Judy Chicago is a pioneer in feminist art and art education. Her work is in the collections of major museums around the world, and she’s best known for her multimedia installation The Dinner Part y, which is part of the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. In the 1970s, Chicago created the groundbreaking Feminist Art Program at California State University, Fresno. She took her last name from her hometown, where she was born in 1939. She’s lived in New Mexico since 1985.
Elizabeth in Honor of Elizabeth, a tribute to Elizabeth I (1533–1603), is part of Chicago’s The Great Ladies Series (1972–73). In her first (1975) autobiography, Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist, Chicago discussed the inspiration for this series:
Special Thanks
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival thanks everyone at the New Mexico Museum of Art for their ongoing cooperation and their longtime support of our concerts held in the museum’s St. Francis Auditorium.
“These women represent themselves, aspects of myself, and various ways in which women have accommodated themselves to the constraints of their circumstances. Some years ago, I began to read women’s literature, study women’s art, and examine the lives of women who lived before me. I wanted to find role models, to discover how my predecessors had dealt with their oppression as women. I was also searching for clues in their work—clues that could aid me in my art. I wanted to speak out of my femaleness, to make art out of the very thing that made me the 'other' in male society.”—Judy Chicago
Visit judychicago.com.
Enterprise Bank & Trust proudly celebrates the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s 52nd season. We’re honored to support an institution that nurtures artistic excellence, enriches cultural life, and inspires the next generation through music education and performance.
Because when communities grow through the arts, everyone benefits.
Together, there's no stopping you. enterprisebank.com
Buffalo Maiden Bronze with patinas edition of
WELCOME TO OUR 52ND SEASON
Music, which Marc created, and which you can read about beginning on p. 18. We’re also presenting our firstever solo percussion recital—a thrilling, genre-defining ride that features one of the world’s greatest percussion virtuosos, Colin Currie, in his Festival debut—as well as two concerts by the amazingly adventurous JACK Quartet, who also make their Festival debut and inaugurate their new role as resident ensemble for our Young Composers String Quartet Project, a position that, for the past 11 seasons, was held by our friends the FLUX Quartet.
This season we also have premieres of Festival-commissioned works by Julian Anderson, Sean Shephard, Freya Waley-Cohen, and our 2025 Young Composers, Tyson Gholston Davis and Ania Vu, plus the Festival debut of New Mexico’s very own Chatter Ensemble, who perform on a powerful program that spotlights two innovative monodramas from the late 20th century.
Of course, few things are more exciting than reconnecting with longtime friends, which is why, as always, we’re welcoming back dozens of cherished collaborators to play a wide range of works—from beloved classics to rarely heard gems—in solo recitals, duo recitals, ensemble performances, and more.
But what we’re most excited about isn’t a Festival first at all: It’s the fact that we’re sharing this music with you, our audience. It’s because of you that this Festival—and this excitement—exists. Thank you for supporting the Festival and for making everything we do possible. We hope you enjoy our 52nd season.
With deepest appreciation,
Ben Allison President, Board of Trustees
Marc Neikrug Artistic Director
Jim Griffith Executive Director
Classical Music During Santa Fe’s Winter Season
Curated by Artistic Director and Violinist Colin Jacobsen
“Armed with vision, courage, a sense of humor and a devastating bow arm, Jacobsen is emerging as one of the most interesting figures on the classical music scene.”
(The Washington Post)
GRAMMY-nominated Orchestra
Renowned String Quartets The Southwest’s Premier Bach Festival
Colin Jacobsen
SANTA FE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL TRUSTEES, ADVISORY COUNCIL, PAST PRESIDENTS, AND ADMINISTRATION
Marc Neikrug
Artistic Director
Jim Griffith
Executive Director
Board of Trustees
Ben Allison
President
John Berghoff
1st Vice President
Kenneth R. Marvel
2nd Vice President
Robert L. Clarke
Treasurer
Carole Brown
Secretary
Anna-Marie Baca
Brett Bachman
Barbara B. Balser
Beth Beloff
Richard Bentley
Neil H. Berman
Douglas Brown
Elisbeth Challener
Ralph P. Craviso
Andrew Eiseman
Michael Everett
David Tausig Frank
Peter B. Frank
Julanna Gilbert
Diane Grob
Jeremy Guiberteau, MD
Bessie Hanahan
John H. Hart
Michael Hindus
Robert Hull
Hervey Juris
Paul L. King
Ronald S. Lushing
Ellen Marder
Elizabeth McGown
David Muck
Jay W. Oppenheimer
Barry W. Ramo, MD
Louisa Stude Sarofim
Herman Siegelaar
Nat Sloane
Trustee Emerita
Jane Ann Welch
Honorary Board Members
Susan Graham
Hon. Senator Martin Heinrich and Julie Heinrich
Marilyn Horne
Arnold Steinhardt
Ambassador Thomas Stewart Udall and Jill Cooper Udall
Pinchas Zukerman
Advisory Council
Ryan Bailey
Kelley O. Berman
Lynn Coneway
Patricia Marcus Curtis
Sue and Chris Fan
Lynne Horning
Kay Duke Ingalls
Jani Leuschel
Ginnie Maes
Crennan M. Ray
David Sontag
Jasper Welch
Jan Chavez Wilcynski
Cheryl Willman, MD
Leshek Zavistovski
Nancy Zeckendorf
Past Presidents
Bergère Kenney (1973–76)
Philip Naumburg (1977–78)
Nicholas Molnar (1979–80)
Owen Lopez (1981–82)
Laurel Seth (1983–84)
Philip Naumburg (1985–86)
Marsha Ard (1987–88)
Stanley Davis (1989–90)
Edward B. Kaufmann, PhD (1991)
Gifford Phillips (1992)
Dode Kenney and Gifford Phillips, Co-chairs (1993–94)
James P. Cohen and Jill Z. Cooper, Co-chairs (1995–96)
Wood “Mike” Arnold (1997)
Jane Ann Welch (1998–99)
L. Donald Tashjian, MD (2000–01)
Thomas F. O’Toole (2002)
Quarrier B. Cook (2003–04)
Carole Brown (2005–07)
Toni Zavistovski (2008–10)
Douglas M. Brown (2011–12)
Kenneth R. Marvel (2013–15)
Arnold Tenenbaum (2016–18)
Michael Everett (2019–22)
Ralph P. Craviso (2023–24)
Year-round Staff
Jane Bagwell CFO
Brian Bixby Director of Marketing and Communications
Jose Gonzalez Operations and Production Manager
Valerie Guy Director of Artistic Administration
Amy Hegarty Writer and Editor
Joseph Hohlfeld Director of Development
Opera Joe McKesson
Digital Consultant: Web, Media, and SEO
Doug Patinka Information Systems and Box Office Manager
Ivy Ross Director of Education and Engagement
Lizette Rubio Events and Board Relations Manager
Part-time Staff
Oliver Prezant
Summer Young People’s Concert Program Host
Edgard Rivera Guitar in Our Schools Coordinator and Instructor
Janine Sammeth Music in Our Schools Curriculum Writer and Workshop Presenter
Hilary Schacht Strings in Our Schools Coordinator and Instructor
Seasonal Staff
Bernard Alexander Piano Technician
Vida Altoé Pimenta Artistic Administration Intern
Eric Bromberger Program Annotator
Gabe Cordova Box Office Representative
Wouter Feldbusch
Production Specialist
CJ Goodyear
Special Events and Development Intern
William Heilbraun Recording Associate
Ryan Pound Production Associate
Jennifer Rhodes Titles and Translations
Matthew Snyder Recording Engineer
Al Stucky Box Office Representative
Mia Tokoroyama Development and Box Office Intern
Clare Velasquez Development and Box Office Intern
Daren West House Manager
Kent Williamson Page Turner
Professional Partners
Norma Alarcón, PhD
Professor Emerita, UC Berkeley Online Spanish Translation and Editing
Israel Alpizar
Designer
Arts, Etc. PR Public Relations
David Aubrey Filmmaker, Lightningwood Pictures
Natalie Baca Designer
Paper Tiger Printer
Marcella Scott
Advertising Sales Manager
Scott Chamberlin Photography Photographer
MEET OUR NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR!
Introducing Jim Griffith
A combination of personal and professional reasons led Jim Griffith to make a big crosscountry move that saw him leave his presidentand-CEO position at a 30,000-square-foot, stateof the-art Florida arts center (which he founded) to immerse himself in new experiences—and new challenges—at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. by Amy Hegarty
Colorado, so we loved the idea of being much closer to them.
What about professionally? Were you looking for new or different challenges?
Professionally, the opportunity to lead the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival was irresistible. It’s one of the most respected festivals of its kind, and it has a rich history; a passionate, engaged audience; and a thoughtful approach to programming that Marc Neikrug built. The chance to be part of an organization that brings world-class music to this incredible community, and to help shape its future, was exactly the kind of leap I was looking to make. I absolutely love when I introduce myself to audience members who come into the office to purchase tickets, and they tell me they’ve been coming to the Festival and sitting in the same seats for 25 years! It’s clear that the Festival is a full experience—one that honors tradition while also encouraging innovation and discovery. That balance is rare, and it was a major reason why I felt so drawn to this opportunity.
Did you know a lot about the Festival before you moved to Santa Fe? What was your impression of it?
I’ve always considered the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival to be the pinnacle of artistic excellence, mostly for two reasons. When I was growing up, I knew that many of my chamber music heroes performed here regularly, and when I was living in New York City, I saw the beautiful Festival posters featuring Georgia O’Keeffe paintings all over Juilliard and in friends’ apartments.
Had you been to Santa Fe prior to any visits related to the Executive Director position?
My interview for the Executive Director position last August was actually my first time visiting the Southwest. But that August, when I stepped off the plane and onto the tarmac at the Santa Fe airport, I saw that there were only two gates and thought, OK, this is going to be amazing. Santa Fe felt instantly special—like a place with its own rhythm, where time moves differently. I stayed at La Fonda, right on the Plaza, in the heart of the historic downtown area. The Search Committee gave me a warm welcome, and the pride each Board Member felt for the Festival was absolutely infectious. And it didn’t take long before I had my first cultural lesson: At a restaurant, a server asked me, “Red, green, or Christmas?” I genuinely thought they were asking about holiday decorations. So that was my official welcome to New Mexico: a plate of enchiladas and the realization that I had a lot to learn. I’ve been happily learning ever since.
Prior to moving to New Mexico, you worked at your last organization, in Florida, for a long time. What was your work there like?
Before coming to Santa Fe, I spent nearly two decades in Fort Myers, where I built the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center from the ground up—transforming a historic federal building into a thriving cultural hub for chamber music, jazz, bluegrass, art, and community. It’s a project I’m incredibly proud of, and if you ever find yourself in southwest Florida, I highly recommend stopping by and catching a concert or two. It’s a very special place.
Having worked on such a grand scale like that for so long, how do you approach running an organization like
the Festival, given that it was founded more than five decades ago and is dedicated to performing a specific art form in an intimate setting?
It’s true—my past roles have involved a lot of building, both literally and figuratively, and I’ve worn enough hats to open my own hat shop! But, interestingly, even when I was immersed in projects that were big in scope and heavy in logistics and required the occasional hard hat and city permit, they all had a chamber music element or purpose to them. There’s something incredibly powerful about focusing on depth over scale. Chamber music, by its nature, is about intimacy, nuance, and connection. You don’t need a hundred-piece orchestra and a light show to move an audience (though, trust me, I’ve done both).
Now that you’ve been in Santa Fe for almost a year, what’s been the best or most surprising part of your time here so far, and what are you most looking forward to in the future?
Without a doubt, the most surprising—and deeply moving—part so far has been the overwhelming support and generosity of the community. I knew the Festival had a loyal audience, but I didn’t quite grasp just how passionate, welcoming, and genuinely engaged people here would be until I experienced it firsthand. And the generosity here isn’t just financial; it’s emotional, cultural, and deeply personal. People show up, lean in, and care, not just about the music but about the people who make it. It’s incredibly inspiring. As for what I’m most looking forward to? Honestly, continuing to build those connections. I’m excited to bring fresh energy to the Festival while honoring its amazing legacy, and I want to expand our reach and deepen our community ties. Also, I’m working on figuring out whether I’m a “red” or “green” person. Green seems spicier, so that’s probably what I am. ◗
Kara and Jim Griffith
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JOHN RUBINSTEIN STARS IN MARC NEIKRUG’S THROUGH ROSES
The renowned actor, director, and composer—who’s won Tony, Drama Desk, Theatre World, Lucille Lortel, and Emmy awards—returns to the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival to star in Marc Neikrug’s haunting Through Roses, which the composer describes as “a play with music” and its star calls “deeply moving and subliminally magical.” by Amy Hegarty
There are many ways you may be familiar with John Rubinstein: as the Tony Award–winning Broadway actor who starred in the original production of Children of a Lesser God and created the title role in the Bob Fosse–directed production of Pippin, or as the Emmy-nominated actor who starred in such TV shows as Family and Crazy Like a Fox. You may know him as the versatile film actor who’s appeared in such movies as Being the Ricardos, Red Dragon, 21 Grams, and Someone to Watch Over Me or as the composer of scores for the Robert Redford–starring films The Candidate and Jeremiah Johnson. You may know him as the former host of the radio program Carnegie Hall Tonight or as the narrator of more than 200 audiobooks, including ones by such best-selling authors as Agatha Christie, James Patterson, Jonathan Kellerman, and Carl Hiaasen. Or you may know him as a longtime Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival artist.
Rubinstein—the son of pianist Arthur Rubinstein who studied theater at UCLA and, later, took composition
courses at Juilliard—first appeared at the Festival in 1995, when he starred in the organization’s first-ever production of Through Roses, which longtime Festival Artistic Director Marc Neikrug wrote over the course of 15 months in 1979 and 1980. This summer, on August 13, Rubinstein returns to the Festival to reprise his role in a production that he also directs (Rubinstein is an Emmy Award–winning director) and that also features an ensemble of eight musicians conducted by Neikrug.
Through Roses was commissioned by the 92nd Street Y in New York City and premiered at London’s Southbank Centre in August 1980. Since then, it’s been performed hundreds of times around the world and translated into many languages, and it’s been turned into a film by theater and opera director Jürgen Flimm that stars Oscar winner Maximilian Schell. Its story centers on an unnamed violinist and Holocaust survivor who, several decades later, is coming to terms with his memories of, and experiences at, Auschwitz, where he was forced to
JOHN RUBINSTEIN STARS IN THROUGH ROSES
Wednesday, 6 p.m.
August 13
The Lensic Performing Arts Center
MARC NEIKRUG Through Roses
John Rubinstein, actor and director/designer
Marc Neikrug, conductor
Martin Beaver, violin
Steven Tenenbom, viola
Felix Fan, cello
Tara Helen O’Connor, flute
Frank Rosenwein, oboe
perform for the Nazis who imprisoned him.
In addition to its heartrending subject matter, Through Roses stands out for its unusual and innovative form— which, Neikrug once told The New York Times, “came first. I was looking for a way to get theater and music together,” he said, “so that music would be crucial—a subtext—to the spoken word.”
The way Neikrug uses music as a storytelling device is one of the biggest draws for Rubinstein, who’s performed Through Roses in Chicago, La Jolla, Miami, Philadelphia, and Seattle in addition to Santa Fe. “Marc uses the music itself as a character in the story, and he also uses it as a kind of continuum in the mind of the actual character, the violinist, that reflects his emotions and recalls his memories,” Rubinstein says. “That dynamic—the character’s profession (which brings him directly into the situation where he’s confronted with the worst moment of his life) and his subsequent tortured existence that’s burdened by that horrifying memory (which manifests itself in the music of both his dreams and waking thoughts)—is what makes this piece deeply moving and subliminally magical, and both a joy and a challenge to perform.”
While Through Roses’ violinist is a fictional character, his ordeal is based in fact. Neikrug is a celebrated pianist as well as a composer, and in that same Times interview, he noted that once, when he was performing in London, he “heard a story about a cellist who was ordered to play Bach in Auschwitz—while inmates were marched to the gas chambers.” Through Roses’ plot led to Neikrug integrating his own music with the kind the violinist would have likely played for his jailers. “At relevant points in the drama,” Neikrug writes in a program note, “[the score includes] fragments of military marches and popular songs as well as Haydn … Beethoven, Paganini, Wagner, Berg, Mozart, Schubert, and Bach.”
Carol McGonnell, clarinet
Colin Currie, percussion
Katia Skanavi, piano
For the full August 13 program, which includes the Chatter Ensemble performing Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King, see p. 148.
All of Through Roses’ music will be performed on August 13 by an ensemble of Festival musicians that joins Rubinstein onstage, although the group—which comprises violinist Martin Beaver, violist Steven Tenenbom, cellist Felix Fan, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, Cleveland Orchestra Principal Oboist Frank Rosenwein, clarinetist Carol McGonnell, percussionist Colin Currie, and pianist Katia Skanavi—represents a figment of the violinist's imagination and performs behind a scrim.
For Rubinstein, no matter how many times he delves into the violinist role in Through Roses, he’ll always be guided by the music. “My main approach to performing this complex work is to take in and absorb the music as the musicians play it on a given night and then somehow combine their sound and interpretation with the words and the physical activity of the violinist as he battles his feelings and recalls events in his life. It all comes down to that interplay of music and memory, of the character’s obsessive, specific guilt, and the amorphous, wordless sound.” ◗
An earlier version of this article appeared on the Festival’s website at SantaFeChamberMusic.org, where you can also watch Marc Neikrug talk about Through Roses on our video podcast series, SFCMF Unfiltered.
John Rubinstein in the 2014 Broadway revival of Pippin and (opposite page) Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground
NEW SERIES ALERT: BAM!!
Insights on the Brain & Music
A new Monday Noon series—created and curated by Artistic Director Marc Neikrug and featuring presentations by top scientific researchers—offers a fascinating exploration of how music affects the human brain in different ways at different stages of our lives. by Amy Hegarty
In 2012, in honor of its 40th anniversary, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival teamed up with the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center and Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation for Cancer Research to present a three-day symposium called Music, the Brain, Medicine, and Wellness: A Scientific Dialogue. That symposium fulfilled Artistic Director Marc Neikrug’s longtime goal of having the Festival explore what he describes as a “fascinating world,” and this season, the Festival continues that exploration with a new three-part series called BAM!! Insights on the Brain & Music
“I’m a firm believer that music communicates to us on a biological level,” Neikrug says, “and I encourage everyone to attend our BAM!! presentations to cultivate a better understanding of the cognitive and health benefits that music provides in addition to, or perhaps exactly because of, the pleasures.”
On Monday, July 14, BAM!! kicks off with its first hour-long
presentation, “How Music Captivates: The Science,” by Elizabeth Margulis, a professor of music at Princeton University, where she also serves as the director of graduate studies in musicology (with affiliations in psychology and neuroscience) and the Music Cognition Lab. Her presentation focuses on experiences that are probably very familiar to all of us but are puzzling nevertheless— specifically, the way music immerses and transports us. In her research, Margulis focuses on phenomena like “the way music captivates us so that nothing seems more important than the next note, or the way it makes us feel like we’re reliving a long-lost personal memory.”
Margulis earned her undergraduate degree in piano performance from the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and it was while she was there that an important shift took place. “One day, I disobeyed my piano teacher, who thought I should be practicing, and snuck onto the bus to take a class at Johns Hopkins called Minds, Brains, and Computers,” Margulis says. “Cognitive science was really focused on understanding
Concetta M. Tomaino, DA, LCAT, MT-BC
language at that time, but as I sat in that class, it became obvious that the techniques people were using to understand speech could be harnessed to answer questions about music.”
Some of those questions came from a personal place for Margulis, who went on to earn her master’s and doctoral degrees from Columbia University. “I grew up in a family of people who weren’t especially interested in music,” she says, “and sometimes it felt like I’d been struck by lightning or something. I was obsessed with listening to music and to playing it and writing it, and as I grew older and acquired more and more training, I wondered how it was that music had seemed so powerful to me before I had known anything about it.”
In her presentation, Margulis explores other questions that many music lovers have probably had at various times, like, “Why do some performances feel just right— or so compelling—while others, even though their notes and rhythms are different by only a hair, fall flat? Why does some music scoop you up and push you onto the dance floor while other music leaves you unmoved? And why does music elicit such a wide range of feelings and associations?” Margulis’s research, she notes, “explores repetition and the strikingly patterned ways that music can shape and guide spontaneous thought,” and her methods
incorporate using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity.
On August 4, music therapist Dr. Concetta M. Tomaino presents “Music, Memory & the Aging Brain,” which, she says, “focuses on the benefits of music therapy and music-based interventions in senior healthcare and wellness.” Those interventions help patients who are experiencing a range of neurologic diseases preserve several key functions, including memory, language processing, association, and motor timing.
Dr. Tomaino is the executive director of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF), which she co-founded in 1995 with the renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks, who wrote the influential non-fiction book Awakenings. “Both Dr. Sacks and I saw the benefits and potential of music therapy for those of our patients who had various neurologic problems,” Dr. Tomaino says. The IMNF, she explains, is “dedicated to bringing the worlds of neuroscience and music therapy together through dialogue and collaborative research in order to expand our understanding of music and the brain.”
A self-proclaimed “science geek” since her youth, Dr. Tomaino enrolled at SUNY Stony Brook as a pre-med student, but she was always interested in music, too,
Elizabeth Margulis, PhD
Assal Habibi, PhD
BAM!! INSIGHTS ON THE BRAIN & MUSIC
12 p.m.
St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art
Monday, July 14
“How Music Captivates: The Science”
Elizabeth Margulis, PhD
Professor of Music, Director of Graduate Studies in Musicology, and Director of the Music Cognition Lab, Princeton University
Monday, August 4
“Music, Memory & the Aging Brain”
Concetta M. Tomaino, DA, LCAT, MT-BC
Executive Director and Co-Founder, Institute for Music and Neurologic Function
Monday, August 11
“Music & Child Brain Development”
Assal Habibi, PhD
Associate Research Professor of Psychology and Neurology, USC Brain and Creativity Institute, and Director, USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society
and, as a child, she’d begun taking accordion lessons at the age of 10 and learned how to play the trumpet in her high school band. In college, she was eager to study the latter instrument with a renowned professor, but when she learned she could only do so as a music major, she became a double major in science and music. By the time she graduated, her major was trumpet performance. Something else transformative occurred for Dr. Tomaino during college. “I learned about the field of music therapy in my junior year,” she says, “and I saw it as an opportunity to combine my passions for science and music in a way that could help others.” Dr. Tomaino earned her master’s and doctor-of-arts degrees in music therapy from New York University, and it was during that time that her interests came together in tangible ways. “My background in science drew me into questions about perception and auditory processing in people with brain disorders, especially stroke and dementia,” she says. “During my clinical internship, I began to recognize ways that music could assist in stroke rehabilitation as well as reach and engage people with cognitive deficits, including Alzheimer’s disease.”
