Originally published Friday, August 22, 2008 at 12:00 AM
Olympic Music Festival: Three more weeks of great Olympic performances
Olympic Music Festival continues for three more weeks on the Olympic Peninsula.
Special to The Seattle Times
On the Internet
Brooklyn-based violinist Michi Wiancko is among the top-flight performers this weekend at Olympic Music Festival. Hear her at www.myspace.com/michiwiancko.
Olympic Music Festival
Saturdays and Sundays through Sept. 7, 7360 Center Road, Quilcene; $11-$18 lawn seating, $16-$27 barn seating (360-732-4800 or www.olympicmusicfestival.org).For 25 years the Olympic Music Festival has been delighting audiences in an idyllic tract of farmland on the Olympic Peninsula, studded with venerable trees and well-supplied with picnic tables. Concerts are given every Saturday and Sunday afternoon (with the same program both days) from late June to mid-September, in a barn of impressive proportions, seating about 400 people on church pews and hay bales. An evidently devoted public sports a liberal array of shorts, T-shirts and baseball caps. The performers, too, are informally dressed, and the whole atmosphere is convivial and relaxed.
The festival is the brainchild of Alan Iglitzin, formerly the assistant principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra and a founder-member of the Philadelphia String Quartet. He started the festival in 1984 and still directs it, plays in many of the concerts and provides unpretentious spoken introductions to the music. You might call the festival a kind of country cousin to the more citified Seattle Chamber Music Society's star-studded summer festival, provided the description is not taken to suggest any inferiority in the level of music-making. An ambitious roster of performers is on hand, from local luminaries like Seattle Symphony principal second violinist Elisa Barston to established and emerging musicians from farther afield, including pianists Paul Hersh and Julio Elizalde, who teach respectively at San Francisco Conservatory and New York's Juilliard School.
This weekend's program includes Joaquín Turina's Piano Quartet and Beethoven's very first published work, the Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 1 No. 1. Hersh, a festival regular, is the pianist, and he will be joined in Brahms' tempestuous Third Violin Sonata, Op. 108, by Michi Wiancko, winner in 2002 of the Concert Artists Guild's prestigious international competition.
Looking ahead
On Aug. 30 and 31, Haydn's B-flat-Major String Quartet, Op. 76 No. 4, known as the "Sunrise," will be followed by the two works that constitute almost the entire core of the repertoire for clarinet and string quartet: Mozart's supremely lyrical Clarinet Quintet in A Major and his younger contemporary Weber's Quintet in B-flat Major. The clarinetist will be Teddy Abrams, a multitalented young man who studies conducting at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, composes copiously and is also a former piano student of Hersh.
Then, on Sept. 6 and 7, the Olympic Music Festival wraps up for the summer with an attractive program of works with piano. Trios by Beethoven (in G Major, Op. 1 No. 2) and Ravel are on the first half, and then Brahms' Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor — the one with the exhilarating gypsy-style finale — will provide a rousing conclusion to send the Quilcene audience home happy.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
"American Idols Live!" tour comes to Tacoma
Live Nation again slashes prices, service fees Wednesday
UPDATE - 01:29 AM
Jackson family seeks delay in naming will executor
Quincy Jones remembers "the biggest entertainer on the planet": Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson's doctors scrutinized; drugs prescribed by at least five

2009 fireworks time lapse
With strict parking rules enforced at this year's July 4th celebration on Wallingford Ave North, less cars and more spectators filled the streets.
Entertainment | Top Video | World | Offbeat Video | Sci-Tech
nwjobs

Post a comment

Michelle Goodman blogs about work/life balance.
Tax tips for new independent professionals
Post a comment
nwautos

Choosing a new sedan? Weigh the impact of your choice on your wallet and on the planet.
Post a comment
nwhomes

Find a new home or condo that fits your lifestyle.
Search New Developments
Builder Directory
- Landmark Smith Tower mostly vacant
- Property taxes: Appeals shoot up in King, Snohomish Counties
- Palin links resignation to 'higher calling' and blasts media in Facebook posting
- Former NFL MVP McNair killed
- Hard times for tourist towns means good deals for travelers
- Shooting unveils very different sides of McNair
- Tukwila residents rally against light-rail noise
- Quincy Jones remembers "the biggest entertainer on the planet": Michael Jackson
- Confessions of an Idol Addict | "American Idols" on tour: Live coverage from opening date
- Plasma and LCD beware; OLED screens ready to go mainstream
- Seattle Mariners at Boston Red Sox: 07/05 game thread
247 - Palin links resignation to 'higher calling' and blasts media in Facebook posting
172 - Hatred for the NBA runs deep, but don't take it out on the players
135 - Tukwila residents rally against light-rail noise
125 - Former NFL MVP McNair killed
112 - Property taxes: Appeals shoot up is King, Snohomish Counties
103 - Tent City on campus: UW stalls decision
100 - Anti-tax rally in Olympia attracts about 1,500
68 - Seeking your questions
53 - Mariners did their part, now they need help
44
- Property taxes: Appeals shoot up in King, Snohomish Counties
- Hard times for tourist towns means good deals for travelers
- Landmark Smith Tower mostly vacant
- Plasma and LCD beware; OLED screens ready to go mainstream
- Tent City on campus: UW stalls decision
- The People's Pharmacy | Estrogen mimicker found in sunscreen
- Toyota's Toyoda scolds execs for emulating U.S. car companies' mistakes
- Tukwila residents rally against light-rail noise
- Outdoor-theater season kicks off at Volunteer Park
- Seattle safety project: A snake shelter on Beacon Hill








