Pianist Joyce Yang makes her debut at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in a 2011 recital.
“The extremely high quality of each performance and the mixing of repertoire on most programs” have been key to the success of the 40-year-old Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, says Artistic Director Marc Neikrug.
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Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 and performs as a violinist in Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat Major; for his third program, on August 8 and 9, he leads Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 2. Completed in 1906 and 1939 respectively, the Schoenberg works are “towering masterpieces of early 20th-century music,” Neikrug says, “and are not performed as much as they should be.” With the first few weeks of the festival having featured three piano recitals (Jon Kimura Parker, Kirill Gerstein, and Inon Barnatan), two Bach cantatas, and a tribute to acclaimed composer Peter Lieberson (a longtime Santa Fe resident who died in 2011), highlights scheduled for the remainder of the season include Beethoven’s String Trio in C Minor and Brahms’s Horn Trio in E-flat Major on August 7; a Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Dvorák program on August 9; a “Vivaldi Spectacular” showcasing five works by the Baroque master on August 11; and the world premiere of a piano suite written for and performed by Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli on August 17 called Indian Gallery. Part of a Salute to Indian Market concert, Indian Gallery draws inspiration from the work of Native American artists Fritz Scholder, Dan Namingha, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, among others. The concert on August 16 features Neikrug’s 2010 work Death Row Memoirs of an Extraterrestrial, starring actor John Rubinstein in the role of a not-of-this-world creature who observes humanity as an outsider and reflects “on all of our quirks, fallibilities, and passions,” Neikrug says. The music of Memoirs is performed by violinist Benny Kim, clarinetist David Shifrin, and pianist Anne-Marie McDermott. Opening the festival with a world premiere and bringing it to a close with two works by Schubert speaks to the range of repertoire concertgoers will find at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival—a range that consistently lures top musicians and composers, and a range that is sure to keep audiences coming back for at least another 40 years.