The final BAM!! presentation, on August 11, is “Music & Child Brain Development” by Assal Habibi, an associate
research professor of psychology and neurology at the USC Brain and Creativity Institute and the director of the USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society.
Studying child brain development is important and impactful work, Habibi says, because “early childhood is a particularly dynamic period when the brain is highly plastic and responsive to environmental influences. Understanding how structured experiences—like participating in music education programs—affect cognitive, emotional, and social development during this time can inform interventions and educational practices that support long-term well-being.”
Habibi says that deciding to research the effects of music on people’s well-being was “a natural convergence” of her “personal and academic interests,” as she began studying classical piano at a young age and developed an interest in science—“particularly in understanding the brain and human behavior”—when she was in college. “As I deepened my training in cognitive neuroscience,” she says, “I became increasingly curious about how music—something so central to my own life—could shape the brain and support development. Playing and teaching music has always been an important part of my life, and those experiences continue to shape my perspective as a researcher.”
Habibi’s research methods include incorporating neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques, which Habibi says are critical to her work. “These tools allow us to observe how the brain changes in response to different types of experiences—including music training—and to understand the underlying neural mechanisms that support learning, emotion, and social development.”
Over the past few years, Habibi has expanded her research “to examine the role of music in healthy aging— both in terms of music listening and active engagement with music among older adults,” she says. But whether she’s working with children or seniors, Habibi is always motivated by the same overarching interest. “I’ve always believed that music has the power to transform individuals and communities,” she says, “and, as a scientist, I’m focused on empirically investigating how and why that transformation happens—particularly how musical experiences can influence brain development, emotional regulation, and well-being across a lifespan.” ◗
To listen to Marc Neikrug talk about his interest in music and the brain on the Festival’s video podcast series, SFCMF Unfiltered, and to watch video interviews with all three BAM!! presenters, visit SantaFeChamberMusic.org.
MUSEUM HILL CAFÉ
Celebrating 15 Years on Museum Hill
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505.984.8900
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Serving simple food done well, The pictures tell the story.
Whether it’s lunch Tuesday thru Friday or brunch/lunch Saturday and Sunday we have your afternoons covered.
Museum Hill Cafe, 100 mile of views
One of the largest covered patios
We have a darn good wine and beer list Plenty of free parking.
Tuesday thru Sunday 11-3
Reservations suggested 505-984-8900
We reserve our evenings for your private parties.
2025 SANTA FE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL COMMISSIONED WORKS
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival premiered its first commissioned work in 1980, during its 8th season, and by the time it concludes its 52nd season this summer, it will have premiered 124 commissioned works, including ones by Sean Shepherd, Julian Anderson, and Freya Waley-Cohen as well as the participants in the 12th annual Young Composers String Quartet Project, Tyson Gholston Davis and Ania Vu (see p. 26).
Since the premiere of that first commissioned work— The Santa Fe Songs by the late Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Ned Rorem, who scored the work for baritone, violin, viola, cello, and piano and featured settings of 12 poems by the late Santa Fe poet Witter Bynner—the Festival has premiered at least one commissioned work almost every year. Commissioning and premiering works has become an integral part of the Festival’s mission and identity, especially under the leadership of Marc Neikrug, an acclaimed composer who’s served as the Festival’s Artistic Director since 1998. In a 2017 interview for the Festival, Neikrug said: “I want to make sure that this art form— classical music—remains a living one, and the only way that can happen is if you continually program living composers.”
“Writing music for me is a very difficult, almost costly game. Emotionally, physically difficult. I lose a lot of
sleep, and I work very hard on these pieces,” composer Sean Shepherd said in a February 2009 interview with the Cornell Chronicle. At the time, Shepherd was finishing his doctor-of-musical-arts degree at Cornell, where he was studying with Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra, and the Chronicle was spotlighting him for having received a commission from the New York Philharmonic four months earlier, in October 2008, when he was 29 years old. The Philharmonic premiered that commissioned work, These Particular Circumstances (written for a 16-member chamber orchestra), in April 2010, as part of a newmusic series, and two years later, they named Shepherd their inaugural Kravis Emerging Composer.
Over the past several years, Shepherd has turned “emerging” into “leading,” with his works having been performed by the BBC, Boston, Chicago, Minnesota, Montreal, and National symphony orchestras; the Cleveland Orchestra; the Ensemble intercontemporain; the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin; and many others around the world. In April, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra premiered his Quadruple Concerto, which the composer, a bassoonist, wrote for the orchestra’s principal winds, and in 2024, Shepherd received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ coveted Charles Ives Living Award, which includes a generous two-year stipend that allows composers to focus on writing.
Sean Shepherd Freya Waley-Cohen
Shepherd began writing music when he was 11, while growing up in Reno, Nevada, and before he headed to Cornell, he earned his bachelor’s degree from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and his master’s degree from The Juilliard School. In an interview with his publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, Shepherd explained that, when he was an undergraduate, he was struck by something the American composer Libby Larsen said during a guest lecture—that “everyone has their own story to tell, and I’m pretty sure that no one can possibly tell it better than you can,” Shepherd recalled. “I often feel very vulnerable when I’m writing music,” he said, “and I didn’t always feel like there was a lot of room to ask questions when I was in school.” Larsen’s words, he added, “became kind of a mantra, and I feel so lucky to have heard her say [them].”
This summer, on July 15, the Festival presents the New Mexico premiere of Latticework, which Shepherd composed for its two performers, violinist Leila Josefowicz and cellist Paul Watkins. A program note Shepherd wrote for the work, which has notions of interweaving and interconnectedness at its center, is on p. 46.
FESTIVAL-COMMISSIONED PREMIERES AND PRE- AND POST-CONCERT TALKS
Tuesday, July 15, 12 p.m.
St. Francis Auditorium
New Mexico Museum of Art
SEAN SHEPHERD Latticework (2024; Festival Co-Commission; New Mexico Premiere)
Leila Josefowicz, violin
Paul Watkins, cello
Tuesday, July 15, 1 p.m.
St. Francis Auditorium
New Mexico Museum of Art
Post-Concert Talk
Composer SEAN SHEPHERD
Wednesday, August 6, 12 p.m.
St. Francis Auditorium
New Mexico Museum of Art
JULIAN ANDERSON String Quartet No. 4 (2024; Festival Co-Commission; US Premiere)
Escher String Quartet
Adam Barnett-Hart, violin
James Thompson, violin
Pierre Lapointe, viola
Brook Speltz, cello
Monday, August 11, 5 p.m.
The Lensic Performing Arts Center
Pre-Concert Talk
Composer FREYA WALEY-COHEN
Monday, August 11, 6 p.m.
The Lensic Performing Arts Center
FREYA WALEY-COHEN Stone Fruit (2024; Festival Co-Commission; US Premiere)
Colin Currie, percussion
Daniel Druckman, percussion
Doug Perkins, percussion
“It’s useful not to have a label,” Julian Anderson told composer Samuel Andreyev in an interview that covered topics like the avant-garde and minimalism. “I think labels
Gregory Zuber, percussion
Julian Anderson
as a whole are very dubious, and I would avoid them myself,” Anderson continued. “I’ve found, for better or worse, that I need quite a wide vocabulary of kinds of sound.” That wide vocabulary has led Anderson to be referred to as nothing less than “a 21st-century Debussy” by the Financial Times and to have his works, no matter their form—instrumental or vocal—hailed for their vividness and intensity.
Considered one of the most important and influential composers of his generation, Anderson, who was born in London in 1967, has been the recipient of major honors throughout his career—from winning the 1991 Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Young Composers for his first orchestral piece, Diptych, and the 2023 Grawemeyer Award for his sole cello concerto, Litanies, to being named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his services to music in 2021.
Anderson’s works have been performed by the world’s leading ensembles and at the world’s most prestigious festivals, and, among many other engagements, he’s served as composer-in-residence for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Wigmore Hall. Anderson has also enjoyed a decadeslong academic career. He earned his degrees from the Royal College of Music and Cambridge University, where he studied with Alexander Goehr, and he studied with John Lambert, Tristan Murail, Olivier Messiaen, György Ligeti, and Per Nørgård as well. Anderson has taught at Harvard University and at the Royal College of Music, where, for five years, he was also the head of the Composition Department, and he’s a longtime professor of composition and the composer-in-residence for London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
In 1984, when he was still a teenager, Anderson composed his first official work, his String Quartet No. 1, Light Music, which Anderson said “explores the color of sound” and sees its “timbres, textures, and harmonies evolve and transform in a manner analogous to filtering light through a glass prism.” On August 6, the Festival presents the Escher String Quartet giving the US premiere of Anderson’s String Quartet No. 4, which, in a program note on p. 117, Anderson says “is in a very different shape” from his three previous quartets and is “a thorough exploration of a particular type of resonance.”
36-year-old London-based British American composer is one of the UK’s most in-demand young talents, with highlights over the past decade including her winning the 2017 Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize and serving as Wigmore Hall’s 2019–20 associate composer and the London Chamber Orchestra’s 2021–22 composer-in-residence.
Waley-Cohen got her musical start playing the violin at age three and the piano at age five, but, despite believing that she wanted to be a violinist, her future path began to come into focus at age 11, when she wrote her first official work, a viola duet, while attending The Walden School in New Hampshire. Waley-Cohen went on to do her undergraduate work at Cambridge, where she studied with Giles Swayne, and her graduate work at the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied with Simon Bainbridge and was one of the last students of Oliver Knussen.
While Waley-Cohen has cited a wide range of influences on her work, from Mahler to Messiaen, throughout her career she’s been focused on honing her own unique voice. “A career in performing or composing music is hard, and you’ll need to be resilient,” she said in a 2024 interview with Expressive Audio. “It’s worth spending time thinking about why you want to make music and asking yourself what is the music that only you could make. Following other people’s footsteps can be helpful sometimes, but it will only take you so far.”
Waley-Cohen distinguished herself early, creating a standout work during her 2015–17 Open Space Residency at Snape Maltings (part of Britten Pears Arts) called Permutations, a fully immersive installation piece created for a specifically designed space. In more recent years, Waley-Cohen’s works have included the song cycle Spell Book, the orchestral composition Demon, and her first opera, WITCH, which was commissioned in honor of the 200th anniversary of the Royal Academy of Music and went on to be nominated for a prestigious Ivor Novello Award. Waley-Cohen has received commissions from the Los Angeles, London, and Royal Stockholm philharmonic orchestras; the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; the BBC Proms; the Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, and Presteigne festivals; and many others.
Many Festival audience members first became familiar with Freya Waley-Cohen in 2017, when she was one of the two participants in the Festival’s fifth annual Young Composers String Quartet Project. Today, the
On August 11, the Festival presents the US premiere of Waley-Cohen’s Stone Fruit, performed by percussionists Colin Currie, Daniel Druckman, Doug Perkins, and Gregory Zuber. Currie, who premiered the work with his Colin Currie Quartet at Wigmore Hall in February, called the piece “ingenious,” and both he and Waley-Cohen have provided program notes for the work on p. 139. ◗
2025 YOUNG COMPOSERS STRING QUARTET PROJECT
This nationally renowned program, now in its 12th season, spotlights two emerging composers who are invited to spend a week in Santa Fe, where they receive mentoring from Artistic Director Marc Neikrug, meet with music-publishing experts, and have their Festival-commissioned quartets workshopped and premiered by the JACK Quartet. by Amy Hegarty
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival is committed to presenting world-class chamber music concerts, but it’s also devoted to growing and evolving the chamber music repertoire and to nurturing young talent. One of the reasons the Young Composers String Quartet Project—which the Festival launched in 2013—is so esteemed and so enduring is that it embodies all three aspects of the Festival’s longstanding mission.
On August 1, the Festival presents the world premieres of string quartets commissioned from 24-year-old Tyson Gholston Davis and 30-year-old Ania Vu, whom Festival Artistic Director—and acclaimed composer—Marc Neikrug invited to be this year’s Young Composers. Prior to the premieres, Davis and Vu will finalize their new works during a collaborative rehearsal session with the celebrated JACK Quartet, which has been called “fearless” and “one of contemporary music’s indispensable ensembles” by
The New York Times. JACK makes its highly anticipated Festival debut on the August 1 concert (which includes works by Anthony Cheung and Helmut Lachenmann), and it ushers in a new era for the Festival by succeeding the trailblazing FLUX Quartet as the Young Composers String Quartet Project’s resident ensemble.
Tyson Gholston Davis was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts’ High School Program. After graduation, he moved to New York City, where he earned his bachelor’s degree from The Juilliard School in 2023 and his master’s degree this past May.
“As a kid,” Davis says, “I was deeply curious about the arts in general. I painted, sketched little plays, and messed around on my grandmother’s piano.” When
Tyson Gholston Davis
Ania Vu
JACK Quartet
Davis was around the age of seven or eight, he became increasingly interested in the piano, so his mother gave him his first lessons, covering “basic piano techniques and notation,” Davis says. “I had been raised listening to everything from soul to rap,” he adds, “so I had a diverse musical life from the start.”
That diverse musical life has seemingly influenced Davis’s musical style as well. “I find that my style is constantly evolving, and, for an artist, I think being open to new ways of understanding your art is your greatest strength.”
Davis has been composing music for almost 20 years—which means for most of his life. “I wrote my first piece as soon as I began learning how to read music at age eight,” he says. “My first pieces were short little things that were influenced by piano works I was learning and listening to at the time. As I kept writing those little pieces,” he continues, “I figured out, in fifth grade, that I wanted to pursue writing music as a career.”
So far, Davis's career has been filled with such notable honors as serving as a 2019 composer apprentice for the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of
PREMIERES AND PRE-CONCERT TALK
Friday, August 1, 5 p.m.
Women’s Board Room
New Mexico Museum of Art
Pre-Concert Talk with Composers
TYSON GHOLSTON DAVIS and ANIA VU
Friday, August 1, 6 p.m.
St. Francis Auditorium
New Mexico Museum of Art
TYSON GHOLSTON DAVIS …echoes of river and mist… (2025; Festival Commission; World Premiere)
ANIA VU Unveiling (2025; Festival Commission; World Premiere)
JACK Quartet
Christopher Otto, violin
Austin Wulliman, violin
John Pickford Richards, viola
Jay Campbell, cello
When writing for a string quartet, “you can’t hide behind extremely timbral changes” like with orchestral music, Davis says, while Vu notes that the form’s long-established tradition “provides both inspiration and challenge: how do I contribute something fresh and personal?”
America at Carnegie Hall and receiving the ASCAP Foundation’s 2020 Morton Gould Young Composer Award, BMI’s 2020 Student Composer Award, and the Copland House’s 2024 Residency Award. Davis has also received numerous commissions, including ones from The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, and the Terezin Music Foundation, which commissioned his 2023 solo piano work, …Expansions of Light, for Jonathan Biss. Davis’s music has also been performed by the Juilliard String Quartet, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and soprano Ariadne Greif, among many others. When describing his music, Davis says: “At the moment, my work tends to have gradually paced-out harmonies that emerge over several minutes, and/or energetic passages that subtly develop themselves. How music is paced has been an extremely important notion in my head over the last several years.”
From grades 1 through 12, Ania Vu attended a public music school in Warsaw, Poland, where she was born and raised. “I was classically trained by a wonderful Russian piano teacher, Professor Irina Rumiancewa-Dabrowski, who profoundly shaped me as a musician,” Vu says. Additionally, Vu studied at home with her mother, Đăng H ông Anh, “who is also a composer-pianist and Moscowtrained,” Vu notes. “If it weren’t for her,” she adds, “I don’t know if I would have ended up in music.”
Vu, like Davis, has been composing for most of her life, having written her first piece at the age of 15, when she learned that her school was hosting a composition competition. “As a teenager, I loved listening to film music and jazz, and my dream back then was to become a film composer,” Vu says. “For the competition, I wrote a simple jazz-inspired piece for soprano saxophone and piano, and it ended up winning first prize. A few years later, I wrote two more pieces to apply for an undergraduate composition program in the US, and the rest is history.”
That history includes Vu earning her bachelor’s degree at the Eastman School of Music and her doctoral degree at the University of Pennsylvania. It also includes serving as the 2024 composer-in-residence at the Chelsea Music Festival in Manhattan, receiving the Copland House’s 2023 Residency Award, and serving as both a 2022 composer fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and a 2021–23 Composers & the Voice fellow at the American Opera Projects in Brooklyn, among other honors. For the past few years, Vu had been based in Chicago, where she served as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Chicago and a lecturer at Northwestern University as well. In July, she relocated to California to begin a new role as an assistant professor at Pomona College.
When reflecting on her work—which has been performed by Sō Percussion, TAK, the Mivos and Daedalus quartets, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Mannes American Composers Ensemble, and others—Vu says that she’s “always been drawn to music theory and ear training, which has provided a foundation for composition.” For the past six or seven years, she notes, “my work has tended to draw inspiration from poetry, time, and sounds and laws from the natural world. But regardless of the source of inspiration or topic,” she says, “what remains constant is my awareness of music as a time-based art form: I'm always aware of form, proportions, and the psychological journey of the listener when experiencing my music.” Overall, she adds, “I strive for my music to be both intellectually and emotionally stimulating.”
Vu and Davis are expecting their experience in Santa Fe to be stimulating in many ways. “I was deeply honored to have been asked by Marc Neikrug to participate in the Young Composers String Quartet Project,” Davis says. “To have the opportunity to write for such a prestigious group like the JACK Quartet is a young composer’s dream. Workshopping and premiering a new work with an adventurous ensemble is extremely exciting. It allows a kind of feedback between the composer and performers that is rarely achieved.”
Vu notes that she was “truly delighted” when she received her invitation, “as it was completely unexpected,” she says. “I was already familiar with the Festival, and I deeply admired many of the composers who had participated in the program, so it felt incredibly humbling to join this lineage.” ◗
JUNE 25 - AUGUST 6, 2026
DONOR PRESALE DECEMBER 2025
SINGLE TICKET ON SALE JANUARY 2026
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Dallas Symphony Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra
New York Philharmonic
2025 GIFFORD PHILLIPS AWARD: SUE AND CHRIS FAN
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s annual Gifford Phillips Award, created in 1999 and named for longtime trustee and former board chairman Gifford Phillips (1918–2013), recognizes individuals and organizations that have supported the Festival and the local performing arts scene while demonstrating leadership, generosity, and integrity. This year, the Festival is proud to present The Gifford Phillips Award to Sue and Chris Fan, who have been supporting the Festival for more than three decades. by Amy Hegarty
personal connection drew them to both the city and the Festival: Their son, the cellist Felix Fan, made his Festival debut playing with the La Jolla Chamber Music Festival Ensemble. Since then, Felix has become one of the Festival’s most frequent collaborators (both individually and as a member of the renowned FLUX Quartet), and the Fans have become two of the Festival’s most generous and longtime supporters.
Today the Fans divide their time between La Jolla and Santa Fe, and since 2000, they’ve attended the Festival almost every year. In early 2000, they joined the Festival’s Advisory Council, and they remain active members to this day. Their generous annual contributions go, in part, toward sponsoring the Festival’s musicians and their residencies, and their devotion stems from not just having raised an award-winning cellist but from being musicians themselves.
The Fans met 60 years ago, when they were playing in the Taipei Century Youth Orchestra in Taiwan. “I was the principal violist, and Sue was a first violinist,” Chris says. “With me having more free time on my hands due to the viola section having fewer notes to play, I was able to watch Sue perform during rehearsals and concerts, which led to us dating, getting married, and having Felix!”
When it comes to what drives their commitment to the Festival, Sue says that she and Chris admire Artistic Director Marc Neikrug’s vision, which reflects his background as both a pianist and a composer. “Chris and I strongly support Marc’s programming,” she says,
“as well as his leadership in introducing contemporary music to audiences and promoting and mentoring young contemporary composers and musicians.” A favorite Festival memory for the Fans, Chris says, is having attended the 2021 New Mexico premiere of Neikrug’s moving stage work A Song by Mahler, which was directed and designed by Doug Fitch and featured mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, baritone Kelly Markgraf, clarinetist David Shifrin, and the FLUX Quartet. Neikrug, in turn, has been moved by the Fans’ dedication over the decades, noting that “Chris and Sue are fiercely generous in their support for new music and for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.”
In addition to supporting the Festival’s musicians, the Fans have supported other Festival artists as well— specifically, ones whose commissioned works have appeared on the Festival’s program-book covers. In 2018, the Fans purchased Koshare Quartet, which Jemez Pueblo artist Kathleen Wall created using Jemez Pueblo clay, and in 2023, they bought Woman. Cello. Glitter. Sound., a Kha’p’o- and micaceous-clay sculpture that the Santa Clara Pueblo–born artist Nora Naranjo Morse made in honor of the Festival’s 50th anniversary.
This summer, the Fans are returning to the Festival to hear Felix perform, of course, and to take in all the
Festival has to offer, which, Chris notes, includes its high-desert setting and historic venues. But more than anything else, he says, “it’s the programs, which include classic to contemporary works and even world-premiere pieces, that make us come back every year.” ◗
The Gifford Phillips Award will be presented to Sue and Chris Fan before the start of the season-finale concert on Monday, August 18. The Fans join the following distinguished previous recipients of the award: Louisa Stude Sarofim, Shirley F. and Charles M. Weiss, Nancy and Bill Zeckendorf, Susan Herter, David and Kay Duke Ingalls, Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw, Quarrier and Philip Cook, Edgar Foster Daniels, Mara and Chuck Robinson, Betsy and Ted Rogers, Toni and Leshek Zavistovski, Paul King, the New Mexico Museum of Art, Ambassador Thomas Stewart Udall and Jill Cooper Udall, Arnold and Lorlee Tenenbaum, Steven Ovitsky, and the Wirth Family.
Below: Marc Neikrug’s A Song by Mahler is a favorite Festival memory for the Fans, who also purchased the artwork featured on the covers of the Festival’s 2018 and 2023 program books.
