Tickling the ivories — and the audience

It was intermission at the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival but pianist Jon Kimura Parker came racing out of the wings to introduce another pianist, Anton Nel, who would play in the second half. Nel demanded to play a "bit of Beethoven" right on the spot.

Nonplussed, Parker listened for a few bars and then joined in. Out on the stage came a third pianist, George Shangrow, who had just finished a fine performance of a Mozart piano quartet (with Andrés Cárdenes, artistic director Aloysia Friedmann and Toby Saks).

Shangrow leaned over the other two pianists, adding his own touches to the music. Finally, out came Adam Stern, the pre-concert lecturer and also a pianist, and now all four of them were attacking the keyboard (and each other) as the audience roared with laughter.

Only at the Orcas Festival, where the sublime and the hilarious are such happy partners.

This inspired bit of tomfoolery (arranged by Stern) got the laughs, but the evening's finale drew gasps of admiration and loud cheers. Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" in a two-piano version with Parker and Nel, plus a dance-and-video interpretation of the score, bewitched both the ear and the eye.

Nine years ago, Parker and Nel's Stravinsky made for one of the most electric evenings in Seattle Chamber Music Festival history; just hearing them again would have sufficed to thrill the Orcas audience. But the dance, choreographed and created by San Francisco Ballet principals Benjamin Pierce and Muriel Maffre, was just riveting.

With the piano off to the side of the small Orcas Center stage, the dancers interpreted the complex music, interspersing live action with inspired video footage shown on a screen at the back of the stage. The video had not only Pierce and Maffre dancing, along with stylized geometric elements but also huge close-ups of the pianists' hands in action.

Those four hands are fascinating to watch in this tremendously kinetic piece, attacking the keyboard and frequently crossing over each other in ways that appear all but impossible. Intensely musical, informed by classical spins and lifts but also by more contemporary styles (including hints of Mark Morris), the choreography had the wonderfully pliant and subtle dancers surging and subsiding in response to every nuance of the score. It was a triumph.

This is a work that dazzles in every respect, one that deserves many repeat performances.

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com