Festivals a good reason to go south
Bellingham and Seattle offer great choices for travelling listeners
Bellingham Festival of Music July 3-19 | Western Washington University Performing Arts Center (516 High Street)
Tickets and info: $12-$45, bellingham festival.
org Seattle Chamber Music Festival July 6-Aug. 1 | Benaroya Hall (200 University Street)
Tickets and info: Single tickets $30-$48, seattlechambermusic.org
Now is the time to start thinking about two musical getaways in Washington state in July: the Bellingham Festival of Music and the Seattle Chamber Music Festival. Both are established parts of the Pacific Northwest musical landscape, offering good choices for classical listeners prepared to combine music with short trips south.
Under the stewardship of Artistic Director Michael Palmer, the Bellingham festival has been going strong for over two decades. Its 2015 core is a series of four orchestral concerts, plus a grand finale performance of Haydn’s The Creation on July 19. All concerts are at Western Washington University’s Performing Arts Center, at 7:30 p.m.
Festivities start July 3 with an evening of Handel and Mozart plus Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto featuring fiddle player Vadim Gluzman, well known to Vancouver Symphony Orchestra patrons.
July 7 brings a program anchored around Sibelius’s First Symphony, with soprano Katie van Kooten singing Strauss’s poignant Four Last Songs. On July 11 there is a rare chance to catch a double bass soloist, Alex Hanna, as well as music by Ravel, Dvorak, and Bartok, and a multi-soloist program on July 15 features one of Bach’s Brandenburg concertos, Gerald Finzi’s Five Bagatelles for clarinet and strings, and Brahms’s First Piano Concerto with Arnaldo Cohen, the Brazilian-born pianist who is Artistic Director of Portland Piano International.
There are also two chamber music programs — the first a “music in unexpected places” concert on the afternoon of July 5, in the Bellingham Cruise Terminal in Fairhaven, Bellingham’s quaint equivalent of Gastown. On July 17, back at WWU, there’s a more formal concert by the Calidore String Quartet, playing Mendelssohn, Haydn and a short work by Music on Main’s new composer-in-residence, Caroline Shaw.
For even more chamber music, head to Seattle, where our sister city’s Chamber Music Festival has been going even longer than the one in Bellingham. Founded by violist Toby Saks in 1982, the summer event was a suburban affair for years, offering concerts in the leafy precincts of two private schools.
In recent years it has downsized and moved downtown, based in the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall (Seattle’s equivalent of the Vancouver Playhouse).
Canadian violinist James Ehnes has taken on the artistic management of the festival, an intensive proposition hosting just shy of 50 performers in Monday/Wednesday/Friday concerts at 8 p.m. Then there are the various add-ons: free 7 p.m. recitals before regular concerts, a family concert, and the like.
This year there seems to be a bit more emphasis on conventional classics. There is lots and lots of Beethoven in Week 1 (July 6-10), with major string quartets each night.
The fare in week two is definitely more eclectic, including tenor Nicholas Phan (who was so impressive here last fall in Britten’s War Requiem) singing Janacek’s Diary of One Who Vanished on July 15 and two of Benjamin Britten’s Canticles on July 17.
In week three new music is the subtext, with composer Steven Stucky in residence as well as a major work by modern Armenian composer Arno Babajanian.
In the festival’s final week the focus is on big blockbusters. Highlights include Dvorak’s Dumky Trio and “American” String Quartet, Dohnanyi’s String Sextet, and Rachmaninov’s lush Piano Trio.