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival July 15—August 20,
Classical Music Festivals of the West 2025
CALIFORNIA
Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music cabrillomusic.org
Santa Cruz, CA
July 27-August 10
Carmel Bach Festival bachfestival.org
Carmel-By-The-Sea, CA
July 12-26
La Jolla Music Society SummerFest
TheConrad.org
La Jolla, CA
July 25-August 23
Bravo! Vail Music Festival
BravoVail.org
Vail, CO
June 19-July 31
Colorado Music Festival coloradomusicfestival.org
Boulder, CO
July 3-August 3
Mainly Mozart All-Star Orchestra Festival mainlymozart.org/allstar
San Diego, CA
June 18-28
Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival and Institute musicatmenlo.org
Atherton, CA
July 18-August 9
Strings Music Festival stringsmusicfestival.com
Steamboat Springs, CO
June 27-August 24
Sun Valley Music Festival svmusicfestival.org
Sun Valley, ID
July 28-August 21
NEW MEXICO
IDAHO COLORADO OREGON
Chamber Music Northwest cmnw.org
Portland, OR
June 28-July 27
Oregon Bach Festival OregonBachFestival.org
Eugene, OR
June 27-July 13
WASHINGTON
Seattle Chamber Music Society Summer Festival seattlechambermusic.org
Seattle, WA
July 6-August 1
WYOMING
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival santafechambermusic.org
Santa Fe, NM
July 13-August 18
Grand Teton Music Festival gtmf.org
Jackson Hole, WY
July 3-August 23
Photo: Tom Cohen
Photo: Eric Berlin
Photo: Jenna Poppe
Photo: Chris Lee Photo:
Photo: Tom Emerson
FINE
TUNE
Pasatiempo presents a symphony of things to see and do in Santa Fe — from checking out the city’s roster of world-class musical offerings such as the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival to exploring the renowned arts and culture scene.
Find it on newsstands, in the Friday edition of The Santa Fe New Mexican, and online at pasatiempomagazine.com. And don’t miss a beat by signing up for the Pasatiempo weekly newsletter at santafenewmexican.com.
WITH THANKS TO OUR 2025 SEASON SPONSORS
ANNUAL SPONSORSHIPS
The following donors have generously directed their annual gifts in support of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival's musicians and their summer residencies.
Anna-Marie Baca
Barbara B. and Ronald Davis Balser
Beth Beloff and Marc Geller
Jean and John Berghoff
Kelley O. and Neil H. Berman
Christine and David Bernick
Brian Braa and Andy Eiseman
Sarah and Douglas Brown
David Bulfer and Kelly Pope
Elisbeth Challener and Brett Bachman
Kathleen and Robert L. Clarke
Lynn Coneway
Ralph P. Craviso
Susan and Conrad De Jong
Anna-Karin and David Dillard
Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation
Bonnie Ellinger and Paul Golding
Mike and Marty Everett
Sue and Chris Fan
Paula and Steven Fasken
David Tausig Frank and Kazukuni Sugiyama
David Goodrich and Brian Clarke
Diane and Werner Grob
Bessie Hanaha
John Hart and Carol Prins
Michael Hindus and Lynne Withey
Dalit and Ron Holzman
Robert L. Hull and Myra Barker Hull
Dan Jackson and Jeremy Guiberteau, MD
Jo Kurth Jagoda
Sue Kimm and Seymour Grufferman
Paul L. King
Mary Lattimore
Lorlee and Arnold Tenenbaum Memorial Fund
Ron Lushing and Dan Reid
Margaret and Barry Lyerly
Ellen Marder and Wolfgang Schmidt-Nowara
Kenneth R. Marvel and Robert R. Gardner
David Muck and Cole Martelli
Orion Weiss, piano
Martin Beaver, violin
Ran Dank, piano
Kirill Gerstein, piano
Todd Levy, clarinet
Eric Kim, cello
David Shifrin, clarinet
Erika Baikoff, soprano
Nicholas Canellakis, cello
Paul Huang, violin
Juho Pohjonen, piano
Camden Shaw, cello
Toby Appel, viola
Leila Josefowicz, violin
Katia Skanavi, piano
Thursday Noon Series
Michael Hix, baritone
Colin Currie, percussion
Felix Fan, cello
George Fu, piano
Calidore String Quartet
Carol McGonnell, clarinet
Dover Quartet
Liv Redpath, soprano
Paolo Bordignon, harpsichord; BAM!! Series
Shai Wosner, piano; concert filmings
Frank Rosenwein, oboe
William Hagen, violin
Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola
Miami String Quartet
Scott Lee, viola
JACK Quartet
Keith Robinson, cello
Tuesday Noon Series
Bart Feller, flute
Julius Drake, piano
Gilles Vonsattel, piano
Ailyn Pérez, soprano
Jennifer Frautschi, violin; concert filmings
Jay W. Oppenheimer and Todd King
Glenn Ostergaard and David Kaplan
Cherryl Peterman and Bill Strange
Mary and Leon Podles
Louisa Stude Sarofim
Herman Siegelaar and Cornelia Bryer
Richard and Willa Sisson
Nat and Rebecca Sloane
John and Jan Wilcynski
Drs. Cheryl Willman and Ross Zumwalt
Ellen Yarrell
PERPETUAL SPONSORSHIPS
Mark Kosower, cello
Robert Ingliss, oboe
Jennifer Montone, horn
Gregory Zuber, percussion
Stefan Dohr, horn
Escher String Quartet
Julia Harguindey, bassoon
Soyeon Kate Lee, piano
Daniel Phillips, violin
Yura Lee, violin and viola
Paul Watkins, cello
These Named Funds of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Endowment were established by friends of the Festival to provide support in perpetuity for performances, artists, and programs.
Louisa Stude Sarofim Artistic Director Chair
Marc Neikrug, Artistic Director
Diane B. Jergins Concert Performance Fund Sunday Series
Jacqueline Hoefer Guest Artist Fund
Helen and Bertram Gabriel, Jr., Flute Fund
Chatter Ensemble
Tara Helen O’Connor, flute
Charles M. and Shirley Weiss Chad Hoopes, violin Distinguished Young Artists Fund
Lanham Deal Memorial Performance Fund
Peter Hoefer Memorial Performance Fund
Dode Kenney Memorial Performance Fund
Naumburg Memorial Performance Fund
Deborah L. Berkman Education Fund
William Randolph Hearst Education Fund
John Hart and Carol Prins Outreach Fund
Festival performances
Festival performances
Festival performances
Festival performances
Education and Engagement programs
Education and Engagement programs
Education and Engagement programs
Ann C. and James E. McGarry Essay Fund Program book articles
Mike and Marty Everett Distinguished Violist Fund
Rebecca and Nat Sloane Distinguished Violinist Fund
Coneway Family Foundation Education Fund
Steven Tenenbom, viola
Joel Link, violin
Teacher training for Music in Our Schools
To learn how you can sponsor an artist, performance, or program annually or in perpetuity, contact the Festival’s Director of Development, Joseph Hohlfeld, at 505-983-2075, ext. 108, or jhohlfeld@sfcmf.org.
Discover the best kept secret in the Northern New Mexico chamber music scene. Music from Angel Fire is the premier summer music festival of the Rockies with world-class musicians, settings and programming.
Tara Helen O’Connor
Kathleen Mcintosh
Sunday & Monday, 6 p.m.
JULY 13 & 14
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
LIV REDPATH, Soprano
GEORGE FU, Piano
GILLES VONSATTEL, Piano
LEILA JOSEFOWICZ, Violin
YURA LEE, Violin
PAUL WATKINS, Cello
TODD LEVY, Clarinet*
FRANZ SCHUBERT
Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock) for (1797–1828)
GEORGE ENESCU
Soprano, Clarinet, and Piano, D. 965 (1828)
Liv Redpath, Todd Levy, George Fu
Sonata in A Minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 25, Dans le (1881–1955)
caractère populaire roumain (1926)
Moderato malinconico
Andante sostenuto e misterioso
Allegro con brio ma non troppo mosso
Yura Lee, Gilles Vonsattel
INTERMISSION
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
Piano Trio in E Minor, Op. 67 (1944) (1906–75)
Andante—Moderato—Poco più mosso
Allegro con brio
Largo—
Allegretto—Adagio
Gilles Vonsattel, Leila Josefowicz, Paul Watkins
*Santa Fe Opera artist
Hamburg Steinway D concert grand pianos are supplied by Pro Piano for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival pianos are moved by A&A Piano Moving.
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Sunday & Monday, 6 p.m.
JULY 13 & 14
FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828)
Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock) for Soprano, Clarinet, and Piano, D. 965 (1828)
Anna Milder-Hauptmann (1785–1838) was one of the finest sopranos of the first part of the 19th century. Haydn described her as having a voice “like a house,” and Beethoven wrote the part of Leonore in his opera Fidelio specifically for her. Milder-Hauptmann sang not only the premiere of Fidelio in 1805 but also the premiere of the final version in 1814. Later she made her career in Berlin, where, in 1829, she was one of the soloists in Mendelssohn’s revival of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion
Schubert was drawn to this remarkable singer when he was only 16 years old, after he’d heard her in Gluck’s opera Iphigénia en Tauride in Vienna. To her credit, MilderHauptmann recognized the young composer’s talent, and after she moved to Berlin, she performed several of his songs in her recitals and sent newspaper clippings of favorable reviews back to Schubert in Vienna. MilderHauptmann wanted Schubert to write specifically for her, but she knew audiences weren’t yet sophisticated enough to respond to his lieder. She lamented to Schubert that audiences only wanted “treats for the ear” and then suggested that he write such a work for her but give it a virtuoso ending.
Schubert did indeed write such a work—called Der Hirt auf dem Felsen —in October 1828, but he had no idea when he wrote it that he’d be dead within weeks (at the age of just 31) and that it would be his final song. Throughout 1828, Schubert’s health had been variable, but he still turned out a succession of masterpieces: the Fantasia in F Minor for piano four-hands, the three final piano sonatas, the Cello Quintet, and his Schwanengesang (Swan Song) collection. All of these works are overpowering in their own way, and some are so somber and moving that critics have inevitably heard in them premonitions of death, but Der Hirt auf dem Felsen —with its relaxed tone and music so buoyant that one comes away from the song happy and exhilarated— confounded them a bit. To be sure, there’s darkness in the song, but Schubert merely touches upon it before gliding away, transcending the darkness to conclude his final song in a great shower of sunshine.
Schubert took Milder-Hauptmann’s suggestions seriously, and as part of the effort to make this song feel like a treat, he included a prominent role for a solo clarinet, which in effect became another soloist. The clarinet part is particularly pleasing, as Schubert writes deftly for the instrument and gives it the brilliant final word. The text, which Schubert apparently assembled himself, is a composite. The opening verses and the concluding verse are from different poems by Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827), whose text Schubert used for his song cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. The central verse in Der Hirt auf dem Felsen is by Wilhelmina von Chézy (1783–1856), who’d written the play Rosamunde (which today is remembered for Schubert’s incidental music) and who later wrote the libretto for Weber’s opera Euryanthe.
The piano’s somber introduction is utterly disarmed by the entrance of the clarinet, which has music of warm charm. The text sets up an almost stock situation: A shepherd sings in a mountain meadow, and his song, full of love and longing, echoes back from the Alpine valleys far below. The clarinet part complements the text, sometimes echoing the singer, sometimes almost yodeling. The shepherd in the text is clearly a male, but Schubert conceived this song for a soprano, and her part is a difficult one that demands a flowing vocal line, wide skips, and, at one point, an exposed high B.
In the song’s dark central section, which moves into G minor, the shepherd laments the loss of his love and sings of his loneliness. A cadenza-like flourish from the clarinet draws us back into B-flat major and into the quicker tempo that will drive the song to its close: Spring has returned for the shepherd, and with it comes fresh hope. Schubert leaves it to the clarinet to bring this “treat” (and his last song) to its sparkling close.
GEORGE ENESCU (1881–1955)
Sonata in A Minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 25, Dans le caractère populaire roumain (1926)
Perhaps the greatest musician to come from Romania, George Enescu was also one of the finest violinists of the 20th century. He trained in Vienna and Paris and enjoyed an international career that saw him perform and conduct
around the world. He lived in Paris and Bucharest and spent a significant amount of time in his native country, where he did much for Romanian music. As a composer, Enescu is remembered primarily for his Romanian Rhapsody No. 1, and its tremendous popularity has, unfortunately, obscured his other achievements, which include the impressive opera Oedipe, five symphonies, and a large amount of chamber music. (Festival musicians perform his Octet on August 10.)
Enescu composed his Sonata in A Minor for Violin and Piano in 1926 and dedicated it to the memory of Franz Kneisel, the longtime concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra who’d died earlier that year at age 61. The key to this striking music can be found in its subtitle: Dans le caractère populaire roumain (“In the popular Romanian character”). Enescu aims here to wed Romanian folk music with the Classical violin sonata, and the result is both a virtuoso violin work and a very exotic piece of music.
Though the sonata contains no specific folk tunes, Enescu—like Bartók in his Violin Rhapsodies, which were composed at almost the exact same time—assimilates a folk idiom so completely that it becomes the raw material for his own music. Listeners will notice characteristic Romanian melodic patterns as well as Enescu’s attempt to mirror the sound of native instruments like the cimbalom and lăută. He notates the score with unusual precision, specifying notes that are to be played slightly sharp or flat, how the piano is to be pedaled, and so on.
This sonata has become one of Enescu’s most popular works, with the likes of Yehudi Menuhin, Isaac Stern, and many others having recorded it. It’s in the standard three movements, but it’s quite free in structure and expression. The opening Moderato malinconico does indeed have a melancholy air. Its first theme-group consists of a series of brief thematic ideas, all of which ride along a very supple rhythmic pulse and all of which will be combined and developed across the span of the movement. The dancing second group quickly turns passionate and soaring, and a brief development leads to a modified return of earlier material and to a quiet close.
The Andante sostenuto opens with the strange sound of a one-note piano ostinato (a high B) sounding obsessively; over this constant pulse, the violin sings the first idea entirely in harmonics. That opening ostinato sets a pattern that will characterize this movement, which is full of recurrent pedal sounds. Some of those sounds are like Romani bagpipes, and some mimic the jangling sound of the cimbalom. This movement is quite varied, with moments of calm giving way to more ebullient episodes.
The finale, marked Allegro con brio, dances to life on the piano’s sharp-edged chords, and soon the violin leads the way through a series of varied sections. This movement is particularly sonorous: There are extended passages that are played in pizzicato chords as well as tumultuous waves of piano sound and striking tremolo and harmonic effects from the violin. The sonata ultimately drives to a dramatic—and resounding—conclusion that’s marked triple forte
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906–75)
Piano Trio in E Minor, Op. 67 (1944)
The Nazis’ invasion of Russia in 1941, during World War II, was one of the greatest catastrophes to ever befall a nation. Within four years, 20 million Russians had died, and the country had sustained damage and suffering that no amount of time could fully repair.
Shostakovich, who was born in St. Petersburg in 1906 and was in his mid-30s at the time of the invasion, produced two very different kinds of music in response to the war. He composed patriotic and optimistic works— such as his Leningrad Symphony and various marches and songs—which passed muster with Stalin’s regime, and he wrote less optimistic, even anguished works, such as his Symphony No. 8 of 1943 and Piano Trio in E Minor of 1944 (which is the one heard on this evening’s program). These latter works weren’t the kind that the Soviet government, which was committed to the artistic doctrine of Socialist Realism, wanted to hear, and so performances of the Piano Trio in E Minor were banned for a time, and the Symphony No. 8 was singled out for censure at the infamous meeting of the Union of Soviet Composers in 1948.
Two particular events in the winter of 1944 appear to have inspired Shostakovich while he was writing his Piano Trio in E Minor. The first came in February, when the composer’s closest friend, the scholar and critic Ivan Sollertinsky, died. (The work is dedicated to his memory.) The second was the discovery, as the Nazi armies retreated, of atrocities committed against Russian Jews. Shostakovich completed this trio in the spring of 1944 and played the piano part at its premiere in Leningrad on November 14, 1944.
The very beginning of the opening, sonata-form Andante movement is an eerie melody for muted cello that’s played entirely in harmonics and sets the spare and somber mood of the entire work. The other voices enter in
canon, and the main theme appears as a variation of the opening cello melody.
Next, the Allegro con brio movement, which opens with fanfare-like figures for the strings, is one of those hard-driving, almost mechanistic Shostakovich scherzos, although its dancing middle section in G major brings scant relief.
The stunning Largo movement is written as a passacaglia. The piano plays eight solemn chords that form the bass line, and five repetitions follow as the strings sing poised, grieving lines above the chords.
The concluding Allegretto movement, which follows the Largo without a pause, is said to have been inspired by accounts that the Nazis forced Jews to dance on their graves before they were executed. Shostakovich doesn’t try to depict this act, specifically, in his music, but the sinister dance for pizzicato violin that opens the movement suggests a vision of horror all its own, and the composer makes the connection clear with the movement’s second theme, which is played by the piano above pizzicato chords and is of unmistakably Jewish origin. At the close of the work, we hear music from earlier movements—the cello melody from the very beginning and the entire passacaglia theme—before the trio vanishes on quiet pizzicato strokes.
It’s not surprising that the Soviet government banned performances of this work. The Piano Trio in E Minor is unsettling music—more apt to leave audiences stunned rather than cheering—and it’s a measure of Shostakovich’s skill as an artist that he could transform his own anguish into music of such power and unusual beauty. ◗
JULY 14
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
BAM!! is generously sponsored by an anonymous donor and by John Hart and Carol Prins
Presentation Synopsis
“How Music Captivates: The Science”
Elizabeth Margulis, PhD Professor of Music, Director of Graduate Studies in Musicology, and Director of the Music Cognition Lab, Princeton University
In her presentation "How Music Captivates: The Science," Elizabeth Margulis, PhD, discusses the cognitive science of musical transportation and immersion—the way music can captivate you so that nothing seems more important than the next note, or the way it makes you feel like you’re reliving a long-lost personal memory. Margulis’s research explores repetition and the strikingly patterned ways music can shape and guide spontaneous thought. Her use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has allowed her to compare imaged stories evoked by music with imagined stories evoked by speech, and her work on repetition has also touched on what we can learn about musical immersion from earworms and the speech-tosong illusion.
About Elizabeth Margulis
Elizabeth Margulis is a professor of music and the director of graduate studies in musicology at Princeton University, with affiliations in psychology and neuroscience. She studies the perception and cognition of music.
Margulis directs Princeton’s Music Cognition Lab, which brings together students and researchers to ask questions that lie at the intersection of the humanities and the sciences. The lab uses experimental data as a provocative, illuminating way into some of the most
complex, subjective, and culturally situated aspects of music, which in turn reveals neglected, broader aspects of human cognition and behavior.
Margulis has published more than 75 articles in outlets ranging from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to Psychological Review. Her book On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind won the Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory and the Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). Her book The Psychology of Music: A Very Short Introduction, which has been translated into six languages, provides an accessible entry into the field. A book she co-edited, The Science-Music Borderlands: Reckoning with the Past and Imagining the Future, won the 2024 Ruth A. Solie Award from the American Musicological Society.
Margulis’s work has been featured in outlets such as NPR’s All Things Considered and the BBC, and she’s given public lectures at venues ranging from South by Southwest to the World Science Festival. She’s also been trained as a pianist. ◗
For more information on this topic and about Elizabeth Margulis’s work, visit elizabethmargulis.com.
The Festival is grateful to Michael Hindus and Lynne Withey and David Muck and Cole Martelli, whose generosity has made the filming of this afternoon's presentation possible.
Generously sponsored by the Lorlee and Arnold Tenenbaum Memorial Fund
1 p.m., Post-Concert Talk: Composer Sean Shepherd Tuesday, 12 p.m.
JULY 15
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
RAN DANK, Piano
LEILA JOSEFOWICZ, Violin
PAUL WATKINS, Cello
SEAN SHEPHERD
Latticework for Violin and Cello (2024; Festival (b. 1979) Co-Commission; New Mexico Premiere)◊
Part I: Ornament I—Long Strands—Flicker I—Dervish— Ornament II
Part II: Flicker II—Mime—Ornament III—The Silk Spinner— Flicker III
Leila Josefowicz, Paul Watkins
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 36 (1913 and 1931)* (1873–1943)
Allegro agitato
Non allegro. Lento— Allegro molto
Ran Dank
MAURICE RAVEL
Sonata for Violin and Cello, M. 73 (1920–22) (1875–1937)
Allegro
Scherzo: Très vif
Lent
Vif, avec entrain
Leila Josefowicz, Paul Watkins
◊Sean Shepherd’s Latticework was co-commissioned by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival.
*Ran Dank is performing his own arrangement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Sonata No. 2, which is a combination of music from the composer's original 1913 version and revised 1931 version.
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Tuesday, 12 p.m.
JULY 15
SEAN SHEPHERD (b. 1979)
Latticework for Violin and Cello (2024; Festival CoCommission; New Mexico Premiere)
Sean Shepherd’s Latticework for Violin and Cello was cocommissioned by the Festival and The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and it’s receiving its New Mexico premiere at this afternoon’s concert. For more information about Shepherd and his work, please see “2025 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Commissioned Works,” which begins on p. 22, and please join us for a post-concert talk with the composer immediately following today’s concert. Sean Shepherd has provided the following program note for Latticework.—The Editors
The assignment, as it was presented on the phone now a while back, was tough: Create a major work lasting some 20 minutes for (the classic treble/bass string duo, for which, interestingly to me, there are relatively few works, and yet still, it’s only) two players. Among the few works for this combination, however, are the masterworks of Ravel and Kodály, who both do incredible things with very large orchestras while giving a very distinctly honest (in my opinion) essence of themselves writ small, clear, and direct.
I also thought of composers like Berg, Bartók, and Dutilleux, for whom the size of an ensemble didn’t have an impact on the scope—be it structural, spiritual, or psychological—of the pieces they composed; in fact, one could argue the opposite was the case in pieces like the Lyric Suite, the Six String Quartets, or Ainsi la nuit, respectively. I thought of the overlapping range of the two instruments I’d be writing for—the violin’s lowest string sounds a pitch below the cello’s highest—and I began working with ideas of interweaving as abstractly as possible. Eventually, images of twisting shapes, veins on tree leaves, spiders creating intricate webs, and any number of ideas in textiles— threads, stiches, machines like looms—permeated the early footprint of the piece. The way the players (for me an equal-privilege, equal-responsibility pair throughout) interact with each other rests on these mental images.
The result is, frankly, a little burdensome to describe! I tend to think that road maps have their place, but it’s not in the car while, say, the Grand Tetons are the view out of the
passenger window. I think the view is the point in music (and in Wyoming), but all the same: One could say that this piece has two sections and be correct. One could say six, and one could say ten. While four of the named movements might be self-contained, they aren’t really there to stand on their own—they play a role in the structure of each part. And two kinds of music that I’ve named Ornament and Flicker do lots of returning and bookending as the piece progresses. The music of Ornament, presented in differing textural settings upon each return, is essentially static; Flicker is dynamic and follows a fluid, musically developmental path. Each of the ways these many musical objects work together plays out differently and at different rates over time—each gear and rotor in the engine is spinning at an independent speed, but we plan our best to arrive together.
