The 2018 Olympic Music Festival came to an end Sept. 9, as Spanish cellist Pablo Ferrández and artistic director and pianist Julio Elizalde enchanted the audience with a recital of romantic chamber music.

Ferrández and Elizalde passionately played two hours worth of classical music from the romantic period at the Wheeler Theater at Fort Worden State Park, starting with Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Brahms’ Cello Sonata No. 2 in F Major, and finishing with Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata in G minor.

“This is our bittersweet final concert,” Elizalde said. “It is amazing to see the outpouring of support we’ve had this year.”

Ferrández and Elizalde made a precise ensemble, playing with a fierce energy and an ease that comes from a close friendship.

“Julio and I are very good friends,” Ferrández said. “It’s easy for us to play together, even though we’ve never played this music together before.”

Elizalde and Ferrández were introduced by violinist Ray Chen, who has performed at the Olympic Music Festival in past years. According to Ferrández, they became friends after their first performance together. Their closeness showed during Sunday’s performance, which they had very little time to rehearse together for, as Ferrández arrived from Spain on the Friday before.

“Sometimes you just feel a certain ease with another musician,” Elizalde added. “We don’t even have to talk sometimes, we just play.”

The two artists were met with a standing ovation after a rousing final movement of the Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata, and then left the audience breathless with an encore of Fauré’s melancholy “Après Un Rêve.”

“I was looking for a piece that would be a good ending for this concert, but also one that could end the summer,” Elizalde said. “Rachmaninoff is about as epic as you can get.”

While Elizalde’s strength as a pianist came through during the Rachmaninoff — which he joked is a piece “pianists are deeply scared of,” — Ferrández showed off a diverse range of skill as a cellist, playing Bruch’s Kol Nidrei with sweetness, honoring Schumann’s bipolar composing tendencies with both light and melancholy tones, and conquering the Brahms and Rachmaninoff with fortitude and energy.  

“The Brahms sonata is very challenging both musically and technically,” Ferrández said. “As for the Rachmaninoff, it was my first time playing it and I have always liked it … But it’s a hard piece I think, musically, to give it some sense.”

Ferrández, who hails from Madrid, was named the “Young Artist of the Year” at the 2016 International Classical Music Awards, and was a prizewinner at the International Tchaikovsky Competition and the Paulo International Cello Competition. In 2017, he performed the Brahms’ Double Concerto alongside renowned violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter with the London Philharmonic.

Normally, Ferrndez plays a 300-year-old Stradivarius, the “Lord Aylesford,” built in 1696, lent to him by the Nippon Music Foundation. But on Sunday night, his famous cello was undergoing routine upkeep that allows such an old instrument to be played by the young artist. In a last-minute switch, Ferràndez played a Gagliano cello built in the 1800s, which he said was a challenging adjustment, since the Stradivarius is much larger.

“The tone is like gold. When you play in a big hall, the way the sound carries is incredible,” Ferràndez said about his Stradivarius cello.

Despite the change in cellos, the musicality of the duo was a showstopping end to the festival’s 2018 season.

“You have shown us today what a live performance can give an audience,” said one audience member to Elizalde and Ferràndez during the question and answer session after the performance.

The Olympic Music Festival season kicked off in mid-July with Russian violinist Dimitry Sitkovetsky's arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations for String Trio, and has featured a number of world-renowned classical artists over the summer.

At the final performance Sunday, Elizalde thanked the audience members for “the best year we’ve had yet,” and announced that the festival reached its fundraising goal for the summer.

“This community comes together to support art unlike any other,” Elizalde said. “It’s been a magical season.”

Elizalde already has tentative plans for next year’s festival: he’s hoping to work together with the Northwest Maritime Center to host a gala concert, although nothing has been set in stone yet. Ferrández is hoping to make a repeat appearance at the festival next year as well.