SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Nicknames are unfair. There are two piano trios in Beethoven’s Opus 70. No. 1 is known as the “Ghost” Trio, and it is played all the time. It is a fine work, to be sure. But No. 2, in E-flat major, has no ready-reference label, and we hardly ever get to hear it; there are more than twice as many recordings of No. 1 listed in the current CD catalogs. Yet No. 2 is perhaps an even greater work–one of the greatest Beethoven ever wrote.

Justice and more was done in the performance Paul Hersh, Ellen Jewett, and Elizabeth Simkin gave in this latest program at the Olympic Music Festival. The sheer irrepressible energy of the outer movements was realized in spades. The “slow movement,” only moderately slow, had all the delicacy and wit it needed, while keeping up the work’s general sense of mobility, and it was left for the minuet-style third movement, elegantly phrased and played with succulent richness of tone, to provide the only really leisured moments.

Both here and in Dvořák’s great Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, where Jewett and Simkin were joined by second violinist Stefan Hersh and violist Alan Iglitzin, pianist Hersh’s affinity for coruscating lines at the top of the keyboard produced textures of crystalline clarity. I regretted only, as in the Brahms Piano Quintet two weeks earlier, the omission of the exposition repeat in the first movement–this time because the cello’s opening statement of the main theme, richly intoned by Elizabeth Simkin, is so gorgeous that one would love to hear it again. As is usual at Quilcene, powerfully committed performance meshed with keen audience involvement to achieve a true chamber-music experience as satisfying as you could find anywhere.

Stefan Hersh had had his own quasi-solo spot in the first work on the program, joining his father in a warmly articulated reading of Fauré’s Violin Sonata No. 1. The outer movements of this relatively early work are a tad formulaic, but the slow movement and scherzo emerged full of charm and zest.

Bernard Jacobson