Latticework is dedicated to Leila and Paul, for whom craft and passion (in performance and in their beings) are as deeply intertwined as they are in any two artists to ever pick up their instruments.—Sean Shepherd
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873–1943)
Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 36 (1913 and 1931)
Though he was famed for his performances of other composers’ piano music, Rachmaninoff made a point early in the 20th century of giving recitals that featured only his own works. In 1913, when he was 40, he felt that he needed new repertoire, so he decided to compose a new piano sonata. That summer, he took his family to Rome, and, while working in a room that Tchaikovsky had once occupied, he sketched two works: a choral symphony based on Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Bells and his Piano Sonata No. 2. Late that summer, he returned to his family estate at Ivanovka, near Moscow, and completed both works.
Rachmaninoff’s setting of The Bells was met with success (it was Rachmaninoff’s favorite among his own compositions), but his Second Piano Sonata, which he premiered in Moscow on December 3, 1913, received a cooler reception. Audiences and critics alike found it difficult—reserved, detached, intellectual—and Rachmaninoff came to agree with them. After performing it for several seasons, he withdrew it from the stage. Rachmaninoff remained interested in the work, however, and in 1931 he decided
to revise it, believing that he’d located the source of the problem. “I look at my early works and see how much there is that is superfluous,” he said. “Even in this sonata, so many voices are moving simultaneously, and it is too long.”
Rachmaninoff cut the original version severely, removing passages he believed to be “superfluous” and clarifying textures. That mostly involved shortening and focusing the development sections, and the revised version wound up being about six minutes shorter than the original. Nevertheless, Rachmaninoff had little success with the revised version—although another Russian pianist had great luck with it. Vladimir Horowitz, acting with the composer’s approval, created his own version of the sonata by reincorporating some of the passages Rachmaninoff had excised from the original. Horowitz made performances of the Second Piano Sonata—which is an extraordinarily difficult piece to play—a real occasion, and he recorded the work as well.
For this afternoon’s recital, Ran Dank is performing his own arrangement of the Second Piano Sonata, which is a combination of music from Rachmaninoff’s original 1913 version and revised 1931 version. Here, the second and third movements are played without pause, and all three movements depend on musically related ideas. The sonata-form first movement, Allegro agitato, opens with a great downward flourish that leads immediately to the main theme; the more lyric second subject, marked meno mosso (“less rapidly”), arrives in a dotted 12/8 meter. The main theme reappears in both the wonderful, dark slow movement (Non allegro) and the dynamic finale ( Allegro molto). Throughout, this music demands a pianist of transcendent skill—one who’s able to cope easily with complex technical challenges while also generating the vast volume of sound this sonata demands.
Many have noted that this music seems full of the plangent sonority of ringing bells, and this is only natural, given Rachmaninoff’s fondness for the sound of bells in general and the fact that he was working on the Poe setting at the same time that he wrote this sonata.
MAURICE RAVEL (1875–1937)
Sonata for Violin and Cello, M. 73 (1920–22)
The composition of the Sonata for Violin and Cello was difficult for Ravel, and he struggled with this brief piece for some time before completing it in early 1922. Even after finishing it, he was unsure about what he’d written, saying, “It doesn’t seem much, this machine for two instruments:
it’s the result of nearly a year and a half’s slogging.”
This was a bleak period emotionally for the composer. He’d just gone through the torment of the First World War (in which he’d served as an ambulance driver), and he suffered the death of his mother in 1917. This spare work is dedicated to the memory of Debussy, who died in 1918.
Writing for two linear instruments without the harmonic foundation and richness of piano accompaniment brings special problems. Ravel himself noted his solution: “Economy of means is here carried to its extreme limits; there are no harmonies to please the ear, but a pronounced reaction in favor of melody.” Listeners accustomed to the rich harmonies of Ravel’s music for orchestra and for piano will find this sonata lean, at times austere, and more striking for its brilliance than its emotional content.
The sonata is in four movements. The Allegro requires the two instruments to play in different keys, and the resulting clash, often on the interval of major and minor thirds, provides much of the movement’s harmonic pungency. The cello’s opening theme is first taken up by the violin and then developed with much energy by both instruments.
The brilliant Très vif, the sonata’s scherzo, is notable for its instrumental effects, particularly the pizzicato ostinato played at times by both instruments. It’s been said, incorrectly, that this movement lacks melodic content; the first distinct theme is played by the pizzicato violin. But it’s true that this movement is made distinctive more by its sounds—the snapping pizzicatos, buzzing trills, and eerie harmonics—than by its melodies.
The Lent is the sonata’s most melodic movement. The cello’s expressive opening theme is soon taken up by the violin, and their extended duet sings gracefully. An agitated middle section leads to a return of the opening material, now muted.
The finale—Vif, avec entrain (“Lively, with spirit”)— is a sort of rondo based on the cello’s spiccato opening theme, which the violin takes in turn. (While attending rehearsals before this sonata’s premiere, Ravel insisted that the cellist bounce his bow “like a mechanical rabbit” in this opening passage.) Several brief episodes interrupt the rondo theme before this brilliant, energetic movement comes to its close on an emphatic pizzicato chord.
Ravel may have been uncertain about this music, but the audience at its premiere in Paris on April 6, 1922, wasn’t. They demanded that the performers repeat the finale. ◗
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
LIV REDPATH, Soprano
GEORGE FU, Piano
HUGO WOLF (1860–1903)
The Santa Fe Opera is a proud promotional partner of the Piano-Vocal Series
“An eine Äolsharfe” from Mörike-Lieder (1888)
FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828) “Ganymed,” D. 544 (1817)
Three Lieder of Ophelia, Op. 67 (1918) Wie erkenn’ ich mein Treulieb Guten Morgen, ’s ist Sankt Valentinstag Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloss
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
“La fille aux cheveux de lin” (1881) (1862–1918)
“Jane” (1881)
“Regret” (1884)
“Clair de lune” (1882)
“La romance d’Ariel” (1884)
“Ballad: Silence ineffable” (1883)
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Wednesday, 12 p.m.
JULY 16
HUGO WOLF (1860–1903)
“An eine Äolsharfe” (“To an Aeolian Harp”) from Mörike-Lieder (1888)
Although he’s not very well known to English-speaking audiences today, the German poet Eduard Mörike (1804–75) was considered second only to Goethe (1749–1832) in 19th-century Germany. Trained in theology, Mörike was a rural Protestant pastor who taught literature at a girls’ school. Beneath this quiet surface, however, he was tormented by religious doubts, dissatisfied with his role as a clergyman, and unhappy in his marriage. Mörike’s best poetry rests on the tension between these poles, combining Classical rigor with an underlying melancholy.
Wolf had known Mörike’s poetry as a young man, but it wasn’t until the spring of 1888, when he was 28, that Mörike’s poems suddenly inflamed his imagination and drove him to set more than 50 of them. On March 23, Wolf wrote to a friend: “I’m working at 1,000 horsepower from early morning until late at night, without respite. What I am now putting on to paper, dear friend, is also being written for posterity. They are masterpieces.”
Wolf set Mörike’s “An eine Äolsharfe” on April 15, 1888. The title of this beautifully stark song refers to an instrument (the Aeolian harp) whose strings, which are stretched over a wooden soundbox, are vibrated by the wind and, in turn, create a “natural” kind of music.
In Mörike’s poem, the speaker stands in a garden as winds from far away produce a “melodious lament.” The winds are seemingly coming from the gravesite of a boy, who is meant to represent Mörike’s deceased 17-yearold brother. The speaker is both lulled and agitated by the wind-music, but then a sudden gust stirs the searing commotion that lies deep within the speaker’s soul, which is reflected in the scattered rose petals that the wind has strewn at the speaker’s feet.
Wolf’s piano accompaniment, with its rolled chords and arpeggios, echoes the sound of the harp, while the singer’s part—often dramatic and set high in the singer’s range— becomes even more intense as the gust of wind stirs the harp. The song concludes with a long piano postlude that’s marked both triple piano and dolcissimo (“as sweet as possible”) and that represents the gradual disappearance of the harp’s music as the winds finally cease.
FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828)
“Ganymed” (“Ganymede”), D. 544 (1817)
The Schubert family was musical but poor. Schubert’s father was a schoolmaster, and he assumed that his sons would assist him in the classroom to help support the family, but Schubert tried to escape the constrictions of his household. In the fall of 1816, it seemed that he’d succeeded, as the mother of one of his wealthy friends offered him rooms, and Schubert moved away from his family and tried to support himself as a composer. That experiment lasted only a year, however, and in the summer of 1817, when he was 20, Schubert was forced to move back and resume his duties correcting classroom exercises and keeping classroom discipline.
It was during that interlude of freedom—in March 1817—that Schubert wrote “Ganymed,” which is based on a poem of the same name by Goethe. The poem tells the story of a beautiful youth, Ganymede, who’s taken up to heaven on the back of an eagle to become a cupbearer for the gods. Schubert’s song is through-composed, meaning that rather than being strophic, it evolves constantly to follow the action of the poem.
Beginning quietly with the fresh sounds of morning, the song grows more animated and dramatic as it proceeds, changing keys and pressing forward as the youth is taken into heaven. The song reaches an ecstatic climax as Ganymed achieves union with the “all-loving Father,” and after all this upward motion, the peaceful piano postlude brings the journey to a perfect conclusion.
RICHARD STRAUSS (1864–1949)
“Malven” (“Mallows”) (1948)
In the stunned aftermath of World War II, Strauss and his wife, the soprano Pauline de Ahna, retreated to Switzerland, where the composer, who’d held a minor musical post under the Third Reich, waited to be cleared by the de-Nazification courts.
During the summer and fall of 1948, when Strauss was 84, he composed his Four Last Songs. Written in his lateRomantic idiom of many years earlier, these songs are about life, love, and death, and they’ve always seemed to be the perfect farewell music (in addition to being some
of the most beautiful music ever written). Strauss never heard these songs performed, however, and he never decided on an order for the set. He also had no idea that they’d be called his Four Last Songs.
The problem with the title Four Last Songs, perfect as it may seem, is that it isn’t exactly accurate. On November 23, 1948, Strauss composed a brief song based on a poem by the Swiss poet and novelist Betty Knobel (1904–98). The poem and song are titled “Malven,” which has been translated as “mallows” or “hollyhocks.” Strauss wrote the song for the soprano Maria Jeritza (1887–1982), who’d sung the roles of Octavian, Ariadne, and Helen in Strauss’s operas many years earlier. Jeritza was now living in New Jersey, and Strauss had sent her the manuscript with the inscription “Der geliebte Maria dieser letzte Rose!” (“To the beloved Maria this last rose!”)
This “last rose” would in fact be Strauss’s final composition, and when he sent Jeritza the manuscript, he asked her to photograph it (he hadn’t made any copies) and send him the photos. Jeritza never did that, and Strauss never heard the song performed, as he died 10 months later, in September 1949. The manuscript for “Malven” was one of Jeritza’s treasured possessions, and it remained private until after her death. The first performance was given by soprano Kiri Te Kanawa and pianist Martin Katz in New York in January 1985, 37 years after the work had been composed.
The subject of “Malven” is transience: Pale, unscented flowers turn their faces toward the sun and are then blown away by the wind. A brief piano prelude marked Allegretto leads to the soaring entrance of the singer, and while the song may nominally be in E-flat major, Strauss subjects that key to considerable tension along the way before the song, like the flowers, gently fades away.
It comes as no surprise that Grieg was a prolific composer of songs (he wrote about 140 of them): His gift as a composer was lyric, he married a superb singer, and he was a fine pianist who frequently accompanied his wife. It’s also no surprise that so nationalistic a composer should turn primarily to Scandinavian writers for his texts: Among his songs are numerous settings of such writers as Henrik Ibsen, Hans Christian Andersen, Aasmund Vinje,
and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. The six songs of his Opus 48 represent a break from this pattern, however, as they’re all settings of German poets, and anyone coming to this set without knowing its composer might well guess it’s the work of a German one. (Grieg’s good friend Brahms, in fact, set texts by four of the poets in this group.) Grieg wrote the first two of these songs in 1884 and returned to complete the final four in 1888.
The set’s fourth song, the beautiful and sparkling “Die verschwiegene Nachtigall,” based on a text after the 13th-century minnesinger Walther von der Vogelweide, is a portrait of secret love witnessed only by a nightingale during the lovers’ secret meetings. The nightingale’s haunting refrain (“Tandaradei”) echoes through the song and finally seals it off beautifully.
FRANZ
SCHUBERT (1797–1828)
“Suleika I,” D. 720 (1821)
Suleika was the heroine and love interest in Goethe’s Westöstlicher Divan, a collection of love poems inspired by the 14th-century Persian poet Hafiz and published in 1821.
Late in his long life, Goethe had fallen in love with the actress, dancer, and poet Marianne von Willemer. She became the model for Suleika, and many years later she confessed that she had actually written the poems attributed to Suleika in Goethe’s volume.
When Schubert wrote “Suleika I” in March of 1821, Goethe’s volume had just been published. In this song, the speaker takes comfort in imagining the benevolent power of the east wind to bring greetings and kisses to her from her beloved, who is absent, and Schubert creates a rustling sound in the piano part that echoes the sound of the wind while the vocal line floats above it. Brahms is reported to have called this “the loveliest song that has ever been written.”
EDVARD GRIEG (1843–1907)
“Ein Traum” (“A Dream”), Op. 48, No. 6 (1884–88)
The last of the songs in Grieg’s Opus 48—“Ein Traum”— has become one of the composer’s most popular. The technique of this song, which takes its text from a poem by the German author Friedrich Martin von Bodenstedt (1819–92), is somewhat reminiscent of the one Strauss used for “Zueignung” (“Dedication”), composed only four years earlier: Both are love songs, both begin simply
but grow more intense as they proceed, and both finally swell to an ecstatic declaration of love at their conclusion.
RICHARD STRAUSS (1864–1949)
Three Lieder of Ophelia, Op. 67 (1918)
In the first years of the 20th century, Strauss got into a series of disputes with music publishers over composers’ rights to their own music once it was published. These disputes reached a level of acrimony (and legal action) that caused Strauss to cut ties with his publisher Bote & Bock, but it soon became apparent that Strauss couldn’t get free of his contract without supplying one more set of songs. At the time, Strauss was working on a set that was based on texts by the German poet Clemens Brentano (1778–1842). He really liked those songs (which include such favorites as “Ich wollt ein Sträusslein binden” and “Säusle, liebe Myrthe!”) and didn’t want to give them to Bote & Bock, so early in 1918 he dashed off a set of six new songs, and Bote & Bock published them as his Six Songs, Op. 67.
Strauss’s biographer Norman Del Mar described the Opus 67 collection as “three mad songs and three bad-tempered songs.” The “bad-tempered songs” (the final three in the collection) are based on text by Goethe, and the “three mad songs” are based on text by Shakespeare—specifically from act 4 of Hamlet. All three songs are sung by Ophelia as she descends into madness following the murder of her father, Polonius. (Audience members who speak German and who know Hamlet well might notice that the Karl Simrock translation Strauss used for these songs isn’t always precise.)
Ophelia’s first song, “Wie erkenn’ ich mein Treulieb (“How Shall I Know My True Love”) is sung to Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, who’s responded to reports that Ophelia, Hamlet’s love interest, is acting erratically. The second song, “Guten Morgen, ’s ist Sankt Valentinstag” (“Good Morning, It Is St. Valentine’s Day”) is sung to the guilt-ridden King Claudius, who, desperate to relieve his conscience after having murdered his brother, King Hamlet, and marrying his brother’s widow, Gertrude, wants to believe that the younger Hamlet’s murder of Polonius, a member of Claudius’s court, is the cause of Ophelia’s derangement. The final song, “Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloss” (“They Carried Him Naked on the Bier”), is sung just after Laertes, Ophelia’s brother, bursts into Elsinore Castle and accuses Claudius of murdering his father and Claudius, in turn, convinces Laertes that Hamlet killed him. Ophelia
sings this song while spiraling into deep grief and madness as a result of her father’s murder.
All three of these songs are by definition mad songs, but Shakespeare (and Strauss) find in them the means to capture the tragedy of the destruction of an innocent young woman.
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
(1862–1918)
“La fille aux cheveux de lin” (“The Girl with the Flaxen Hair”) (1881)
“Jane” (1881)
“Regret” (1884)
“Clair de lune” (“Moonlight”) (1882)
“La romance d’Ariel” (“The Ballad of Ariel”) (1884)
Debussy studied at the Paris Conservatory from 1872 to 1884, and it appears to have been a match made in hell. The convention-bound conservatory had little use for the rebellious young man, and that feeling was distinctly mutual.
During his later years at the conservatory, Debussy became friends with the wealthy and cultivated Parisbased Vasnier family and essentially moved in with them for a period of five years. He read and composed in peace at their elegant home, where his attention was soon drawn to the attractive Madame Marie-Blanche Vasnier, a talented amateur singer. Debussy fell in love with her and wrote several songs specifically with her high, clear voice in mind. While reading in the extensive Vasnier library, he discovered many of the poets who would be important to him throughout his career, including Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé. (The latter’s L’Après-midi d’un faune would, several years later, inspire Debussy’s first masterpiece.)
This afternoon's recital concludes with a collection of six of Debussy’s early songs, all written when the composer was between 19 and 22 years old, and all doubtless intended for Mme. Vasnier. These songs remained unpublished and unknown for many years; in fact, some weren’t published until nearly a century after they were written.
The first two songs set texts by the French poet Charles Leconte de Lisle (1818–94). “La fille aux cheveux de lin” brings a surprise: This isn’t the music from the famous piano prelude of the same name that Debussy would compose 30 years later. Rather, it’s a completely different composition all together—although, like the prelude, its title comes from Leconte de Lisle’s poem. The brilliant,
high writing here gives some sense of the agility of Mme. Vasnier’s voice.
“Jane” is a more poised song, though, like “La fille,” it’s set high in the soprano’s range. Here the speaker is enamored with Jane’s beautiful blue eyes, which seemingly have a power of their own and have broken the speaker’s heart and destroyed his strength and life.
“Regret” is another song of ardent—and lost—love. It sets a text by the French novelist, critic, and poet Paul Bourget (1852–1935).
The next song is another example of where we need to beware of a title: “Clair de lune” isn’t the music of the famous piano piece that Debussy would write eight years later but rather an entirely different composition. This song sets a poem by Paul Verlaine (1844–96) that was originally published in his Fêtes galantes and drew its inspiration from the paintings of Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). The text evokes the masks people wear to hide their sorrows and uncertainties.
“La romance d’Ariel” sets another poem by Paul Bourget, but this one is based on characters from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest and sees Ariel using his magical powers over Miranda in order to convince her to fall in love with Ferdinand.
“Ballad: Silence ineffable” is one of Debussy’s least-familiar songs: Composed in 1883, it wasn’t published until 1982. Bourget’s text is sentimental and conventionally “poetic” and represents a direction Debussy would soon leave behind. ◗
Generously sponsored by
RAN DANK, Piano
GILLES VONSATTEL, Piano
YURA LEE, Violin
MARK KOSOWER, Cello
PAUL WATKINS, Cello
ROBERT INGLISS, Oboe*
TODD LEVY, Clarinet*
JULIA HARGUINDEY, Bassoon*
JENNIFER MONTONE, Horn
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Quintet in E-flat Major for Piano and Winds, Op. 16 (1796) (1770–1827)
Grave—Allegro ma non troppo
Andante cantabile
Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo
Ran Dank, Robert Ingliss, Todd Levy, Julia Harguindey, Jennifer Montone
FRANZ SCHUBERT
Sonata in A Minor for Cello and Piano, D. 821, Arpeggione (1797–1828) (1824)
Allegro moderato
Adagio
Allegretto
Paul Watkins, Ran Dank
INTERMISSION
FELIX MENDELSSOHN
Piano Trio in C Minor, Op. 66 (1845) (1809–47)
Allegro energico e con fuoco
Andante espressivo
Scherzo: Molto allegro quasi presto
Finale: Allegro appassionato
Gilles Vonsattel, Yura Lee, Mark Kosower
*Santa Fe Opera artist
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Wednesday, 6 p.m.
JULY 16
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
Quintet in E-flat Major for Piano and Winds, Op. 16 (1796)
Beethoven wrote several chamber music works for winds early in his career. In Bonn—where, as a teenager, Beethoven had secured his first musical appointment— Archduke Maximilian Franz maintained a wind octet that played at court functions and sometimes during mealtime. Beethoven wrote several works for the Archduke’s ensemble, but he continued to write for winds after he’d moved to Vienna. It’s possible that Beethoven did so in order to learn about those instruments while he prepared to write a symphony, as after his First Symphony was premiered in 1800, he never wrote a chamber music work for winds again.
Beethoven’s Quintet in E-flat Major for Piano and Winds, composed in 1796, is clearly inspired by Mozart’s Quintet in E-flat Major for Piano and Winds, K. 452, composed only a dozen years earlier, in 1784 (and heard this season on the Festival's July 27 & 28 program). The works share the same instrumentation (oboe, clarinet, French horn, bassoon, and piano), the same key (E-flat major), and the same pattern of movements. Beethoven greatly admired Mozart’s wind music, so it’s not surprising that he used that earlier work as a model—although it was a little daring, as that quintet is one of Mozart’s greatest works.
Beethoven had a further motive for writing for this combination of instruments: He wanted to promote himself as a pianist in Vienna. Accordingly, while the writing for winds is accomplished here, Beethoven makes sure that the piano—and, presumably, himself as the pianist—remains center stage. The piano announces virtually all the themes and is seldom absent from the instrumental texture. Its presence is so great, in fact, that this quintet has been likened to a small piano concerto.
The work opens with a slow introduction marked Grave. Stately dotted rhythms lead to the Allegro ma non troppo, where the solo piano presents the Mozartian main theme of the sonata-form movement before it’s joined by the wind instruments. That pattern holds throughout this energetic movement: the piano announces the musical ideas and is answered by the winds.
The Andante cantabile is the real glory of the work. The piano opens with the graceful main subject and
then accompanies the winds as they take it up. Over the course of the movement, each of the wind instruments is given the opportunity to shine individually.
The piano introduces the main theme of the rondofinale, marked Allegro ma non troppo, and is soon joined by the winds, which answer with the gently swung second subject. This is the most concerto-like of the movements, with the piano blazing across the keyboard as the winds accompany it. The music remains goodspirited and energetic throughout, and, at the end— after some surprising modulations—the piano rushes the movement to its sudden close.
FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828)
Sonata in A Minor for Cello and Piano, D. 821, Arpeggione (1824)
In 1823, the Viennese instrument maker Johann Georg Stauffer invented a new instrument, which he called the “guitar-violoncello” or the “guitare d’amour.” About the size of a cello, it had six strings and frets and was tuned like a guitar. Unlike a guitar, however, it had a curved bridge and was played with a bow.
The instrument never caught on. Performers didn’t take it up, and few composers wrote for it, so it quickly lapsed into obscurity, where it would have remained had it not been for one particular piece of music.
A musician named Vincenz Schuster learned to play the new instrument, and he asked his friend Franz Schubert to write a piece for it. In November 1824, Schubert composed the three-movement Sonata in A Minor for Schuster and, in the process, contributed a new name for the instrument: Schubert referred to it as an arpeggione, and that name has stuck to the now nearly forgotten instrument.
While the arpeggione may have been relegated to the history books, Schubert’s music—thankfully—was not. A wide range of musicians have wanted to play this sonata on their own instrument, so it’s been transcribed for (and recorded on) such instruments as the cello, viola, violin, double bass, flute, clarinet, and guitar. On this evening’s program, the Arpeggione Sonata is heard in a transcription for cello.
The most striking thing about this music is how gentle it is. Though it’s full of Schubert’s characteristic fine shading, it remains serene throughout, as Schubert appears to have been impressed with an element of tonal restraint built into Stauffer’s instrument. The opening Allegro moderato is constructed on two ideas: a dark and lyric opening melody and a busy, good-natured second subject. The development of these ideas, though extended, stays within the restrained character of its time.
A brief Adagio in E major leads without pause into the rondo-finale, marked A llegretto, which swings along agreeably on its 3/8 meter. There are vigorous episodes along the way—as well as one episode full of wistful Viennese charm—but the amiable spirit that pervades this sonata is always present.
FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–47)
Piano Trio in C Minor, Op. 66 (1845)
Mendelssohn wrote his second and final piano trio in April 1845, just two and a half years before his death in November 1847 at the age of 38. Composition-wise, this trio comes between two of Mendelssohn’s best-known works—the Violin Concerto of 1844 and the oratorio Elijah of 1846—and it was completed only weeks after the premiere of the Violin Concerto on March 13, 1845. It’s dedicated to the German composer and violinist Ludwig Spohr, whom Mendelssohn had met when he was 13 and Spohr was 38.
This music is anchored firmly on its stormy outer movements, and their markings are important. Not content to simply name them Allegro, Mendelssohn makes his instructions more specific and dramatic: energico e con fuoco (“energetic and with fire”) and appassionato (“passionate”). These qualifications are key to the character of this music; at climactic points, it feels as if this trio is straining to transcend the realm of chamber music and take on the scope and sonority of symphonic music.
The piano immediately announces the dark, murmuring main theme of the first movement, which recurs continually throughout the movement, either rippling quietly in the background or thundering out fiercely. The violin and cello share the soaring second theme, and the development is dramatic.
By contrast, the Andante espressivo brings a world of calm. The piano sings the main theme, a gently rocking chordal melody in 9/8 time, and it’s soon joined by the
strings. The propulsive Scherzo: Molto allegro quasi presto rockets along in dark G minor, and a steady rustle of 16th notes flavors the entire movement. The trio section switches to bright G major before the return of the opening material and a sudden close on quick, quiet pizzicato strokes.
The Finale gets off to a spirited start with the cello’s lively theme, and unison strings share the broadly ranging second idea. One of the unusual features of this movement is Mendelssohn’s use of the old chorale tune known in English as “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow,” first heard quietly in the piano. As the movement nears its climax, the chorale grows in power until—with piano tremolando and multiple-stopped strings—it thunders out boldly. ◗
Thursday, 12 p.m.
JULY 17
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
Generously sponsored by the Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation in memory of Edgar Foster Daniels
GILLES VONSATTEL, Piano
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 7 (1796–97) (1770–1827)
Allegro molto e con brio
Largo con gran espressione
Allegro
Rondo: Poco allegretto e grazioso
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Sonata in E Minor, Op. 90 (1814)
Mit Lebhaftigkeit und durchhaus mit Empfindung und Ausdruck
Nicht zu geschwind und sehr singbar vorgetragen
Sonata in A Major, Op. 101 (1816)
Etwas lebhaft, und mit der innigsten Empfindung (Allegretto ma non troppo)
Lebhaft, marschmässig (Vivace alla marcia)
Langsam und sehnsuchtsvoll (Adagio, ma non troppo, con affetto)
Geschwind, doch nicht zu sehr und mit Entschlossenheit (Allegro)
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Thursday, 12 p.m.
JULY 17
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 7 (1796–97)
Sonata in E Minor, Op. 90 (1814)
Sonata in A Major, Op. 101 (1816)
Among Beethoven’s more than 30 piano sonatas, his Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 7, stands out for several reasons: It’s one of his earliest, it’s one of his longest, and it’s one of his least well-known.
Beethoven wrote this music in 1796–97, around the same time that he wrote his two Opus 5 cello sonatas and three Opus 10 piano sonatas. He’d been in Vienna for only a few years by then, and he was still working to master Classical form, which may be why this sonata shows several unusual features and presents performers with various technical challenges, like awkward hand-crossings, octave passages played legato (“smoothly”), and passages that included simultaneous legato and staccato playing.
The first movement is marked Allegro molto e con brio, which seems to suggest fast and dramatic music, but this sonata-form movement has virtually no conflict, and Beethoven builds it on two rather gentle ideas: a propulsive opening theme and a quiet chordal melody as the second subject.
Beethoven titled the second movement Largo, a tempo marking he rarely used, and then went on to specify con gran espressione (“with great expression”). There’s something consciously grand about this music— with its chordal melodies, sharp dynamic contrasts, and silences—and the movement ranges far afield harmonically before it concludes in quiet C major.
The third movement, titled Allegro, is neither a scherzo nor a minuet. Beethoven marks it dolce, and that gentle mood is sustained through the outer sections. The trio, however, leaps into the remote key of E-flat minor, and its deep, rumbling triplets sound particularly turbulent in contrast to the restrained outer sections.
The finale may be the most unusual movement of all. Beethoven titles it Rondo, but rather than make it a fast display piece, he sets it at an unexpectedly slow tempo: Poco allegretto e grazioso (“A little allegretto and graceful”). This music is gentle and restrained—at least on its first presentation, as mercurial moments come quickly, with great chords being hammered out over a racing 32nd-note
accompaniment. At the end, with their energy apparently exhausted, those 32nd-note runs help draw this music to its murmuring and quite subdued conclusion.
One of the problems with dividing Beethoven’s work into three periods, as is typically done, is that we inevitably assume those dividing lines are firm. And so, we often take Beethoven’s return to writing music at the age of 50— following a fallow period that lasted six years—to mean that his “late style” was a sudden development. The reality, however, was that many of the elements that define Beethoven’s late style—intimacy of expression, a deepened concern for lyricism, formal experimentation, and an interest in fugal writing—were already evident in the music he composed just before he entered that period of comparative silence. Works like the Violin Sonata in G Major of 1812 and the Elegiac Song of 1814 already show pronounced characteristics of Beethoven’s late style even though, chronologically, they come at the close of his “heroic” period.
The Sonata in E Minor, Op. 90, composed during the summer of 1814, is another such work that looks ahead to the directions Beethoven would explore more fully in his final years. The conflict-based sonata form of Beethoven’s heroic style is abandoned here and replaced with a wholly original approach to sonata structure. To begin with, the work has only two movements, and they’re in the unexpected order of a fast movement followed by a slow one. The harmonic progression is also unusual (moving from E minor to the tonic major, E major, in the second movement), and the focused and terse structure of the opening movement gives way to a relaxed and flowing concluding movement.
Also remarkable is Beethoven’s decision to set this sonata’s movement markings in German rather than the traditional Italian. The first movement is marked Mit Lebhaftigkeit und durchaus mit Empfindung und Ausdruck (“With liveliness and with feeling and expression throughout”), and it’s noteworthy for its rhythmic imagination: The opening phrase is full of rests and pauses and then moments where the music suddenly flashes forward; the singing second subject arrives in syncopated octaves in the right hand. Beethoven seems intent on building this movement not out of the collision of themes of different character but on the rhythmic
possibilities that are built into these quite different subjects; the movement vanishes on a quiet reprise of a bit of the opening theme.
The second movement, Nicht zu geschwind und sehr singbar vorzutragen (“Not too fast and presented very songfully”), is quite different. It’s a broad rondo based on the gorgeous opening idea—Beethoven’s lyric sense was growing richer even as he was sinking more deeply into deafness. There are animated episodes along the way, and some of them are extended at length. (This movement is significantly longer than the opening movement.) But the rondo theme always makes its welcome return, and Beethoven repeatedly reminds the pianist to play dolce (“sweetly”) and teneramente (“tenderly”); only rarely does the music rise to a forte, and when it does, it retreats quickly. The rondo theme returns for a final statement, and the sonata— inward even at its close—vanishes quietly and gracefully.
When Beethoven began work on his Sonata in A Major, Op. 101, in April 1816, he was 45 years old, and he’d just completed his song cycle An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved). He took the first sketches of the sonata with him to the resort town of Baden, where he spent the summer and where he did most of the actual composing. He returned to Vienna that fall and, after a spell of poor health, completed the sonata in November. This all happened during a period when—burdened by illness, the legal struggle to gain custody of his nephew, his decline into total deafness, and stylistic uncertainty—Beethoven’s creative energies faltered. New projects such as a piano trio in F minor and a piano concerto in D major were begun but abandoned, and much of Beethoven’s time was spent revising music he’d composed much earlier. Still, he did manage to complete a handful of new works during those lean years, including two cello sonatas in 1815, the Hammerklavier Sonata of 1818, and the Sonata in A Major, which Beethoven dedicated to Baroness Dorothea von Ertmann when it was published in February 1817.
A tall and regal presence, Ertmann was also a superb pianist, and one of the few of her era who could do justice to Beethoven’s music. She had been, for many years, a good friend to the composer, alert to the difficulties he was having and tolerant of his behavior. When her husband, General Stephen von Ertmann, was transferred to Saint Pölten, she went with him, and Beethoven felt her absence keenly; he sent her a copy of this sonata upon its publication with the message: “Receive now what was often intended for you and what may be to you a proof of my affection for your artistic aspirations as well as your person.”
Beethoven’s late style is generally seen as beginning with
his three final piano sonatas, which he began composing in 1820. But some of the elements of that style are apparent in the A-Major Piano Sonata. Gone are the clear Classical forms of Beethoven’s heroic style, and in their place are several surprises as Beethoven experiments with the forms instead. The sonata’s opening Allegretto ma non troppo may show some of the shape of sonata form, but lyricism is at the heart of this music: Beethoven specifies that it should be performed “with the deepest feeling” and takes care to mark it both espressivo e semplice (“expressive and simple”) and molto espressivo (“very expressive”). The main idea glides smoothly along its 6/8 meter, but much of the movement is set in syncopated rhythms that blur a clear sense of that meter. This movement is based not so much on the collision of contrasting material as it is on an expansion of the lyric opening idea. And while it rises to a resounding chordal climax, the movement falls away to a subdued close.
The second movement, Vivace alla marcia, is a march that proceeds briskly along its omnipresent dotted rhythms. Its central episode, written in canon, quickly makes its way back to the opening material, which Beethoven repeats in full.
The third movement is built on an expressive hymnlike melody that grows rhythmically more complex as the brief movement proceeds, and then comes a surprise: A cadenza-like flourish leads to a sudden return of material from the opening movement. Beethoven recalls that lyric, flowing atmosphere for only a phrase or two before a series of trills propels the music into the massive final movement, which Beethoven specifies should be played “with determination.”
The powerful beginning of the Allegro movement is hammered out by both hands in octaves, which makes the lighthearted secondary material (Beethoven marks it dolce) seem like an intentionally comic surprise. The surprises continue, however: Beethoven builds the development on a fugue whose subject is derived from this movement’s thunderous beginning. This fugue is worked out at length and with great energy before the recapitulation brings another unexpected turn: the coda is based on the innocent second subject, which murmurs along—happily and very quietly— until the final three measures leap up fortissimo to bring this very original sonata to its sudden close. ◗
Generously
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
RAN DANK, Piano
YURA LEE, Violin
MARK KOSOWER, Cello
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 (ca. 1720) (1685–1750)
Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Menuet I and Menuet II
Gigue
Mark Kosower
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Violin Sonata No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1005 (ca. 1720)
Adagio
Fuga
Largo
Allegro assai
Yura Lee
Keyboard Partita No. 4 in D Major, BWV 828 (1726–31)
Ouverture
Allemande
Courante
Aria
Sarabande
Menuet
Gigue
Ran Dank
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Saturday, 5 p.m.
JULY 19
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 (ca. 1720)
Violin Sonata No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1005 (ca. 1720)
Keyboard Partita No. 4 in D Major, BWV 828 (1726–31)
Bach’s Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello date from around 1720, when the composer was kapellmeister (music director) at the court in Anhalt-Cöthen, so it may well be that Bach wrote these works for a member of the Cöthen orchestra, Christian Ferdinand Abel, who was also one of the best cellists in Europe.
Abel and Bach became good friends (Bach was the godfather of one of Abel’s children), and almost certainly the two worked together as these suites were composed: Bach, who didn’t play the cello, would have asked Abel what was possible and what wasn’t, what worked and what didn’t, and so on. The result is cello music that’s very idiomatically written but also supremely difficult, and all by itself it may tell us how high the standard of music-making was in the Cöthen court when Bach was there.
Bach understood the word suite to mean a collection of dance movements in the basic sequence of allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue, which is the same sequence of movements found in his instrumental partitas. But Bach added an introductory prelude to all six Cello Suites, and he interpolated one extra dance movement into each suite just before the final gigue to make a total of six movements.
For more than a century, these suites remained the property of a handful of connoisseurs, as they weren’t published until 1828. Over the years, they’ve presented performers with a host of problems, as none of Bach’s original manuscripts survived. The published versions were copies made by Bach’s second wife and one of his students, and they lacked all performance indicators, including bowings and dynamics. In a postscript to his edition of these suites, the cellist János Starker (1924–2013) noted that one of the pleasures of going to heaven would be that he could discuss with Bach himself exactly how he wanted this music played. In the absence of such insight, individual performers must make their own artistic decisions, and these suites can sound quite different in the hands of different cellists.
The noble Prelude of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major rides along a steady pulse of 16th notes, and it’s the responsibility of the performer to bring musical life— tempo manipulation, contrasts between dynamics, a gradual build toward a great climax—into these otherwise bare sequences of steady notes. Bach makes full use of the resonant sound of the cello’s open G string, which underlies so much of this movement, and, in a nice touch, the movement’s concluding line is effectively an inversion of its opening one.
The Allemande moves along a similar sequence of steady 16ths, although the tempo feels slower and more dignified. In this and the other binary movements, the performer has the option to take or ignore the repeat of the second section.
Next, the Courante (which means “running” in French) sails along somewhat harder-edged rhythms, while the Sarabande dances with a grave dignity. Bach makes an effective contrast here between the resonance of great chords and the steady flow of the melodic line.
In this suite, the interpolated movement is the Menuet I and Menuet II. Although we tend to think of a minuet as a stately court dance, the sprightly rhythms heard here remind us that the form traces its origins to a quick French folk dance. The second minuet is the only section of this suite that isn’t in G major. Bach moves to D minor instead, but even this section continually edges back toward the home tonality.
The concluding Gigue movement is an athletic and quite brief dance in 6/8 that flows smoothly to its brisk close.
Sometime around 1720, when he was in his mid-30s and serving as the music director for Prince Leopold in AnhaltCöthen, Bach composed six works for unaccompanied violin—three sonatas and three partitas—that would go on to be pinnacles of the violin literature (although they wouldn’t be published until roughly a century later).
While writing this music, which is supremely difficult for the violinist, Bach had to wrestle with the fact that, unlike a keyboard instrument, a violin can’t really play more than two notes at once. Within that limitation, a composer must find a way to provide a harmonic foundation for an essentially linear instrument over the span of an extended work. Bach solved this problem by
suggesting the harmonic accompaniment with rolled chords, broken chords, multiple-stopping, and a complex polyphonic interweaving of voices. The effect of sounding a chord and then leaping away to resume the melodic line in another register can seem stark and almost fierce.
Bach was famous in his day as a virtuoso organist, and, like virtually all composers of his era, he also played the violin. That said, Bach’s biographer Philipp Spitta noted that in all the writings about Bach by his family members and contemporaries, there isn’t one mention of his skill on that instrument. What’s indisputable, however, is that Bach’s understanding of the violin was profound.
The violin is essentially a lyrical (as well as linear) instrument, but this sonata is contrapuntal, requiring continual multiple-stopping and the most sophisticated technique imaginable. Unlike the opening movements of his other two unaccompanied sonatas, which were conceived to suggest an improvisatory character, the Violin Sonata No. 3 in C Major begins with a long, slow, and solemn Adagio that’s somewhat in the manner of a prelude and that’s built entirely on the steady rhythm of the dotted eighth. The figure is very simple at its first appearance; gradually it grows more complicated, and the melodic line is elaborately embellished.
The second movement is the expected Fuga, and it’s one of the most difficult fugues Bach ever wrote for the violin; its subject is based on the old chorale tune “Komm, Heiliger Geist, Herre Gott” (“Come, Holy Ghost, Lord God”). The simple opening evolves into music of unbelievable complexity, but the fugue subject remains clear throughout despite Bach’s complicated evolutions, which include its appearance in inversion.
The Largo is a lyrical slow movement; once again, the main idea is stated simply and then developed contrapuntally. This movement is the only one in the sonata that isn’t in C major. (It’s in F major instead.)
The binary-form Allegro assai is a sort of dance-like movement that’s built on a steady flow of 16th notes, and it brilliantly concludes this sonata.
When Bach moved from Cöthen to Leipzig in 1723, his musical duties changed. As music director for Cöthen’s music-loving Prince Leopold, he’d written the majority of his secular instrumental works. In Leipzig, where he was the cantor for Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church), he was charged with producing music for religious functions— and that music flowed out of him at an exhaustive pace.
During the late 1720s alone, Bach wrote several hundred church cantatas and his St. Matthew Passion,
although he didn’t lose interest in composing instrumental music altogether. He wrote his set of six partitas, originally for harpsichord, between 1726 and 1731, and he published them in the latter year as the first volume of his four-volume Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice) series. In a wonderful introductory note for the Clavier-Übung, Bach described the works as having been “composed for music lovers, to refresh their spirits.”
Bach understood a partita to be a suite of dance movements—its name implies a set of “parts”—and those movements were based on the sequence of allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue. And while Bach adopted this tradition, he made it his own by supplementing it with three of what he called galanteries: extra movements that were somewhat lighter in character and that he thought would make the work more attractive to listeners. The galanteries comprised an introductory movement (in a different form in each of the six partitas) and two extra dance movements.
The Keyboard Partita No. 4 in D Major opens with a lengthy Ouverture in the French style: a grand slow introduction, full of runs and dotted rhythms, gives way to a fast fugue in 9/8 that rushes along its staccato main idea.
An allemande (that name suggests its German ancestry) is traditionally a slow dance of serious character, and it’s usually in 4/4 time and in binary form, as this partita’s second movement is. If both of its halves are repeated, this stately Allemande movement is by far the longest of the whole work.
The lively Courante (French for “running”) is in triple time and bursts with a jaunty, snappy energy, while the Aria, the second of the galanteries, isn’t so much lyric or vocal in character as it is balanced and precise.
The spare Sarabande, whose name references a dance of Latin American and Spanish origin, moves slowly along its 3/4 meter, while the brief Menuet (the third and final galanterie) is energized by the showers of triplets that the pianist performs with their right hand.
Bach rounds off this partita with a brilliant Gigue, which rips along its 9/16 meter. A tour de force of keyboard writing and contrapuntal complexity, this movement brings the work to an impressive close. ◗
Sunday & Monday, 6 p.m.
JULY 20 & 21
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
JUHO POHJONEN, Piano
PAUL HUANG, Violin
IDA KAVAFIAN, Violin
YURA LEE, Violin & Viola
FRANZ SCHUBERT
SUNDAY & MONDAY SERIES
The July 20 & 21 concerts are generously sponsored by
TOBY APPEL, Viola
NICHOLAS CANELLAKIS, Cello
MARK KOSOWER, Cello
Drei Klavierstücke (Three Piano Pieces), D. 946 (1828) (1797–1828)
No. 1 in E-flat Minor: Allegro assai
No. 2 in E-flat Major: Allegretto
No. 3 in C Major: Allegro
Juho Pohjonen
FRANZ SCHUBERT
Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano, D. 574, Duo (1817)
Allegro moderato
Scherzo: Presto
Andantino
Allegro vivace
Yura Lee, Juho Pohjonen
INTERMISSION
ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD
String Sextet in D Major, Op. 10 (1914–16) (1897–1957)
Moderato—Allegro
Adagio
Intermezzo: Moderato, con grazia
Finale: Presto
Paul Huang, Ida Kavafian, Yura Lee, Toby Appel, Mark Kosower, Nicholas Canellakis
The Festival is grateful to Michael Hindus and Lynne Withey and David Muck and Cole Martelli, whose generosity has made the filming of the July 20 & 21 concerts possible.
Summer Young People’s Concert—FREE!
Monday, 10 a.m.
JULY 21
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
MUSIC FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO BY MOZART AND PROKOFIEV
Oliver Prezant, host; Paul Huang , violin; Orion Weiss , piano
Generously sponsored by
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Sunday & Monday, 6 p.m.
JULY 20 & 21
FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828)
Drei Klavierstücke (Three Piano Pieces), D. 946 (1828)
Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano, D. 574, Duo (1817)
In the spring of 1828, Schubert sketched three brief pieces for piano that are today known as Drei Klavierstücke. The previous year, he’d written his two sets of impromptus—short piano pieces intended for the growing number of talented amateur pianists in Vienna. The impromptus had proven popular, and it’s possible that the three new pieces were intended to be part of a new set of impromptus, but it wasn’t to be. Schubert set the pieces aside and, working at white heat, spent the next six months composing a string of masterpieces: three piano sonatas, the songs of the Schwanengesang (Swan Song) collection, and the Cello Quintet. And then, suddenly, in November, at the age of 31, he was dead.
Schubert left behind a huge number of unpublished works, and many of them weren’t published until much later. The three piano pieces had to wait a very long time indeed: It wasn’t until 40 years later that they were assembled and edited for publication by a young newcomer to Vienna named Johannes Brahms, who had a passion for Schubert’s music. The order in which Schubert intended the pieces to be performed was unclear, as Schubert left no title for them, and, in fact, it was unclear if he intended them to be performed together at all. Brahms had to make some artistic decisions, and he published them in 1868 under the neutral title Drei Klavierstücke.
