A trio, quintet, and septet add up to an impressive range of emotional and timbral explorations in the concluding concert of Seattle's summer chamber music festival.
The musicians got on a bus to their next destination as the audience left the music hall. What had happened no longer was. Yet so much had changed after two Beethoven symphonies and Bruch’s violin concerto, all totems of the staple repertoire. In the hands of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, they became almost as palpable as a drawing. The Academy is a perfectly balanced ecosystem.
Yo-Yo Ma, currently the Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, along with members from the same orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, took the stage at Symphony Center for a single night last Wednesday.
There are musical moments that lift you up into a jet stream you ride till your feet are on the pavement again. Last evening in Koerner Hall was a flow of such moments as the Amici Chamber Ensemble celebrated their first set of twenty-five musical years.
It was the first time I'd been fully clothed in this venue. Prior to its 2008 reinvention, Dovecot Studios was the oldest of Edinburgh's six Victorian swimming pools. Now a tapestry studio and exhibition space, it doubles as a resonant chamber music venue. The musicians occupied the shallow end, amply lit by bright Edinburgh skies through the lengthy cupola.
