AN DIE MUSIK: A SCHUBERTIADE
PACIFIC MUSICWORKS
THE HORSES' YARD, MADISON VALLEY
JULY 25, 2021

Pacific MusicWorks is known worldwide for its masterful performance of Early Music and Baroque masterworks, but this past Sunday, a group of PMW supporters were treated to an outdoor concert focused on the works of the Romantic-era composer Franz Schubert (1797—1828). Though Schubert was only 31 when died, he left so much cherished music behind that "Schubertiades" — concerts and gatherings devoted to his music — are celebrated around the world.

The original Schubertiades were intimate affairs held in people's houses in Schubert's hometown of Vienna, with Schubert himself at the piano and his friends crowded around, singing his songs and playing his sonatas. This same intimacy was achieved on Sunday as PMW's friends sat on folding chairs and hay bales in a close circle around the musicians under the shade of towering pines. As a pair of miniature horses looked on, three great instrumentalists and one marvelous soprano brought Schubert's music to a uniquely pastoral and romantic setting.

Violinist Tekla Cunningham and soprano Danielle Reutter-Harrah took turns center stage as they displayed Schubert's mastery of emotional and yearning melodies. One fascinating piece was the haunting "Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel," presented first as a violin and harp duet, then as the Schubert lied sung by Reutter-Harrah with all the sorrow and longing of a girl for her absent lover: "My peace is gone, My heart is heavy...When he's not with me, Life's like the grave." The listener was given a chance to understand grief first through the violin's melody — a song without words expressing universal sorrow — then through the specificity of a young girl's loneliness.

Another compelling song about lost love, "C'en est fait" (It's Over) by a Schubert contemporary, Zoé de la Rue, is about an unrepentant young man being sent away by a young woman for stealing a kiss. Search as I might, I couldn't discover anything more about de la Rue than that she lived from 1770 to 1832, and that she was pretty (there's one little pencil portrait of her online). Her music, however, was witty and multilayered, sad and defiant at the same time. PMW has often brought neglected composers to light, and we can be grateful to hear the work of a woman of the early Romantic period. I hope to hear more of it in the future.

Cunningham on the violin was masterful, elegant, and compelling. She is one of the finest violinists in the country, and as a Seattle native, artist-in-residence at UW, and founder of the Whidbey Island Music Festival, she has a tremendous impact on the quality of music in our area. Reutter-Harrah's gorgeous, ringing soprano voice and subtle interpretation of lyrics told the story of languishing love with perfect taste and sympathy.

Founding director Stephen Stubbs on guitar and Maxine Eilander on the harp replaced the piano that normally attends Schubert's "Sonata in D Major for Violin," as well as the Schubert lieder. This gave a different tone to the accompaniments — lighter, brighter, less ominous — which is no mean feat for a harpist, whose feet must be as nimble on the pedals as her fingers are on the strings. Since the audience was sitting so close to the players, we could see Eilander's agile use of her feet as well as her hands.

Since I'm a poet who works with musicians on occasion, I always want to recognize the poets who inspire composers to write their best work. Schubert's songs in this concert are based on poems by Ernst Schulze, Ludwig Christoph Heinrich Hölty, Franz von Schober, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. My favorite of these, which gave this wonderful event its name, is Schober's "An die Musik" (To Music): "Beautiful Art, in how many a bleak hour, when I am enmeshed in life's tumultuous round, have you kindled my heart to the warmth of love, and borne me away to a better world! ...Beloved art, for this I thank you!" It rhymes in German, and has become a thank-you prayer for many musicians and music associations, as well as music lovers everywhere. If you're not familiar with it, there are dozens of renditions on YouTube.

We can also thank Pacific MusicWorks for its steady flow of events covering many periods, its great scholarship in finding neglected works to revive, and its presentation of wonderful artists and singers. For this, I (and many others) thank them.

Pacific MusicWorks' "An Die Musik: A Schubertiade" will be in virtual release in late August 2021, and the next in-person concert is Festa Italiana, October 23 and 24, 2021. Check out the website at pacificmusicworks.org.