Schubert’s impromptus of 1827 were melodic, attractive, and not so difficult as to take them out of the range of good amateur pianists, and the same can be said of the Drei Klavierstücke. They’re in a sort of rondo form, with an opening section, an interlude in a different key, a return to the opening material, another interlude, and a return of the opening music.
The first piece, marked Allegro assai (“Very fast”) and in the unusual key of E-flat minor, proceeds vigorously along its 2/4 meter. The first interlude is a chordal Andante in A-flat major, but there’s an issue with the second interlude, a gentle Andantino : Schubert crossed it out in his manuscript, intending that the piece be in simple ABA form, but Brahms liked it so much that he included it in the published version. Pianists may choose to perform the piece with or without it.
The July 20 & 21 program notes are generously sponsored by
The second piece, in E-flat major, begins with a relaxed Allegretto that rolls comfortably along its 6/8 meter. The first interlude is in a muttering C minor, and the second is in A-flat major. Both seem faster than the opening Allegretto, but Schubert specifies they should all be at the same tempo.
The concluding piece, an Allegro in C major, was probably the first to be composed. Its opening section, built on syncopated rhythms, is dynamic, and in this piece, Schubert offers only one interlude, in A-flat major and set in the unusual meter of 3/2. A powerful coda brings the set (if it is a set) to an exciting conclusion.
Inevitably, we’re left with questions. How would these pieces have been different if Schubert had completed them? Would there have been a fourth? Would they have been published under the title Impromptus? The Drei Klavierstücke have certainly had some famous champions (including Wilhelm Kempff, Claudio Arrau, Alfred Brendel, and Sviatoslav Richter), yet two centuries after their composition, they remain among Schubert’s least familiar works for keyboard.
Schubert grew up in a musical but poor family in Vienna. His father, a schoolmaster, assumed that his sons would assist him at his school to help supplement the meager family income, and so in the fall of 1814, 17-year-old Franz (who was desperate to become a composer) found himself teaching schoolboys. Schubert was miserable in the classroom and constantly tried to break free. After two years, he seemed to have found an opportunity when the mother of one of his wealthy friends offered him rooms, and Schubert moved away from his family and tried to support himself with his composing.
That experiment turned out to be short-lived, however, and Schubert had to move back to his family’s home a year later and resume teaching. But from 1816 to 1817, he’d had the freedom to compose. That year marked the period between his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, and much of it was spent composing piano sonatas and songs. But in August of 1817, Schubert wrote a piece for violin and keyboard, which he simply called Duo. (The young composer may have been wary of calling it a sonata, which it actually is, although it has four movements instead of the sonata’s customary three.)
Full of amiable and agreeable music, the Duo passes by in a very compact 20 minutes. Schubert played both violin and piano, and the writing for both instruments is idiomatic and comfortable.
The opening Allegro moderato is an endless outpouring of attractive music: It’s built on a wealth of themes— five separate ideas in all—which are introduced by both instruments. Schubert creates a quite brief “development” section and then plunges back into a recapitulation that offers an almost literal repeat of the sequence of themes that opened the movement.
The “extra” movement in the Duo is the second, the Scherzo, which is in ABA form; its fast outer sections feature athletic skips and an energetic violin part, and those sections are broken up by a flowing trio that glides smoothly along its chromatic lines.
The Andantino, which remains unfailingly melodic throughout, is nevertheless subdued and wistful in mood, while the concluding Allegro vivace returns to the extroverted manner of the Scherzo. The writing here is vigorous: Both instruments leap across a broad range, with the melodic line moving easily between them. Schubert’s second subject is a waltz (that craze was just beginning in Vienna), and this waltz tune is full of harmonic freedom, chirping grace notes, and smooth runs. Particularly impressive are Schubert’s quiet but graceful key changes and the calm just before the dramatic concluding chords.
ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD (1897–1957)
String Sextet in D Major, Op. 10 (1914–16)
Few child composers have been as precocious as Korngold. His cantata Gold, composed when he was 10, amazed Mahler, who pronounced the boy a “genius.” Others impressed by his talents included Richard Strauss and Puccini, who said: “That boy’s talent is so great, he could easily give us half and still have enough left for himself!” Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt (The Dead City) had simultaneous premieres in Hamburg and Cologne on December 4, 1920, when the composer was 23, and in the 1920s, Korngold was one of the most admired composers in Europe.
But in 1934, Korngold’s career took an unexpected turn. Director Max Reinhardt invited him to Hollywood to help score a film version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Korngold found that his Romantic idiom was ideally suited for film music. When Hitler came to power, Korngold moved to Hollywood and achieved his greatest
success with swashbuckling music for Errol Flynn movies like Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Sea Hawk. As soon as the war was over, Korngold put films behind him to return to “serious” music, but he couldn’t escape his Hollywood reputation, especially since he used themes from many of his film scores in his classical works (the most successful of which was his 1945 Violin Concerto, which was championed by Jascha Heifetz).
Korngold composed his String Sextet between 1914 and 1916, and it was first performed in Vienna on May 2, 1917, a few weeks before his 20th birthday. A string sextet (two violins, two violas, and two cellos) is a challenging form for a composer, as they need to balance six instruments of uneven strength, keep textures clear, treat all six instruments as equals, and avoid writing music that becomes “symphonic” in its power. At the time, Korngold had three masterful sextets to draw inspiration from, all of which were written by Viennese composers—the two sextets by Brahms and Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) by Schoenberg—yet his String Sextet doesn’t sound like any of those works; in fact, even though he was only a teenager when he wrote his sextet, he managed to find a voice that was his own.
Korngold’s String Sextet is in a late-Romantic idiom, and it requires the most skillful of players: Harmonies are chromatic to the point where any sense of a home key is often obscured, tempos are fluid, the meter sometimes changes by the measure, and the writing can be dramatic and virtuosic.
Korngold builds the work’s opening Moderato— Allegro movement on three separate theme-groups, each at a different tempo, and the music glides smoothly between these sharply contrasted ideas. Moments of calm alternate with dramatic episodes that feature thick chording and double-stroked notes. One moment the music can be subdued (Korngold asks the players to bow over the fingerboard to dampen their sound), and the next it can erupt into full-throated climaxes. The first violin’s opening melody dominates this movement and finally helps propel it to a near-symphonic close.
The slow Adagio movement brings little relief. The cello’s jagged opening statement sets the unsettled mood, and its melodic line quickly moves between the various instruments. Korngold writes long passages here where the meter changes from 3/4 to 4/4 to 5/4 by the measure.
The Intermezzo has proven to be the most immediately attractive movement to audiences. It has a distinctly Viennese flavor, and while its basic meter is 6/8 rather than 3/4, this music waltzes throughout. To be sure, this
is an unusual waltz, with the violin singing a most angular waltz tune and the whole ensemble participating in great swooping glissandos.
The Finale is a lot of fun. Korngold specifies it should be played “as fast as possible” and also “with fire and humor.” It goes like a rocket, and as the sextet nears its conclusion, Korngold recalls the first violin’s melody from the beginning of the first movement. Now that theme— gentle then but powerful now—helps propel the sextet to its emphatic conclusion. ◗
Tuesday, 12 p.m.
JULY 22
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
Generously sponsored by the Lorlee and Arnold Tenenbaum Memorial Fund
JUHO POHJONEN, Piano
JYRKI LINJAMA
Prélude oublié (2021; rev. 2024) (b. 1962)
FRANZ LISZT
Après une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi sonata from Années (1811–86) de pèlerinage (1839–49)
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 1, Quasi una fantasia (1770–1827) (1800–01)
Andante—Allegro— Allegro molto e vivace— Adagio con espressione— Allegro vivace
OLIVIER MESSIAEN
Le Baiser de l’enfant-Jésus from Vingt regards sur (1908–92) l’enfant-Jésus (1944)
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Tuesday, 12 p.m.
JULY 22
JYRKI LINJAMA (b. 1962)
Prélude oublié (2021; rev. 2024)
The works of Finnish composer Jyrki Linjama are strongly connected to his spirituality. Some of his most important and successful pieces explicitly draw on Christian scripture: his 2005 Liturgical Organ Concerto; his 2012 setting of the Finnish translation of the Stabat Mater; and his Allerheiligentag cycle, a set of works for various instrumentations that pull from a hymn for All Saints’ Day. To him, there is a strong connection between the liturgy, which he sees as a “journey from darkness to light and the celebration of communion,” and Western musical language. As he put it in a 2019 interview: “I’m not even able to divide music into spiritual and secular. If the music is alive, it also breathes. Music (like the liturgy) offers means of articulating the profoundest of questions with the greatest of sincerity: in so doing, it can have great collective significance.”
Linjama’s Sonata da Chiesa for Piano, which was premiered by pianist Juho Pohjonen in 2010, is a good example of Linjama’s blend of sacred and musical concerns. The piece was modeled on the four-movement form of the “church sonata,” which dates to the Baroque era. Each part of the work has its origins in a bit of Christian text or music—a psalm, for example, or a stretch of Gregorian chant. We hear the tolling of bells, haunting strains of sincere prayer, and other lyrical sentiments all filtered through Linjama’s bright, lightly dissonant melodic and harmonic style.
Linjama’s Prélude oublié (Forgotten Prelude) for Piano similarly integrates the spiritual and the musical. The work begins with a rolling, tranquil figure in the right hand of the keyboard and a solemnly ascending line of bell-like notes in the left hand. Linjama maintains a triple meter for the duration of the piece, resulting in a soft, murmuring, pulsing quality even as the harmonies grow subtly harsher and the rhythms become more complex. The composition illustrates the “mimosa-like quality” that Linjama has often described in his works (that is, it is like the sensitive, soft leaves of the mimosa flower and not like the alcoholic apéritif).
About halfway through the Prélude, Linjama brings in a quotation of the Et incarnatus est section of Bach’s B-minor Mass, and this becomes a main motif until the end of the
piece. Linjama seamlessly combines Bach’s gesture with the rolling figures that have dominated the composition up until that point, so it becomes clear that this older source material has, in a sense, been there in the background all along. Though such borrowings are clearly important to his compositional process, Linjama doesn’t want to constrain the meanings that listeners can draw from what he writes: “I don’t believe in the topicality of music; rather, it should defy time and stretch out to eternity.” Indeed, he creates an overwhelming sense of timelessness at the end of the Prélude, in which we hear the pitch B across several ranges of the instrument. It is music that could lead smoothly into a performance of Bach’s famous Mass, but it functions equally well as an introduction to any number of 19th-, 20th-, or 21st-century piano works.—Nicky Swett
Juho Pohjonen gave the world premiere of Jyrki Linjama’s Prélude oublié on February 20 in New York City, in a recital presented by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.—The Editors
Cellist, writer, and music researcher Nicky Swett has a PhD in music from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Gates Scholar. He’s served as a program annotator for many organizations, including The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Music@Menlo, the BBC, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Carnegie Hall.
FRANZ LISZT (1811–86)
Après une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi sonata from Années de pèlerinage (1839–49)
Après une lecture du Dante (After a Reading of Dante) was published as the seventh and final piece in Liszt’s second volume of Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), a collection of piano music inspired by various works of Italian art. This particular piece, however, was inspired at least in part by another work that drew inspiration from Italian art, as Liszt took the title from a poem by the French writer Victor Hugo and appended his own description: fantasia quasi sonata (“fantasy in the manner of a sonata”). That said, this work is often known, simply, as the Dante Sonata.
Liszt first sketched this piece in 1839, but its composition was apparently very difficult. His lover Marie d’Agoult wrote to a friend that the piece “was sending him to the very devil,” and it didn’t reach its final form until 1849.
The Dante Sonata plunges listeners immediately into the Inferno part of Dante’s epic poem The Divine Comedy. It opens with powerful descending octaves meant to depict the entry into hell and doubtless inspired by a famous line in the poem: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” Liszt underlines this association by having the octaves descend on the interval of a tritone. This unsettling interval (a diminished fifth) has been associated for centuries with the devil: Its unresolved dissonance was referred to as the diabolus in musica (“devil in music”), and its use was forbidden in some circles. Here that ominous sound makes an ideal accompaniment for our descent into hell, and soon we’re plunged into the torment of the damned on music that Liszt marks lamentoso (“plaintive”). Liszt’s biographer Alan Walker notes—based on information provided by the composer—that one of Liszt’s students copied the following lines from the Inferno into his own score at this point:
Here sighs, with lamentations and loud moans, Resounded through the air pierced by no star, That e’en I wept at entering. Strange tongues, Horrible cries, words of pain, Tones of anger, voices deep and hoarse, With hands together smote that swelled the sounds, Made up a tumult, that for ever whirls Round through that air with solid darkness stained, Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies.
Consolation comes with the chorale second subject— perhaps a vision of heaven from out of the pit of hell— though Walker points out that this is ingeniously derived from the lamentation theme. Liszt then extends both these ideas through some furious development, but his intention in this piece is not pictorial: This music doesn’t tell a story. Instead, the work may be thought of as being in a free sonata form based on themes inspired by The Divine Comedy. There may be moments of radiant calm along the way, but it’s the vision of damnation that dominates this music.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 1, Quasi una fantasia (1800–01)
In 1801, Beethoven completed two piano sonatas that he would publish jointly as his Opus 27. The second of these, in C-sharp minor, has become one of the most famous pieces of music ever written—we know it as the Moonlight Sonata. The first, however, remains almost unknown to audiences today.
By the year 1800, Beethoven had reached a moment of transition. He’d spent the previous decade mastering Classical form, and that achievement was signaled by the completion that year of the six string quartets of his Opus 18 and his First Symphony. Three years later, Beethoven would compose his Eroica Symphony (his third) and, in the process, revolutionize the possibilities of sonata form. But even by 1800—just as the almost-30-year-old composer was completing his first symphony and quartets—he was already beginning to experiment with that form.
Beethoven realized that works in Classical form tended to be dominated by their first movements: The opening movement—in a form that depended on the conflict and resolution of theme and tonality—set the character for the rest of the work. Now Beethoven wondered if it might be possible to shift the weight of a piece of music to later in the work, and to do that he needed to de-emphasize the first movement.
Neither opening movement of his two Opus 27 sonatas is in sonata form; instead, each has a free, improvisational character. Beethoven understood that what he was doing changed the entire nature of sonata form, and when he published these two sonatas in 1802, he specified on the title page that each should be understood as a sonata quasi una fantasia (“sonata in the manner of a fantasy”).
The Sonata in E-flat Major is original in a thousand ways. It’s in four brief movements, but they’re played without pause. Beethoven blurs the outlines of sonata form, sometimes keeping the general shape of the form, sometimes dismissing it altogether. Part of the originality here is rhythmic, as this sonata alternates between quick and slow tempos, and often the rhythmic sense defeats our expectations with extended syncopations and displaced attacks.
The opening Andante—Allegro movement is defiantly a non-sonata-form movement—it truly is a fantasia. It’s in ternary form based on a murmuring, amiable opening section that’s cast aside as the music suddenly leaps into
6/8 and C major and then rushes vigorously across the keyboard. Beethoven rounds off matters with a reprise of the opening.
The Allegro molto e vivace, which lasts barely two minutes, functions as the scherzo. Its flowing opening is interrupted by sharp attacks, the theme of the brief trio section is completely off the beat, and the reprise is truncated and syncopated as it cascades directly into the Adagio con espressione. This movement brings a world of calm as its poised main melody proceeds chordally along a very slow pulse.
A cadenza-like flourish plunges the music into the concluding Allegro vivace. This is a rondo and, in that sense, might seem the most “normal” movement in the sonata, except that even here Beethoven has surprises. He breaks off the rondo to include a vigorous development section, and just before the ending he brings the music to a pause and recalls the theme of the Adagio. A crisp presto coda drives this very original sonata to its firm close.
OLIVIER MESSIAEN (1908–92)
Le Baiser de l’enfant-Jésus from Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus (1944)
Messiaen composed Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus in Paris between March 23 and September 8, 1944. That was one of the happiest moments in the history of that city—Paris was liberated from the Nazis’ occupation that summer—but there’s no trace of such external events in this work. Instead, this music is concerned with a different sort of joy: one that exists outside of time and human action.
This collection, whose title translates to Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus, is an expression of the devout Christian faith that lies at the heart of every note Messiaen composed. It comprises 20 pieces that Messiaen wrote specifically for his brilliant pupil Yvonne Loriod (who later became his wife), and it lasts, collectively, about two hours.
These 20 pieces are unified in several ways. First, three different themes run through the set: a simple chordal melody that Messiaen calls the “Theme of God,” the linear “Theme of the Star and of the Cross,” and a sequence of four simple chords called the “Theme of Chords.” Vingt regards also reflects Messiaen’s lifelong interest in birdsong (he quotes the songs of specific birds) as well as his interest in canon.
In its purest form, religious faith should be ecstatic, and Vingt regards is ecstatic music—in its rhythmic freedom
(there are no time signatures here and few bar lines), its incredible pianistic sonorities (much of it is written on three staves), and its virtuosity. In the preface to the score, Messiaen wrote: “More than in all my preceding works, I have sought a language of mystic love, at once varied, powerful and tender, sometimes brutal, in a multi-colored ordering.”
The 15th movement, Le Baiser de l’enfant-Jésus (The Kiss of the Infant Jesus), is a rapt, slow episode that treats the “Theme of God” as a berceuse (or lullaby). Messiaen marks the movement “very slow, calm” and stipulates it should be like “a dream.” This movement is in the home key of Vingt regards—F-sharp major—and Messiaen sends the piano into its ringing high register as the music comes to a quiet, shimmering close. ◗
Wednesday, 12 p.m.
JULY 23
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
AILYN PÉREZ, Soprano
JULIUS DRAKE, Piano
RICHARD STRAUSS
The Santa Fe Opera is a proud promotional partner of the Piano-Vocal Series
Mädchenblumen, Op. 22 (1886–88) (1864–1949)
Kornblumen
Mohnblumen
Epheu
Wasserrose
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Frauenliebe und Leben, Op. 42 (1840) (1810–56)
Seit ich ihn gesehen
Er, der Herrlichste von allen
Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht glauben
Du Ring an meinem Finger
Helft mir, ihr Schwestern Süßer Freund, du blickest
An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust
Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan
JOAQUÍN TURINA
Tres poemas, Op. 81 (1933) (1882–1949)
Olas gigantes
Tu pupila es azul
Besa el aura
XAVIER MONTSALVATGE
Cinco canciones negras (1945) (1912–2002)
Cuba dentro de un piano
Punto de Habañera
Chévere
Canción de cuna para dormir un negrito
Canto negro
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Wednesday, 12 p.m.
JULY 23
RICHARD STRAUSS (1864–1949)
Mädchenblumen, Op. 22 (1886–88)
The spring of 1888 was a propitious time for the almost24-year-old Richard Strauss, as he was just about to begin composing his mighty tone poem Don Juan—music that would all at once make him famous and expand the entire conception of what a tone poem could be. Just before beginning work on that violent composition, however, he completed a cycle of four gentle songs that he titled Mädchenblumen (Maiden Flowers). All four songs are settings of poems by the German historical novelist and poet Felix Dahn (1834–1912), and in those brief poems, the speaker associates four flowers with specific personality traits.
In “Kornblumen” (“Cornflowers”), the speaker notes that cornflowers is what he calls blue-eyed women, whose eyes, he believes, evoke a gentleness and serenity that arises from the purity of their souls. Strauss’s setting is steady and graceful, and he marks the song andante (“moderately slow”).
By contrast, “Mohnblumen” (“Poppies”) are women who are fun-loving pranksters who love to dance, laugh, and tease but are kind and gentle at their core. Strauss marks the song allegro giocoso (“fast, happy”) and has it zip along breathlessly, powered by trills in the piano accompaniment.
The mood changes sharply with “Epheu” (“Ivy”), which the speaker says refers to deep, soulful women who lovingly entwine their lives and destinies around those of others. Strauss’s smooth vocal line glides above the piano’s climbing arpeggios, which bring the song to its quiet close.
Mädchenblumen concludes with “Wasserrose” (“Water Lily”), a flower made famous through legend and that here refers to a bewitching kind of woman, one who has an ethereal and mystical aura and a foreboding and seemingly unknowable nature. "Wasserrose" is the longest song in this cycle, and Strauss’s setting is unusual: it begins with both hands of the piano accompaniment high above the voice and builds to a climax that’s at once radiant, heartfelt, and shimmering.
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–56)
Frauenliebe und Leben, Op. 42 (1840)
Robert and Clara Schumann had one of the most famous
marriages in music history, but the course of their relationship hardly ran smoothly. Clara’s father, Friedrich Wieck, mounted an astonishing campaign to block the union of his piano-virtuoso daughter and Schumann, whom he deemed unstable and unfit. It was only after a lengthy series of court actions that the young couple became free to marry, which they did on September 12, 1840, a day before Clara’s 21st birthday and not long after Schumann sued Wieck for slander and won a large judgement.
Eighteen forty was Schumann’s famous “year of song,” during which the newly happy composer—who’d been known for writing works for the piano, his own instrument—turned to lieder to express his feelings. He composed more than 130 songs that year, and, perhaps not surprisingly, most of them were love songs.
Frauenliebe und Leben ( A Woman’s Love and Life) is a setting of eight poems by the German writer Adelbert von Chamisso (1781–1838) that detail a young woman’s progression from the first pangs of love through to marriage, motherhood, and the premature death of her husband. Some have found Chamisso’s texts to be too old-fashioned, with their portrait of a young woman who finds her highest happiness in surrendering to a man and expresses herself with such lines as “I will serve him, live for him, belong to him totally.” But Schumann rescues these texts with his sensitive settings and his varied portraits of the nameless heroine’s joys and grief.
The progression across the cycle is clear, and the individual songs need little detailed commentary. The piano’s halting and uncertain rhythms at the opening of “Seit ich ihn gesehen” (“Since I First Saw Him”) perfectly capture the confusing and destabilizing effect the young woman’s first encounter with her love has upon her. The tempo picks up over the next few songs, and the music reaches its first climax in the fifth song, as the young woman prepares for her wedding day. The seventh song finds the woman now a nursing mother and beside herself with love. Schumann marks this song “Happy, heartfelt,” and the animated voice and swirling accompaniment suggest the young woman’s joy.
All this is blasted, however, in the final song, “Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan” (“Now You Have Caused Me My First Pain”), which features some of Schumann’s most effective writing. The woman’s
husband has died, and, as a young widow, the woman now sees the world as empty and lives instead in a world of memories. The bleak D-minor triad at the very beginning of the song shatters the warmth of the previous one, and the singer almost recites rather than sings this final text to reflect the reality of a suddenly forlorn existence.
