Another stellar SCMS concert at Lakeside

Every year, Seattle Chamber Music Society’s summer festival is a shining event in Seattle’s musical life. It would be hard these days to say it’s better than last year, or the year before, or the year before that, because the quality has been stellar for years now and it’s almost never that there is a bad night or even a bad performance.

This year is no exception. Monday, the beginning of the second week’s performances, included the premiere of Christopher Theofanidis’ “Summer Verses,” the third annual commission from the SCMS commissioning club. Sensibly, the recital was taken up with commentary on the work from Theofanidis with illustrations from its two performers, violinist James Ehnes and cellist Robert deMaine, the complete performance taking place in the concert. itself.

Theofanidis, born 1967, is one of today’s “hot properties” as composer with works being performed and commissioned by many orchestras and other performing groups. He also happens to be a longtime friend of deMaine, and the fourth part of “Summer Verses” is titled “Robert” and is a portrait of him.

The work is really a short suite in five parts for violin and cello. It’s fun, for summer, and wears its careful scholarship lightly, being beautifully constructed and varied in content with the two instruments sometimes sounding as full as a quartet of players and at others as spare and clear as a Bach fugue. The movement devoted to deMaine is one of a kind, and given that it requires not only the musician’s cello but a rubber face, entire body and voice to perform with the violin as straight man, it might easily be omitted by any duo not feeling equal to this very personal task. As it was, the result was hilarious. And then the players moved straight into the last, most serious and moving section of “Verses,” with moments which reached the sublime.

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As Ehnes said in the recital, works for duet of violin and cello are scarce and it’s a real plus to have another, good one to add to the repertoire.

The remaining two works on the concert program were large ones, Ravel’s Sonata for violin and piano with violinist Soovin Kim and pianist Adam Neiman, and Brahms’ expansive Quintet for piano and strings. Here the players were Scott St. John and Augustin Hadelich, violins; Richard O’Neill, viola; Edward Arron, cello; and Anna Polonsky, piano. The performance of each work was masterly, even profound, and eminently satisfactory to hear.

From the deceptively unpretentous beginning to its quiet end, the Ravel was unmistakable, had one heard only an unidentified snatch on the radio. Kim and Neiman caught the watery glimmer so often present in Ravel’s work, combined with a silken smoothness which yet could grow deeply intense and then draw back. While Kim caught the slurps and swoops with just the right timing in the blues movement, Neiman achieved it in his demeanor where the piano can’t slurp, but both got into the mood superbly well.

As for the Brahms, it was the great variety of tone colors which struck the ear first, then how each was achieved with such nuance and without every forcing the sound. Felicitious moments abounded, like the communication between St. John and O’Neill in the octave passages, or the anchoring depth of sound coming from Arron’s cello and the delicacy of St. John’s quietest playing. Polonsky’s huge role never overwhelmed the strings, but knit it all together.

Brahms is prominent in the festival programming this year. If this thrilling, fresh-sounding performance of this very familiar work was anything to go by, I am eager to hear the rest.