SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

The organ is sometimes referred to as “the king of instruments,” but the chosen instrument of kings–both before and after ascension to the throne–has often been the cello. Visiting England in the 1790s, Haydn was impressed by the Prince of Wales’s prowess as a cellist, and the present holder of the same title followed in those footsteps in his younger days.

It was for a full-fledged monarch, Frederick William II of Prussia, that Mozart wrote his last three quartets, known accordingly as the King of Prussia quartets, and he flattered his royal patron by including many prominent and taxing solos for the cello, which the king played with enthusiasm and surely with some competence. Amy Barston rose nobly to the occasion, phrasing eloquently with lustrous tone in the frequent passages near the top of the cello’s range, and providing solid grounding for her colleagues when Mozart took the instrument down to its formerly prevailing lower reaches.

 

Chamber music, however, is aptly known as “the music of friends,” and, as is usual at the Olympic Music Festival, it was the joyful give-and-take of the playing–as well as the obvious involvement of a large and responsive audience–that made this a very special occasion. A gloriously sunny and very hot day might have been expected to pose some problems in the matter of intonation, but Amy Barston, her sister Elisa and Megumi Stohs on violins, and festival director and violist Alan Iglitzin emerged largely unscathed.

This was truly collaborative music-making in the best chamber-music tradition. Elisa Barston took the first-violin part in the D-Major and B-flat-Major quartets before intermission, and then changed places with Stohs for the F-major work. This is perhaps the greatest of the three, with its witty instrumental exchanges in the first movement, its mischievous seven-measure phrases in the minuet countered by fives in the trio, and the giddy prestidigitation and pre-Beethovenish pauses of its finale. Both ladies played splendidly, and it was an added pleasure to watch the glances of happy interaction that passed between them.

But if the cello was the king’s instrument, Mozart’s was the viola–he usually played it when he was taking part in quartet performances, because he liked “to be in the middle of the harmony.” So it seemed only appropriate that he chose the viola to introduce a near-quotation from his 40th Symphony in the glorious slow movement–a moment in the limelight that Iglitzin seized with justifiable glee.

One concert doesn’t usually constitute a festival: but the presentation of Mozart’s last three string quartets at Quilcene on Saturday was labeled a “Mozart Festival,” and the title was reflected both by the greatness of the music and by the lofty standard of the performances. How about giving the composer a full two-week festival next year, Mr. Iglitzin, and presenting all six of the quartets he dedicated to his friend Haydn?

 

Bernard Jacobson

Part of this review appeared also in the Seattle Times.