Review: Stiff shot of dissonance vibrates at Seattle chamber-music fest

Dissonance in music is a taste acquired over time. Like a craving for coffee or scotch, the appetite for such harmonics is also culturally conditioned. One man's song may well be another man's noise.

The Seattle Chamber Music Festival is beloved by its fans for its Romantic sweet spot, but even the most ardent champions of easy-on-the-ear melody would have had to reconsider the merits of dissonance last Sunday night.

The evening opened with Mozart's crisp and deceptively melodious Piano Trio in B-flat Major, the highlight of which was pianist Ran Dank's crystalline tone, especially in the opening Allegro.

Compared to the pleasant, cuppa-tea-with-milk-and-honey Mozart, Prokofiev's Quartet No. 2 in F Major is a stiff shot of vodka. The starting Allegro is a stolid contraption of levers and pulleys, a steel factory producing energy in the form of audible vibrations.

The Adagio was that same factory at rest, so that one could hear electrical wires thrumming, a taut, tensile sound that alternately shimmered and vibrated. As his compatriots Ida Levin (violin), Richard O'Neill (viola), and Robert deMaine (cello) plucked pizzicato sparks and bowed squiggles of light, violinist Augustin Hadelich strung up a high-wire line that glinted like a knife edge. Then, it all unspooled, a sonic melee like an orchestra tuning up.

Listening to the Prokofiev as it was played by these musicians — with brawn and brains — one couldn't help thinking that music is quite a marvelous transference of energy, sounds generated by one body and absorbed by another.

It seemed impossible that the night could get any better, but after intermission it did. Lalo's Piano Trio in A minor opened its floodgates immediately, with a torrential opening delivered with bracing conviction by cellist Bion Tsang. James Ehnes' violin engaged Tsang's cello in a series of beautifully shaped ripostes. The piece ended with the two string players plucking two notes — such delightful simplicity that chuckles erupted from the audience.

After this impassioned first movement, the Presto exploded like a geyser. The energy of this movement never ebbed, bubbling up with cascades of piano chords from Adam Neiman and pizzicato bubbles from the strings. The stillness of the slow movement was titanic: The instruments gathered force and swelled up magnificently before ebbing out, a tidal wave hitting land in slow motion.

The concluding Allegro offered a mountainous landscape of contrasts from the strings while the piano offered thunderous lightening-bolt chords. Electrified by all the energy produced that evening, the audience — no surprise — leapt to its feet.

Sumi Hahn: sumi@bewodo.org

Upcoming concert highlights

Friday: Too many treats this night! Pianist Ran Dank does Rachmaninoff at the free 7 p.m. recital. Dank then pairs with violinist Stefan Jackiw in Beethoven's monumental Sonata in C minor.

Saturday: Dueling violins: Jackiw and Emily Dagget Smith in Prokofiev's Sonata for Two Violins in C Major at the free 7 p.m. recital. Brahm's Quartet for Piano and Strings in G minor will no doubt jolt the audience to its feet.

Monday: A world premiere: Gerard Schwarz's Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano with Jackiw, pianist Adam Neiman and Jeffrey Fair on horn. Introduction and remarks by Schwarz during the free 7 p.m. recital. Tchaikovsky's thrill ride of a String Sextet (D minor) will close the evening.

Wednesday: Two off-the-beaten-track combinations: Mozart's Andante and Variations for Piano, Four Hands in G Major (Dank and Anton Nel), and Dvorak's Terzetto for Two Violins and Viola in C Major (Jackiw, Daggett Smith and Richard O'Neill).