Skaneateles Lake possesses a shimmering magic. She carries herself at the highest altitude of the Finger Lakes, while stretching out long and thin from north to south as a tableau for a daily display of the dance between light and air and water. She is her own music, as well as being host to the Skaneateles Festival, a classical-music mainstay that is gracing her shores now through September 4.

Now in its 31st year, the Skaneateles Festival attracts world-class musicians, and audiences of all ages and expertise in classical repertoire. The fourâ€'week event is designed and headed up year-round by co-artistic directors David Ying and Elinor Freer. Ying is the cellist of the Ying Quartet. Freer is a pianist. Both are also on faculty at the Eastman School of Music.

"Nature and music - there's something about it," says Ying. "The audience will feel transported. Skaneateles has a totally different feeling to Rochester, or even Canandaigua or Keuka or the other Finger Lakes."

Ying spoke with City after the opening concert of the festival on August 12. It was directed toward children, and featured musical artwork and paintings inspired by Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." Ying wants each Skaneateles Festival concert to be "powerful and fulfilling, including the concerts for kids," he says. This spirit will extend into the kids' concert titled "The Birds and the Beasts" on September 1, when Ying and Freer will lead the parade of musical portraits of animals through performances of such classics as "Flight of the Bumblebee" and "The Swan."

It is misleading to start on such a simple note. The Skaneateles Festival is one of the premier chamber music festivals in the country, according to Ying. Indeed, the repertoire to be performed this year, and the list of musicians arriving to perform it, reads like a Who's Who of American chamber musicians.

Chamber music is written specifically for a small group of instruments to be played in an intimate setting, originally at the chamber of a palace or simply at home. The festival is broken down into four weeklong segments, each with a different theme around which a cluster of concerts is performed. The performances take place in locations as diverse as Brook Farm, the First Presbyterian Church and St. Mary's of the Lake, Anyela's Vineyards, and Skaneateles High School.

The second week of the 2010 festival, running August 18-21, is titled "Baroque and Before..." and includes performances by the groups NYS Baroque, Lionheart, and others.

NYS Baroque performs on period instruments. Artistic Director Heather Miller Lardin will be performing on a violone. She says she looks forward to the festival, and to performing a "Serenata" by Heinrich Ignaz Biber (1644-1704). "During the Biber, the violone stops and there is a vocal part for a bass singer, the Night Watchman's call, and after he sings the violone comes back in, again," she says. Kurt-Owen Richards from Lionheart, an ensemble for vocal chamber music, will stay an extra day so that he can sing the part.

The same program will also include the Bach 2nd Orchestral Suite in A Minor, including Debra Nagy performing as an oboe soloist. This piece has traditionally been performed with a flute soloist in b minor, Nagy explains, "but it really does look like wind music of some kind. The notes are so low for a flute that they get buried in an ensemble. All five parts in the original score are in different handwriting."

Both pieces are examples of the rare opportunities that Festival concert-goers will have to enjoy rare gems of chamber music.

The third week of the festival, running August 25-28, is titled "White Nights," and revolves around the Russian Romantic period. For these works, the Ying Quartet will be performing, as will Freer, along with Sylvan Winds, and others. "Russian music being such an incredible tradition all in its own, how could you pass by an opportunity to spend a whole week doing that - the romantic pieces that turn us to mush?" says Ying. He points in particular to the "Piano Quintet" of Alfred Garyevich Schnittke (1934-1998), commenting, "It's heartbreaking. Whether it makes your heart sing or cry, it gets to you."

The fourth and final week of the festival, running September 1-4, is titled "Hilary and Friends." The Hilary in question is Hilary Hahn, violinist, a two-time Grammy Award winner and Gramophone Magazine's Artist of the Year. In 2010, Hahn will give more than 100 concerts in more than 12 countries. And for Hahn at Skaneateles, 12 is a special number: it's how old she was when she first appeared at the festival in 1992, and she has returned to perform there every year since.

It is Hahn who will get the final note on Saturday, September 4, with a performance that will include the Sinfonia No. 3 in C Major by CPE Bach (1714-1788), the Symphony in B-flat Major, D. 485 by Franz Schubert (1797-1828), and the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219 (1756-1791).

As Ying puts it, "You get a musical universe in one month."

2010 Skaneateles Festival

Through September 4

Various venues in the village of Skaneateles

$16-$30 | 315-685-7418, skanfest.org