psychic vibe because it is just one step beyond intuition. And everybody believes in intuition!
“The psychic element makes it possible for me to do suspenseful plots without the heavy police-procedural forensic elements. It allows for crimes that often go unobserved because they don’t look like crimes to the police – they look like natural disasters or deaths. This gives me a way to create an undercover agency that handles those kinds of crimes: the ‘Foundation’. I see the Foundation as basically a remnant of the old days when the US government was seriously experimenting with the paranormal as legitimate research in the 1950s, 60s, and maybe the early 70s. It was amazing how seriously they took it; they spent millions and involved major universities in studies.
“In the book, I just posit that the experimentation and research never really went away, and that’s where the Foundation comes in. This is the kind of world I am drawing on, in writing what is essentially a murder mystery and a romance. That’s what I write: romantic suspense.”
“The Vanishing” starts back in the 1960s in Fogg Lake, a hippie town in the mountains for off-the-grid people who valued privacy and didn’t welcome outsiders. The government’s secret underground laboratory, however, caused an explosion when an experiment went horribly awry. The next thing the townspeople knew, they had awakened to a different world. They explained away the hallucinations they experienced from “the Incident” as the result of food poisoning – but some of the Fogg Lake descendants, like Krentz’s protagonists Catalina and Olivia, were later born with what they call “other sight.” These two friends had earlier witnessed a murder in the caves, and now the killer wants to make them disappear permanently.
The two friends put their preternatural abilities to work in their Seattle private-investigation firm, where they meet with investigator Slater Arganbright; he is probing a series of recent murders. When Olivia suddenly goes missing, however, Catalina and Slater join forces and pool their psychic talents to find her.
And, of course, they also find each other: this is, after all, a novel of romantic suspense, at which Krentz is an acknowledged master. She has over 35 million books in print, and has written more than 100 novels, over 50 of them New York Times best-sellers.
“This is the first book of a projected trilogy, and a lot more will be revealed gradually in the next two books,” says the prolific author. She likes doing trilogies: they allow for a lot of plot development, but are still easy for readers to access (unlike, say, a 20-book series). Krentz’s “core story” – the developing through adversity of a relationship between a strong hero and a brave, resourceful heroine – doesn’t work for a long series, because readers are waiting for “the sense of resolution,” as Krentz puts it.
You might say she knows her craft; what might surprise you is how painstaking and dedicated she is. Every morning she’s up at 5 or 5:30 a.m., writing; her afternoons are devoted to editing and research, fleshing out characters and plot elements. Physical descriptions are a lot less interesting to her than dialogue, which conveys the essence of the character.
“Too much chatter on the page, though, and you’re looking at a play,” she observes.
“My favorite time is writing the second draft, after I’ve done the rough draft and I know where I’m going, with a complete vision of the book.”
But there is a third draft, too, and a fourth and fifth. There’s nothing slapdash about Krentz’s method, and it’s easy to see the pleasure she takes in her work: “The good ideas start when two characters start talking to each other in an imaginary conversation.”
Krentz especially likes setting novels in the Pacific Northwest, a locale that’s a natural for “The Vanishing”: “There are still so many tiny towns and wild places in the state, and I’m always amazed that people still disappear in the mountains. And some of the volcanic lakes are almost bottomless. I like drawing on the wild energy of nature for the story lines. And the energy of Seattle is at the core of the story: almost any kind of character can come out of our town.”
Krentz likes the changes that come with starting a brand-new book in a different milieu.
“Each book is a ‘palate cleanser’ for the one that came before,” she observes.
“It gives me something fresh to look forward to. I don’t know if my career would have endured as it has if I had not made the decision to write in two or three ‘worlds’. When I emerge from a past, present, or future world, I’m ready for the total change of pace of a new one. That gives me the energy and excitement I need.”