There Stands the Glass

I worked up a lather in a hurried thirty-minute walk to Lincoln Performance Hall in ninety-degree heat on Sunday, July 14. Not having time to rinse myself off in a bathroom, I left a trail of perspiration as I made my way to my $30 seat at the back of the venue on the campus of Portland State University.

Given the fiery theme of the concert presented in Chamber Music Northwest’s 2024 Summer Festival series, my prodigious sweating was apropos. Performances of three works were accurately billed as blazing.

Joan Tower introduced the world premiere of her “Sing or Dance” with a few humble words. Much of the challenging piece rendered by violinist Soovin Kim and Sandbox Percussion resembled free improvisation. I liked it, but many in the audience of approximately 400 squirmed.

The duo of Kim and his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, dueted on the program’s two additional pieces, Béla Bartók’s “Violin Sonata No. 2” and Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” sonata. Kim Chien- the festival’s artistic directors- tore through the famously difficult pieces. Kim’s astounding feat of endurance kept me sweating in sympathetic allegiance.

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

A distraught man seated next to me in the second row of Escher String Quartet’s recital at Polsky Theatre never stopped staring at his phone during the concert on Wednesday, August 3. The discourteous behavior would ordinarily enrage me.

Yet prior to the performance the Chinese national explained he was communicating with friends and family in Taiwan who were closely monitoring the Chinese military drills around the contested island.

Compositions by Joseph Haydn, Béla Bartók and Antonín Dvořák sounded especially consequential as my new friend frantically doomscrolled. Might, as he implied at intermission, the event be among the last concerts on earth? And how precisely would I want to go out?

I consume gobs of reggaeton for the same reason other people swallow pharmaceutical mood elevators. Yet I’d be mortified if Bad Bunny was playing when the world ended. Escher String Quartet would provide a far more suitable sendoff.

Even though one member of the acclaimed quartet committed minor flubs during the concert presented by the Heartland Chamber Music Festival, the gorgeous Haydn, queasy Bartók and sublime Dvořák works riveted the audience of about 300. And at only $10 a ticket, the recital was an economical end-of-the-world bargain.

Concert Review: Chamber Music Northwest’s “Incandescence: Blazing Works by Joan Tower, Bartók & the ‘Kreutzer’” at Lincoln Performance Hall

Concert Review: Escher String Quartet at Polsky Theatre