Debussy's sole string piece makes for singular moment at festival

The Seattle Chamber Music Society's summer festival rolled into its second week with a concert of unexpected contrasts. The festival, celebrating 30 years of consistently high musicianship and audience enthusiasm, continues to be a rich mine of gems.

Monday night's concert at Benaroya Hall would seem to be a program of only moderate shifts, from a glance at the offerings: Mozart, Schubert, Debussy and Richard Strauss (in his youth). But that's because we forget what an iconoclast Debussy was to the contemporaries of his day.

The program set this up beautifully by leaving our ears completely unprepared.

Mozart's Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano, K. 564 featured Anna Polonsky doing the lion's share on the piano, with Bion Tsang on cello and festival favorite Stefan Jackiw on violin, functioning as a seamless unit. Polonsky's animated and nimble performance was a particular delight.

In hindsight, it is difficult to look at the single-movement Schubert trio (violin, viola, and cello this time) as anything more than an appetizer for the Debussy that was to come. It is a sweet piece, played with exacting tenderness by violinist Augustin Hadelich, violist Richard O'Neill and cellist Godfried Hoogeveen.

But when these three returned to the stage in the company of first violinist Joseph Lin, the real feast started.

Debussy wrote just one string quartet in his career, and while it is not the work he is best known for, everyone should hear a great performance of his Quartet for Strings in G Minor.

The first movement begins by breaking all the fine crystal. Debussy smashes dissonances together vigorously, while toying with rhythms that seem to defy time signatures and overlapping lines that state the brilliant independence of each instrument. And he wrote this in 1893, 20 years before Stravinsky's music was causing riots in Paris.

Yet this is not cacophony, only an arresting dazzle that still sounds bold more than a century later.

Having staked out its new territory, the second movement relaxes into a playful pizzicato, and the third, into a sweet, muted melancholy. O'Neill's sublime viola solo was a heart-tugging reminder that Debussy was not just about rule-breaking but also believed in sheer beauty. The emotional roller coaster brought the audience to their feet in the most passionate applause of the evening.

The second half was solely occupied by a substantial slice of German beef, the Quartet for Piano and Strings, Op. 13, written by the mature 20-year-old Richard Strauss. Nurit Bar-Josef provided great leadership from the violin chair, with violist Cynthia Phelps, cellist Edward Arron and pianist Orion Weiss. This team sounded composed of many more than four musicians.

The first movement laid heavy emphasis on the strings, with the piano providing background support. The Scherzo movement began with wispy flashes of the pianist's right hand, with the strings following like cats chasing a lightning bug around the room. After some really lovely piano work from Weiss in the Andante, the finale was off to the races for a grand finish. Another festival evening ended as it commonly does, with great satisfaction.