Schumann’s ending for this collection is powerful: The piano’s long postlude brings back the music and halting rhythms of the first song, and life, love, and death are melded into one as the voice of the grieving young woman fades away and the piano takes this tale into silence.
JOAQUÍN TURINA
(1882–1949)
Tres poemas, Op. 81 (1933)
Trained at first in his hometown of Seville and then Madrid, Turina moved to Paris in 1905, when he was 23, to study with Vincent d’Indy at the Schola Cantorum. He remained in Paris for nine years before returning to Spain at the beginning of World War I.
Turina conducted and composed in Madrid, and in 1930, he was named a professor of composition at the Madrid Royal Conservatory. Unlike many other Spanish composers, Turina chose to compose in the Classical forms developed by German composers—sonatas, trios, quartets—although he was also drawn to Spanish subjects and Spanish music. Tres poemas, a setting of texts by the Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836–70), came from the latter creative impulse. All three of its songs are fast paced, slow down in their final measures, and are extremely dramatic; they also feature a very active piano accompaniment as well as a powerful vocal line that keeps the soprano soaring into her highest register.
“Olas gigantes” (“Giant Waves”) bursts to life with a firm piano introduction marked vivo. Here the speaker of the poem is desperate to escape the pain of life, and he appeals to the waves, winds, and clouds to rescue him from his misery, exclaiming at one point: “Take me with you!”
Bécquer based the text of “Tu pupila es azul” (“Your Eyes Are Blue”) on Lord Byron’s poem “I Saw Thee Weep.” The poem’s text may seem conventional—the speaker is transfixed by his love’s blue eyes—but, once again, the setting is dramatic, and Turina asks that the soprano’s final flourish be sung con sentimento popular (“with popular sentiment”).
In “Besa el aura” (“The Gentle Breeze”), nature suddenly comes alive in flames and kisses, and Turina’s music matches that excitement: the tempo marking is
allegro vivo, and the song drives to a ringing conclusion.
XAVIER MONTSALVATGE (1912–2002)
Cinco canciones negras (1945)
Xavier Montsalvatge, of Catalonian descent, spent almost his entire career in Barcelona, where he was a composer, critic, and teacher. His works include three operas, more than twenty ballets, and orchestral and instrumental music, but he’s probably best remembered for one work, his Cinco canciones negras, which springs directly from one of his passions: the music of the West Indies. Montsalvatge felt a connection to the music of the Antilles and composed in a “West Indian musical style,” which he described as having a “vague and evocative manifestation of musical lyricism.”
Montsalvatge wrote the Cinco canciones negras for the Catalan soprano Mercedes Plantada (1892–1976), who premiered the work on June 14, 1945. The collection's five songs are settings of texts by poets of different nationalities, and Montsalvatge’s music is rich with the idioms of the Caribbean and their characteristic rhythms and dances.
The first song, “Cuba dentro de un piano,” is a pleasantly surreal song that sets a text by the major 20th-century Spanish poet Rafael Alberti (1902–99), who was a friend of the composer’s. The song is marked lento, and it makes its way along sultry, swaying rhythms.
“Punto de Habañera” is based on text by the Spanish poet and journalist Néstor Luján (1922–95), and it depicts the experience of a white-clad Creole girl who, one evening, is walking past a group of transfixed sailors on the docks of Havana.
“Chévere” features text by the popular and socially and politically active Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén (1902–89), who championed Afro-Cuban culture and was named the National Poet of Cuba. Despite its strident opening, Montsalvatge’s setting is subdued and doesn’t directly reflect the dark and deep issues addressed in Guillén’s text.
The first of the songs to be written, “Canción de cuna para dormir un negrito,” has become the most famous of the set. The text is by the Uruguayan writer Ildefonso Pereda Valdés (1899–1996), and it’s recited as a lullaby to an enslaved little boy who’s fearful and having trouble falling asleep. Montsalvatge’s music rocks along, seemingly innocently, beneath the song’s sharp-edged text.
The final song of the collection, “Canto negro,” features text that’s once again by Guillén. It depicts a man dancing, drinking, singing, and eventually falling, and Montsalvatge sets it to vigorous, drum-like music. ◗
Open Rehearsals Are Back!
Have you ever wondered what goes into creating a world-class Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival concert? If so, join us at one of our free Open Rehearsals and find out!
Access and seating are limited—we’re offering THREE open rehearsals on a FIRST-COME, FIRST-SERVED basis for those concerts’ TICKET HOLDERS.
Check out the list of rehearsals below, and we’ll look forward to seeing you at the rehearsals and at the concerts!
2025 OPEN REHEARSALS*
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
SATURDAY, JULY 19
10 a.m.–12 p.m.
For ticket holders to the July 20 or July 21 concert
KORNGOLD String Sextet in D Major, Op. 10
Paul Huang, violin
Ida Kavafian, violin
Yura Lee, viola
Toby Appel, viola
Mark Kosower, cello
Nicholas Canellakis, cello
SATURDAY, AUGUST 2
10 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
For ticket holders to the August 3 or August 4 concert
WEBER Clarinet Quintet in B-flat Major, Op. 34
David Shifrin, clarinet
Miami String Quartet
Benny Kim, violin
Cathy Meng Robinson, violin
Scott Lee, viola
Keith Robinson, cello
TUESDAY, AUGUST 5
2:30–4:30 p.m.
For ticket holders to the August 6, 6 p.m. concert
DOHNÁNYI Sextet in C Major for Clarinet, Horn, Violin, Viola, Cello, and Piano, Op. 37
David Shifrin, clarinet
Stefan Dohr, horn
Jennifer Frautschi, violin
Toby Appel, viola
Eric Kim, cello
Soyeon Kate Lee, piano
*These are working rehearsals. Audience members are welcome to come and go quietly, but we ask that you please be mindful of the musicians at work.
Wednesday, 6 p.m.
JULY 23
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art WEDNESDAY
JUHO POHJONEN, Piano
ORION WEISS, Piano
PAUL HUANG, Violin
NICHOLAS CANELLAKIS, Cello
MARK KOSOWER, Cello
CARLO ALFREDO PIATTI
Serenade for Two Cellos and Piano (1890) (1822–1901)
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
sponsored
Mark Kosower, Nicholas Canellakis, Juho Pohjonen
Sonata in C Minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 30, No. 2 (1770–1827) (1801–02)
Allegro con brio
Adagio cantabile
Scherzo
Finale
Paul Huang, Orion Weiss
INTERMISSION
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Piano Trio in E Minor, Op. 90, Dumky (1890–91) (1841–1904)
Lento maestoso—Allegro quasi doppio movimento— Poco adagio—Vivace non troppo—
Andante—Vivace non troppo
Andante moderato (quasi tempo di marcia)—Allegretto scherzando
Allegro
Lento maestoso—Vivace, quasi doppio movimento
Juho Pohjonen, Paul Huang, Nicholas Canellakis
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Wednesday, 6 p.m.
JULY 23
CARLO ALFREDO PIATTI (1822–1901)
Serenade for Two Cellos and Piano (1890)
In the early 19th century, the cello escaped its identity as an “accompaniment” instrument. Previously, it had been relegated to the bass line, but now it was being recognized as a melodic and expressive instrument of its own, and composers were beginning to write for it.
With this new repertoire came something else that was new: the virtuoso cellist, and one of the greatest of that time was from Italy. Born into a musical family in Bergamo, Carlo Alfredo Piatti studied cello with his greatuncle and developed so rapidly that he was playing in a professional orchestra by age 8 and touring Europe at age 16. Mendelssohn was one of the many people who admired Piatti’s playing, and so was Liszt, who, when he heard that Piatti had to sell his instrument in order to pay his bills, bought him a cello by the 17th-century master luthier Nicolò Amati.
Piatti began playing in England in 1844, at the age of 22, and thereafter he made his home in London, although he continued to play throughout Europe. While Piatti was famed as a solo cellist, he was also an active chamber musician, and he played in various string quartets— including ones with violinists Joseph Joachim and Henryk Wieniawski. Like most 19th century virtuosos, Piatti composed extensively for his own instrument. His list of works includes six cello sonatas, two concertos, 12 caprices, several short pieces, and a method. We may not regard him as a major composer, but his works for cello are so pleasing and so beautifully written that they remain in print more than a century after his death.
Piatti’s Serenade for Two Cellos and Piano, composed toward the end of the 19th century, offers a good sense of his melodic gift and of his writing for his instrument. The Serenade is full of dramatic gestures, rapid exchanges between the two cellos, and quick shifts of mood—it can be lyrical one moment, stormy and agitated the next. The composer demands accomplished playing from his cellists, who must master extensive pizzicato writing, passages set in the instrument’s highest register, and a sustained use of artificial harmonics. And just before he brings the work to its end, Piatti challenges his cellists with a complex cadenza.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
Sonata in C Minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 30, No. 2 (1801–02)
Beethoven’s choice of key for this sonata is important, as he employed C minor for works of unusual intensity. The recently completed Pathétique Sonata, Fourth String Quartet, and Third Piano Concerto were in C minor, and over the next several years Beethoven would use that key again for the Funeral March of his Eroica Symphony, his Fifth Symphony, and his Coriolan Overture. The musical conflict that fires those works is also evident in the sonata heard on this evening’s program, which is, along with the Kreutzer Sonata, the most dramatic of Beethoven’s 10 violin sonatas.
The opening movement is marked Allegro con brio; that’s the same indication Beethoven would later use for the opening movements of the Third and Fifth Symphonies, and this sonata’s first movement has a dramatic scope that’s similar to the ones found in those symphonies. The movement opens quietly with the piano playing a recurrent brooding figure that ends with a sudden turn, like the quick flick of a dragon’s tail. The violin soon picks this up and then goes on to present the second subject, which marches along clipped dotted rhythms. There’s no exposition repeat, and Beethoven slips into the development quietly, but soon the energy that’s been pent up in these simple figures is unleashed. This dramatic music features massive chording by both instruments and drives to a huge climax.
By contrast, the Adagio cantabile opens with a melody of disarming gentleness, once again announced by the piano, and much of this movement sings gracefully. As it develops, however, the accompaniment grows more complex, and soon these murmuring runs begin to take over the music. Beethoven makes sharp dynamic contrasts before bringing the movement to a quiet close.
The brief Scherzo is full of stinging accents and rhythmic surprises. Its trio section is a subtle variation of the movement’s opening theme, here treated in canon.
The Finale returns to the mood of the opening movement. Again, there’s a quiet but ominous opening full of suppressed energy that will later explode to life. This Finale is in modified sonata-rondo form, and, despite an occasional air of play and some appealing
lyric moments, the movement partakes of the same atmosphere of suppressed tension that’s marked the entire sonata. Beethoven brings it to a suitably dramatic close with a blazing coda that’s marked Presto and that remains resolutely in C minor.
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904)
Piano Trio in E Minor, Op. 90, Dumky (1890–91)
The word dumky is the plural form of the Russian dumka, a type of Slavonic ballad (perhaps of Ukrainian origin) characterized by a dark and elegiac character. In his Dumky Trio, Dvořák makes an important change to this form: to the melancholy music of the traditional dumka, he adds fast and jubilant music so that each of his movements consists of sharply contrasted parts.
Dvořák began work on his Dumky Trio in November 1890 and completed it on February 12, 1891. When he played the piano part at the work’s premiere in April 1891, he was a few months short of his 50th birthday and at the height of his powers. The previous year, he’d conducted the premiere of his Eighth Symphony, and later in 1891, he’d go on to receive double honors: an honorary degree from Cambridge and an invitation to become the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. Dvořák played the Dumky Trio in a series of farewell concerts before departing, in the fall of 1892, for his new position in the New World.
The Dumky, which is the last of Dvořák’s four piano trios, has an unusual form that consists of six dumka movements, each with slow and fast sections. The first three are played without pause, the fourth is primarily a slow movement, the fifth is primarily a fast one, and the sixth shows some elements of the rondo-finale. It can be said—if one needs or wants to understand it this way—that Dvořák’s highly unusual structure conforms to the four-movement shape of the standard piano trio, but it’s far better to take this highly original music, which annihilates sonata form, on its own terms.
The Dumky Trio is powerfully expressive music, ranging in emotional extremes from fragmentary, grieving slow phrases that often sound right out of Janáček to fast sections much like Dvořák’s own buoyant Slavonic Dances. The odd combination of dark music side-by-side with bright music is curiously satisfying—the elegiac and festive sides of Dvořák’s soul flashing out by turns in this intense music.
The first dumka, marked Lento maestoso, opens with falling piano triplets that soon give way to ascetically
lean and beautiful string lines; at the Allegro quasi doppio movimento section, the music leaps brightly forward, and these two sections alternate before leading directly into the second dumka, marked Poco adagio. Here the somber and steady opening pulse gradually leads to a dancing Vivace non troppo, where the violin flies quietly but brilliantly over staccato piano accompaniment. Along the way Dvořák offers a brief cello cadenza.
The third dumka, Andante, is built on the piano’s chaste opening melody, played at first only by the right hand. The fast Vivace non troppo section, just like in the second dumka, belongs to the violin.
Listeners will find that the fourth dumka, Andante moderato, has the feel of a slow movement because the fast sections are brief and restrained, almost a part of the fabric of the overall slow tempo. In a similar way, the fifth dumka, Allegro, functions as the work’s fast movement because it opens at a fast tempo and, despite some slow interludes, remains largely at this pace.
The opening of the Lento maestoso is dark, grieving, and painful, as are the Lento interludes. Dvořák binds them together with vigorous dance sections. ◗
Generously sponsored by the Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation in memory of Edgar Foster Daniels
Thursday, 12 p.m.
JULY 24
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
PAUL HUANG, Violin
ORION WEISS, Piano
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Sonata in F Major for Violin and Piano, K. 376 (1781) (1756–91)
Allegro
Andante
Rondo: Allegretto grazioso
ARVO PÄRT
Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror) (1978) (b. 1935)
SERGEI PROKOFIEV
Sonata in F Minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 80 (1938–46) (1891–1953)
Andante assai
Allegro brusco
Andante
Allegrissimo—Andante assai, come prima
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Sunday & Monday, 6 p.m.
Thursday, 12 p.m.
JULY 13 & 14
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–91)
Sonata in F Major for Violin and Piano, K. 376 (1781)
In June 1781, at the age of 25, Mozart broke away from the two authority figures in his life—his father, Leopold, and his employer, Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg—and set out to establish himself in Vienna. His first task was to make himself financially independent, and to that end he took students and performed widely throughout the city. But Mozart wished to succeed as a composer, and the sources of income for a composer were complex.
A composer could make significant income from an opera commission, but Mozart was aware of another lucrative market: the increasing number of amateur musicians in Vienna. Mozart’s first publication in Vienna, therefore, was written not on commission from a member of the nobility but rather for talented amateur performers. During the summer of 1781, while he was working on his opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, Mozart wrote four sonatas for keyboard and violin, combined them with two sonatas he’d written earlier, and published them that November as his Opus 2. Those six sonatas attracted immediate attention, and one early reviewer wrote about them at length:
These sonatas are the only ones of this kind. Rich in new ideas and in evidences of the great musical genius of their author. Very brilliant and suited to the instrument. At the same time the accompaniment of the violin is so artfully combined with the clavier part that both instruments are kept constantly on the alert so that these sonatas require just as skillful a player on the violin as on the clavier.
That reviewer made an important point: Earlier sonatas for this combination of instruments had essentially been keyboard sonatas with the accompaniment of a violin, and in fact Mozart’s description on the title page of the new set—“Six Sonatas for Clavier or Pianoforte, with the Accompaniment of a Violin”—seems to preserve that identity. But as the reviewer notes, these are in fact duosonatas (“the only ones of this kind”), and the musical duties are divided evenly here (“require just as skillful a player on the violin as on the clavier”). The piano may retain a measure of primacy in these sonatas, but Mozart
is well on his ways to redefining the violin sonata and giving the violin a much more important role.
The Allegro opens with three bright chords, and the whole movement is characterized by energy and thrust. The piano introduces the more restrained second idea, and all seems set for a standard sonata-form movement, but then Mozart springs a surprise at the development: Rather than develop those principal themes, he seizes on a brief turn-figure from the end of the exposition and builds the development on that. He brings back the principal themes in the recapitulation and closes out the movement quietly on the turn-figure.
The ternary-form Andante is remarkable for the range of its sounds, as it seems to be in constant, murmuring motion. Some of this is the sound of quietly pulsing 16th notes that run through the accompaniment, but Mozart also has both instruments trilling at length here.
The concluding Rondo gets off to an elegant start. Mozart’s marking of grazioso is exactly right here, as this little tune has a music-box delicacy. It’s all the more surprising, then, that the episodes that punctuate this rondo are so wildly different, full of massive chords, cascading runs of 16th notes, and sudden excursions into moments of subdued expressiveness. Mozart winds down all this energy at the end, and the sonata vanishes like a puff of smoke.
ARVO PÄRT (b. 1935)
Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror) (1978)
The emergence of Arvo Pärt as a major voice at the end of the 20th century is one of the more unusual stories in music. Pärt was almost unknown in the West until he was nearly 50. He lived in Estonia, supported himself by composing film music and working as a recording engineer for Estonian Radio, and composed largely in private. He rebelled against the strictures of Soviet control of the arts and began to experiment, first with serialism (at a time when that was forbidden in Soviet music) and later with collage techniques. Without any knowledge of minimalism as it was then evolving in the United States, Pärt arrived at similar compositional procedures, and over the past several decades he’s produced scores that have moved audiences with their simplicity, expressiveness, and emotional impact.
Composed in 1978, Spiegel im Spiegel was one of the final works Pärt wrote before emigrating to Germany (he’s since returned to Estonia). That title, which translates to Mirror in Mirror, refers to the visual effect that results when two facing mirrors are slightly out of alignment, creating an endless pattern of visual repetitions that fade into the distance.
Spiegel im Spiegel is one of the earliest examples of Pärt’s “tintinnabuli style,” in which one instrument (here the piano) has a steady progression of quarter notes built on the notes of a simple triad, while, over this, another instrument (here the violin) has long, simple melodic lines that slowly move upward or downward, one step at a time. The piano part is written on three staves, and while the three notes of each triad ring quietly by themselves, Pärt occasionally adds solitary octaves at the extreme ends of the keyboard, and these ring, too. The effect of this music, with its steadily repeating quarter notes, is hypnotic, like the way the opening music of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata is.
There are no dynamic markings in Spiegel im Spiegel, but the atmosphere is subdued and calm. The cumulative effect of the held notes above a repeating pattern isn’t simply soothing but quietly reassuring, too, and it comes as no surprise that Spiegel im Spiegel has been used on many film soundtracks. The slow progression of quarter notes continues throughout, and, at the end—as if in the most distant of mirrors—the music fades into silence.
From a technical standpoint, Spiegel im Spiegel is quite “easy”: the violin part can be played entirely in first position, and the piano part simply requires a steady progression of quarter notes and widely spaced octaves. But playing the notes isn’t the challenge in this music. The challenge is to take these seemingly simple materials and turn them into music of quiet, expressive strength.
SERGEI PROKOFIEV
(1891–1953)
Sonata in F Minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 80 (1938–46)
Prokofiev’s First Violin Sonata had a difficult genesis. The composer began working on it in 1938, during one of the most horrifying moments in Soviet history—the period of Stalin’s purges—but found that he couldn’t complete it. He therefore set the score aside, but before he could return to it, another horrifying event—World War II—occurred. In response to the war, Prokofiev wrote some of his greatest scores, including his opera War and Peace and his mighty Fifth Symphony, but he didn’t return to the sonata until after the war had ended. (That made for some confusing
numbering, as, during the war, Prokofiev wrote another violin sonata, which he called his Second Violin Sonata even though he’d completed it before his First.) Violinist David Oistrakh gave the world premiere of the First Violin Sonata, which Prokofiev dedicated to him, in Moscow on October 23, 1946.
While the Second Violin Sonata (in D major) is one of Prokofiev’s sunniest scores (it shows no trace of the war that raged during its creation), the First Violin Sonata (in F minor) is grim, and Soviet commentators were quick to put a politically correct interpretation on such dark music: Some heard it as resistance to the Nazis, others as a portrait of oppressed Russia, and so on. Eighty years after the composition of this sonata, however, it’s far better to let the music speak for itself than to impose extraneous interpretations onto it.
Beneath the lyric surface of this music, the mood is often icy and dark—even brutal. These unsettling qualities come, in part, from Prokofiev’s extremely fluid metrical sense: In this score, the meter sometimes changes every measure. The marking for the opening Andante assai movement is 3/4 4/4, and Prokofiev alternates those two meters, although he’ll sometimes fall into just one of them for extended passages.
The somber first movement opens with an ostinato-like piano passage over which the violin makes its muttering, tentative entrance. Much of the main section is doublestopped, and in the final moments come quietly racing runs for muted violin. Prokofiev said these runs should sound “like the wind in a graveyard,” and he marks the violinist’s part freddo (“cold”).
The second movement, Allegro brusco (“brusque”), is in sonata form. The pounding opening subject gives way to a soaring second theme marked eroico (“heroic”); the brusque and the lyric alternate throughout this movement, which ends with the violin rocketing upward to the concluding high C.
Prokofiev began the Andante —which he described as “slow, gentle, and tender”—before the war, but didn’t complete it until 1946. Muted throughout, the violin has the main subject over rippling triplets from the piano.
The concluding Allegrissimo brings back the metrical freedom of the opening movement: Prokofiev’s metric indication is 5/8 7/8 8/8. The alternating meters give the music an asymmetric feel, which is intensified by the aggressive quality of the thematic material. The cold winds from the first movement return to blow icily through the sonata’s final pages. ◗
Saturday, 5 p.m.
JULY 26
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
Variation 6: Canon at the Second Variation 7: Al tempo di giga
Variation 8
Variation 9: Canon at the Third Variation 10: Fughetta
Variation 11
Variation 12: Canon at the Fourth Variation 13
Variation 14
Variation 15: Canon at the Fifth (Andante) Variation 16: Overture
Variation 17
Variation 18: Canon at the Sixth Variation 19
Variation 20
Variation 21: Canon at the Seventh Variation 22: Alla breve
Variation 23
Variation 24: Canon at the Octave
Variation 25: Adagio
Variation 26
Variation 27: Canon at the Ninth Variation 28
Variation 29
Variation 30: Quodlibet Aria da capo
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Saturday, 5 p.m.
