We’re back for just an overnight at home, then it’s off to Sunriver for some chamber orchestra action. The Methow Festival went very well. There were more than a few communication and logistical snafus, but given that Artistic Director and Pianist Lisa Bergman had to leave for Seattle during the middle of rehearsals due to a medical situation, it all came together very well, indeed!
Heather was to play the Chopin Pollanaise Brilliante with Lisa, and then four of us were to do the Brahms Piano Quintet with her as well. The Chopin got axed, as did the Brahms, and in place of the Brahms we filled out the second program with the Haydn “Lark” Quartet, on two day’s notice and without having ever played it together, no less! It was a great confidence booster to see that we’d jelled enough as an ensemble to tackle the intricacies of Haydn on short notice and very little rehearsal time.
The Mozart Quintet in g minor (Kv. 516a) was great fun, and it was such a pleasure to share the stage with our fellow festival artists Maria Sampen and Timothy Christie (violin and viola, and wife and husband), who also played the Bach Double Violin Concerto with us. The quintet really is such a staggering work of heartbreaking genius (with apologies to Dave Eggers) and it was incredible to get back in touch with it after years of only knowing it as a recording and excerpts from Alfred Einstein’s biography of Mozart harking to Gethsemane and the poisoned chalice. Great stuff!
We also did the Haydn Op. 20 no 4 ‘Sun’ – a work from the amazingly mature and interesting (if a bit underplayed by the major touring quartets) opus 20. The set gets its name from the title page illustration of the original edition. It also made a cool bookend to our last work, the titanic Beethoven Op. 59 no 2 of the Razumovsky set, which Czerny called an evocation of a great starry night sky and the music of the spheres.
As if there wasn’t enough musical and life drama during the week, the complex of wildfires known as the “Tripod Complex” was buring through over 57,000 acres of rugged backcountry forest a short distance north and east of the town of Winthrop, where the festival is held. The fire provided a dramatic backdrop to the concerts, and became even more so after dark. Timothy Christie noticed tongues of flame coming up from the crowns of newly ignited trees and christened the area Mordor, after the land of the evil wizard Sauron from The Lord of the Rings.
For those of you who might be interested in such things, we’ll be deciding repertoire for the coming season by the end of the month – so far Beethoven Op. 130 has a strong chance of being on our fall concert…