JULY 26
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
Aria with 30 Variations (Goldberg Variations), BWV 988 (1742)
In November 1741, Bach, then 56 years old, made the hundred-mile trip east from Leipzig to Dresden to visit an old friend, Count Hermann Keyserlingk, the Russian ambassador to the Saxon court, and there are several stories as to what happened during that visit regarding the work heard on this evening’s concert.
One story is that Keyserlingk commissioned a work for his harpsichordist—a 14-year-old boy named Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who, at age 10, had been one of Bach’s students—and gave Bach a goblet full of gold coins in payment. Another is that Keyserlingk told Bach he wanted a piece Goldberg could play for him as he went to sleep, as a way to help with his insomnia.
While it’s impossible to confirm these or other stories, we can confirm that the year after his visit to Dresden, Bach published—as the fourth and final volume of his collection of keyboard works called the Clavier-Übung —a work for the two-manual harpsichord called, simply, Aria with 30 Variations.
Bach’s score bore no dedication, nor did it mention Keyserlingk or Goldberg, but Bach did give a copy of the manuscript to the count, and scholars have concluded that Keyserlingk did, in fact, request the piece during Bach’s visit to Dresden. By a process of (perhaps random) association, one of the greatest works ever written immortalizes a 14-year-old harpsichord player, as the piece has become known as the Goldberg Variations.
For his theme, which he titles Aria, Bach uses a sarabande melody he’d written as part of the second Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, one of two volumes of works for keyboard or voice that the composer presented to his second wife. The theme is 32 measures long and already ornately embellished on its first appearance, although its melody doesn’t serve as the basis for the variations that follow—the bass line beneath it does. This lengthy harmonic progression will become the backbone of the Goldberg Variations, functioning much like the ground bass of a passacaglia.
The 30 variations that follow the Aria are grouped into 10 units of 3, of which the third is always a canon, and each successive canon is built on an interval that’s one larger than
the previous one. Such a description makes the Goldberg Variations sound like one of the more densely argued works of the Second Viennese School, but this is some of Bach’s most moving and exhilarating music, and it’s a measure of his genius that such expressive music can grow out of such rigorous compositional procedures.
Listeners don’t need to understand the complexity of Bach’s techniques to feel the greatness of this music, however. One is certainly aware of the original bass line as a structuring element, but beyond that, each variation can be taken as an individual pleasure.
Bach changes meter with virtually every variation, leaping from the Aria’s 3/4 meter to such permutations as 4/4, 3/8, 2/4, 12/16, and 18/16. The 10th variation is written as a fughetta, and of special importance to the work are the three minor-key variations (Nos. 15, 21, and 25): All of these are slow, all begin in G minor (but can go far afield harmonically), and all are darkly expressive. In particular, No. 25, which lasts well over six minutes by itself, forms the emotional climax of the work before the spirited conclusion.
That conclusion is unusual all by itself. The 30th and final variation is marked Quodlibet, which is a gathering of tunes. Here, Bach incorporates into the harmonic frame of his variations some of the popular tunes he’d heard sung around him on the streets of Leipzig. The British musicologist Donald Francis Tovey (1875–1940) identified two of them, and their first lines translate to “It is so long since I have been at your house” and “Cabbage and turnips have driven me away. If my mother’d cooked some meat, I might have stopped longer.” Listeners in Bach’s day would have understood those references and been amused by them, while modern-day listeners feel only that the work is approaching its close in an unusually relaxed and tuneful manner.
And then, Bach provides a masterstroke: rather than round off the Goldberg Variations with a rousing display of contrapuntal brilliance, he concludes with a simple repetition of the opening Aria. ◗
JULY 27 & 28
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
JULIUS DRAKE, Piano
ORION WEISS, Piano
ROBERT INGLISS, Oboe*
TODD LEVY, Clarinet*
JULIA HARGUINDEY, Bassoon*
JULIA PILANT, Horn
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
CALIDORE STRING QUARTET
JEFFREY MYERS, Violin
RYAN MEEHAN, Violin
JEREMY BERRY, Viola
ESTELLE CHOI, Cello
Quintet in E-flat Major for Piano and Winds, K. 452 (1784) (1756–91)
Largo—Allegro moderato
Larghetto
Rondo: Allegretto
Julius Drake, Robert Ingliss, Todd Levy, Julia Harguindey, Julia Pilant
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110 (1960) (1906–75)
Largo
Allegro molto
Allegretto
Largo
Largo
Calidore String Quartet (Jeffrey Myers, Ryan Meehan, Jeremy Berry, Estelle Choi)
INTERMISSION
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44 (1842) (1810–56)
Allegro brillante
In modo d’una marcia. Un poco largamente
Scherzo: Molto vivace
Allegro ma non troppo
Orion Weiss, Jeffrey Myers, Ryan Meehan, Jeremy Berry, Estelle Choi
*Santa Fe Opera artist
Generously sponsored by Summer Young
Monday, 10 a.m.
JULY 28
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
SCHUMANN Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44
Oliver Prezant, host; Orion Weiss, piano; Calidore String Quartet (Jeffrey Myers, Ryan Meehan, Jeremy Berry, Estelle Choi)
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Sunday & Monday, 6 p.m.
JULY 27 & 28
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–91)
Quintet in E-flat Major for Piano and Winds, K. 452 (1784)
No one knows why Mozart wrote so superbly for winds. He was a virtuoso pianist and violinist, but as far as we know, he didn’t play a wind instrument. Yet he had a special fondness for the sound of almost all winds, and he wrote an enormous amount of music for them.
Mozart completed his Quintet for Piano and Winds on March 30, 1784, in Vienna. He’d moved there from Salzburg three years earlier, and in a letter to his father, he called this quintet, with its unusual combination of instruments, “the best work I have composed.” Though the young composer was perpetually anxious to reassure his worried father that he wasn’t wasting his life in Vienna, we have every reason to believe that Mozart was sincere in his estimation of this work.
One of the most impressive things about this quintet is that Mozart writes so directly to the character of each instrument. He gives the winds music that’s exactly suited to their strengths and limits: Phrases tend to be short, and there are rapid exchanges among the winds, often in music highly elaborated by turns and other decorations. The piano, by contrast, supplies the fluid long lines that the wind instruments can’t. The piano’s music is also one of the true glories of this quintet: it ripples and flows gracefully throughout, complementing the winds beautifully.
Another part of this quintet’s appeal is that it’s completely without flash or glitter; Mozart consciously avoids showing off virtuoso skills. Here the instruments are at the service of the music rather than the reverse. This music glows rather than blazes.
The form of this music is Classical simplicity itself. A slow introduction leads to a sonata-form opening movement, the slow movement is in ternary form, and the final movement is the expected rondo. In the first movement, Largo— Allegro moderato, Mozart often sets the piano and winds in opposition, with the winds playing as a group. In the poised Larghetto, however, he gives them a chance to shine individually. The finale, marked Rondo: Allegretto, is surprisingly measured. It never rushes, and Mozart’s marking at the very beginning, dolce (“sweetly”), is the key.
At the start of the coda comes an unusual touch: Mozart writes out what he calls in the score a cadenza in tempo, which sees the four winds make quietly terraced entrances
above piano chords. It’s a kind of final review for each of them before the rush to the close, which is as classic and restrained as everything else in this most graceful score.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906–75)
String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110 (1960)
In the summer of 1960, Shostakovich went to Dresden to write a score for the film Five Days, Five Nights, a joint East German–Soviet production. The devastation of Dresden by Allied bombing in 1945 was still evident in 1960, and it stunned the composer. He interrupted his work on the film score, and over the course of three days (July 12–14), he wrote his String Quartet No. 8, which includes the dedication “To the memory of the victims of fascism and war.”
The Eighth String Quartet has become Shostakovich’s most frequently performed quartet (he wrote a total of 15), but this intense music appears to have been the product of much more than an encounter with the horrors of war: it seemingly sprung straight from its creator’s soul.
Shostakovich quotes heavily from his own works— including his First, Fifth, Tenth, and Eleventh symphonies; his Piano Trio in E Minor; his Cello Concerto No. 1; and his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk—as well as from several Russian songs, and he uses his musical “signature” as its central theme: He takes the letters DSCH (D for Dmitri and SCH from the first three letters of his last name in its German spelling) and sets down their musical equivalents: D-Es (E-flat in German notation)-C-H (B in German notation). That motto—D-Eb-C-B—is the first thing one hears in this quartet, and it permeates the entire work.
In Testimony, Shostakovich’s much-disputed memoirs, the composer strongly suggests that this quartet is autobiographical and that it’s about suffering rather than fascism. He cites his quotation of the song “Languishing in Prison” and the “Jewish theme” from the Piano Trio as pointing a way toward understanding the quartet. Laurel Fay, in her biography of Shostakovich, suggests an even darker autobiographical significance. In the spring of 1960, she recounts, just before his trip to Dresden, Shostakovich was named the head of the Union of Composers of the Soviet Federation, and the Russian government clearly expected such a position to be held by a member of the
Communist Party. The composer reluctantly agreed to join the Party under pressure and then was overwhelmed by guilt and regret. There’s evidence that he planned to take his own life upon his return to Moscow and that the Eighth String Quartet was intended to be his final composition. Five days after completing the quartet, Shostakovich wrote to a friend:
However much I tried to draft my obligations for the film, I just couldn’t do it. Instead, I wrote an ideologically deficient quartet nobody needs. I reflected that if I die someday, then it’s hardly likely anyone will write a work dedicated to my memory. So I decided to write one myself. You could even write on the cover: “Dedicated to the memory of the composer of this quartet.”
The quartet is extremely compact and focused: Its five interconnected movements last only 20 minutes. The brooding Largo opens with the DSCH motto in the solo cello, which soon turns into the fanfare from the First Symphony, and that’s followed by a quotation from the Fifth Symphony. The movement—somber and beautiful— suddenly explodes into the Allegro molto, in which the first violin’s pounding quarter notes recall the “battle music” from the composer’s wartime Eighth Symphony. At the climax of this movement comes what Shostakovich called the “Jewish theme,” which seems to shriek out above the sounds of battle. The Allegretto is a ghostly waltz in which the first violin dances high above the other voices.
Each of the final two movements is a Largo. The fourth movement is built on exploding chords that some have compared to gunshots and others to a fateful knock on the door. At the climax of this movement comes quotations from the prison song and, in the cello’s high register, from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. The fifth movement returns to the mood and music of the first. The DSCH motto enters fugally, and many of the quartet’s earlier themes are recalled before the music closes very quietly on a chord marked morendo (“dying away”).
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–56)
Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44 (1842)
On September 12, 1840, Robert Schumann married the young piano virtuoso Clara Wieck, a match that had been bitterly opposed by Clara’s father, Friedrich Wieck. But with Wieck’s various lawsuits and assaults on his character behind him, Schumann settled down to one of the happiest
and most productive phases of his life. From 1840 came a series of song cycles, from 1841 several symphonic works, and from 1842 an outpouring of chamber music.
Schumann wrote the three string quartets of his Opus 41 in the summer of 1842, and on September 23, he began work on the Piano Quintet, which he finished on October 12. The first performance, a private one with Clara at the piano, took place in November. A second performance was scheduled in the Schumanns’ home on December 8, but Clara fell ill, so Mendelssohn replaced her and sightread the piano part. The members of the Gewandhaus Quartet (whose first violinist, Ferdinand David, would give the premiere of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto three years later) were the other performers, and that would have surely been an exciting evening to sit in on.
Schumann’s Piano Quintet is his most successful chamber work, and it’s also the first great piano quintet. (It would be followed over the next century by those of Brahms, Franck, Dvořák, and Shostakovich.) From the vigor of the first movement through the contrapuntal mastery of the finale, the work shows a composer in command of his materials and at the height of his expressive powers.
The aptly named opening movement, Allegro brillante, is full of strength. Its driving opening theme—whose first four notes recur throughout the movement—gives way to a second theme of melting songfulness heard initially in the piano. Schumann asks that it be played dolce, and when the strings repeat it, he continually reminds them that it should be espressivo. The vigorous development of this sonata-form movement, frequently dominated by the piano (Schumann’s own instrument), leads to a recapitulation based on the opening theme.
The second movement, In modo d’una marcia, is much in the manner of a funeral march, although Schumann didn’t call it that. The awkward tread of the march section (in C minor, the relative minor) is interrupted first by a melodic interlude for the first violin and then by pounding triplets in the piano.
The propulsive Scherzo: Molto vivace runs up and down the scale with interruptions by two trio sections, while the last movement, the Allegro ma non troppo, is the most complex and interesting. It begins in the “wrong” key (G minor) and only gradually makes its way back to E-flat major. A second theme, for first violin, arrives in E major. At the conclusion, Schumann reintroduces the opening subject of the first movement and develops it fugally, ingeniously using the first theme of the finale as a countersubject. It’s brilliant writing and brings to a triumphant close one of the noblest creations in chamber music. ◗
Generously sponsored by the Lorlee and Arnold Tenenbaum Memorial Fund
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
CALIDORE STRING QUARTET
JEFFREY MYERS, Violin
RYAN MEEHAN, Violin
JEREMY BERRY, Viola
ESTELLE CHOI, Cello
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN
String Quartet in D Major, Op. 76, No. 5 (1797) (1732–1809)
Allegretto—Allegro
Largo cantabile e mesto
Menuetto
Finale: Presto
CAROLINE SHAW
Entr’acte for String Quartet (2011) (b. 1982)
ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD
String Quartet in D Major, Op. 34 (1945) (1897–1957)
Allegro moderato
Scherzo: Allegro molto
Sostenuto. Like a Folk Tune
Finale: Allegro
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Sunday & Monday, 6 p.m.
Tuesday, 12 p.m.
JULY 13 & 14
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN (1732–1809)
String Quartet in D Major, Op. 76, No. 5 (1797)
Haydn composed the six string quartets of his Opus 76 in 1796–97, shortly after returning to Vienna from the second of his wildly successful trips to London. At age 65, he was nearing an important turning point in his life: Soon he’d turn away from composing instrumental music entirely and devote the rest of his life to vocal music. Behind him now were all 104 of his symphonies, and he was close to the end of the cycle of his string quartets (the one heard on this afternoon’s program is number 79 of 83). Even as he wrote these last quartets, he was beginning to work on his oratorio The Creation
The Opus 76 quartets—sometimes called the Erdödy Quartets after Count Joseph Erdödy, who commissioned them—include some of Haydn’s most famous, such as the Emperor, Sunrise, and Fifths. While the D-major Quartet lacks a nickname, it shows some unusual technical features. It also shows the consummate mastery of a composer who’d spent a lifetime transforming the string quartet into one of the greatest of all musical forms.
A particularly striking feature of this quartet is the structure of its first movement. Haydn had for many years experimented with building sonata-form movements on just one theme, but here he goes even further, using one theme across a movement that’s been divided into two different parts with two different tempos. The first part is a lengthy Allegretto that’s based on the violin’s graceful opening melody. This melody hardly has a chance to unfold when, suddenly, it slips into D minor, and the cello takes it over beneath the first violin’s complicated embellishments. The music grows turbulent and then, just as unexpectedly, moves back into the D-major sunshine of the beginning. Only at this point does Haydn launch the second part, the Allegro, which itself is based on the opening melody, but this section (the first movement proper) is extremely short and almost abrupt.
The unusual length of the slow movement, Largo cantabile e mesto, gives it central importance. The movement also has a distinctive marking—Haydn stresses that he wants it to sound “singing and sad”— and it’s set in the unusual key of F-sharp major. This is another monothematic movement that’s based on the violin’s opening melody.
The Menuetto is more conventional, though the expansive D-major minuet gives way to the tense mutterings of the D-minor trio. In the Finale, marked Presto, some have heard the music of rustic village bands, but Haydn transforms this material into a sonata-form movement of unusual polish. Particularly impressive is the range of the writing (the first violin part is extremely high for a string quartet) as well as Haydn’s deft use of silences to contrast with the cheerful thrust of this lively closing music.
CAROLINE
SHAW (b. 1982)
Entr’acte
for String Quartet (2011)
Caroline Shaw studied violin as a child and began to compose at age 10. She received her bachelor’s degree from Rice University and her master’s degree from Yale, and in 2010 she entered the doctoral program at Princeton. She performs as a violinist and a vocalist with several new-music ensembles, and in 2013, at age 30, she became the youngest composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, which was awarded for her a capella work Partita for 8 Voices. Shaw has also won four Grammy Awards, and she’s written works for soprano Renée Fleming, the New York Philharmonic, and many other major artists and ensembles. She’s scored Ken Burns’s PBS documentary Leonardo da Vinci, the FX on Hulu series Fleishman Is in Trouble, and more.
In the program note below, the composer introduces the work heard on this afternoon’s program, Entr’acte, and describes something of its origins and character. —The Editors
Entr’acte was written in 2011 after hearing the Brentano String Quartet play Haydn’s Op. 77, No. 2—with their spare and soulful shift to the D-flatmajor trio [section] in the minuet [movement]. It is structured like a minuet and trio, riffing on that Classical form but taking it a little further.
I love the way some music (like the minuets of Op. 77) suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition.—Caroline Shaw
Entr’acte was first performed by the Brentano String Quartet at Princeton University in April 2011. The Grammynominated chamber orchestra A Far Cry commissioned a version for string orchestra in July 2014.
ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD (1897–1957)
String Quartet in D Major, Op. 34 (1945)
Korngold composed his third and final string quartet—the String Quartet in D Major—in 1945, at a very particular intersection in his life.
Korngold had been one of the most fabulously gifted child prodigies ever—as a 10-year-old, his music and talent were praised by Mahler, Strauss, and Puccini—and he fulfilled his potential by becoming, in the 1920s, one of the leading composers in Europe. But the next decade brough a transformational career change.
In 1934, director Max Reinhardt invited Korngold to Hollywood to help score a film version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Korngold found that his Romantic idiom was ideally suited for film music. When Hitler came to power, Korngold moved to Hollywood and achieved his greatest success with swashbuckling music for Errol Flynn movies like Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Sea Hawk, and he won two Oscars along the way.
When the war was over, Korngold planned to put film music behind him and return to “serious” music, but he found that the Romantic idiom and lush orchestration that had served him well were now deemed hopelessly old-fashioned, and he couldn’t escape his Hollywood association, especially since he used themes from his film scores in his classical works. Korngold’s formidable Symphony in F-sharp Major was a complete failure at its premiere in Vienna in 1954, and it didn’t receive a revival and a fair critical estimation until the 1980s. By then, however, Korngold had been dead for 30 years.
The String Quartet in D Major was another work that Korngold had hoped would let him move on from Hollywood. One of its most striking features is its stylistic range: From an elegant lyricism to the chromatic bite of its themes, and from the slashing brilliance of some of the writing to the gentleness of its quiet moments, this is extremely varied music. It’s also quite difficult music and requires players of the greatest skill.
While the Allegro moderato opens in D major, the chromatic freedom of its ideas almost suggests Schoenberg. Following a gentle beginning, the music presses ahead—sometimes while changing meter
every measure—to an agitated middle section before it falls away and ends quietly on its opening theme, now gracefully elongated.
In the Scherzo, the viola introduces a lively rhythmic kernel that will recur in many shapes throughout the movement, and it’s a mark of Korngold’s classical roots that the form of this movement is so traditional: the opening section leads to a flowing trio and a da capo repeat.
Korngold mutes all four instruments in the lyric Sostenuto movement, which he specifies should sound “like a folk tune.” The opening gives way gradually to an animated center section: Korngold has the players remove their mutes in turn as the tension rises to a climactic Appassionato, and then he has them put the mutes back on as the movement winds to its quiet close.
A six-measure introduction kicks off the Finale, which Korngold aptly notes should be played “with fire.” This is almost a moto perpetuo in its nonstop energy—along the way, Korngold alternates pizzicato and bowed passages, makes reference in passing to some of his film scores, and subjects his main theme to a brief fugal treatment. At the end, he offers fleeting reminiscences of earlier movements before the blistering rush to the concluding unison D.
Korngold dedicated his Third Quartet “in admiration and friendship” to the conductor Bruno Walter, who’d led the premiere of his opera Violanta in 1916. ◗
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
ERIKA BAIKOFF, Soprano
JULIUS DRAKE, Piano
FRANZ SCHUBERT
“Alinde,” D. 904 (1827) (1797–1828)
FRANZ LISZT
The Santa Fe Opera is a proud promotional partner of the Piano-Vocal Series
“Die Götter Griechenlands,” D. 677 (1819)
“Schwestergruss,” D. 762 (1822)
Viola, D. 786 (1823)
Die Macht der Musik, S. 302 (1848) (1811–86)
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
“Ya li v pole da ne travushka bila?,” Op. 47, No. 7 (1880) (1840–93)
“Die Götter Griechenlands” (“The Gods of Greece”), D. 677 (1819)
“Schwestergruss” (“Sister’s Greeting”), D. 762 (1822)
Viola (Violet), D. 786 (1823)
Schubert composed the pleasing song “Alinde” early in 1827 and based it on a text written by one of his friends, the poet and novelist Johann Friedrich Rochlitz (1769–1842). “Alinde” has been called a serenade, but it’s more of a little scena, in which the singer waits restlessly for his love, who is late in meeting him. In each verse the singer calls out anxiously to people he encounters while searching for her, and his aching refrain on her name, Alinde, reveals the intensity of his feelings. Schubert’s setting rocks easily along its 6/8 meter and, after all the singer’s worries, concludes very gently and happily.
The second song on the program, “Die Götter Griechenlands,” is a lament for the vanished glories of ancient Greece—its opening line is “Schöne Welt, wo bist du? Kehre wieder” (“Fair world, where are you? Return again”)—and this song is bleak indeed. It sets only one of the original 16 stanzas of a poem by Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), and that stanza emphasizes loss and uncertainty. Schubert’s harmonic language mirrors that sense of loss: Its beginning, in A minor, gives way to what seems to be a consoling A major in the middle section, but the song slips back into an ambiguous, unresolved A minor at the end. Many have noted that the piano’s opening three-note figure would, five years later, become the beginning of Schubert’s Rosamunde Quartet, which is music of a similarly somber cast.
As a young man, Schubert became good friends with Franz Bruchmann (1798–1867), a philosopher and poet who was a year younger than Schubert. Bruchmann, who was from a wealthy and cultivated family, was a strong believer in Schubert’s talent, and he held several Schubertiads (events dedicated to Schubert’s music) at his family home. Bruchmann later became a priest and never published any of his poems, but we do know five of them, as Schubert transformed them into songs.
Bruchmann’s sister Sybilla died in 1820, and he wrote
the poem “Schwestergruss” in her memory; two years later, in November 1822, Schubert made a remarkable setting of that poem, which centers on an encounter with a spirit in a moonlit graveyard.
Schubert marks his song langsam (“slow”) and sets it in 12/8 time. It opens with what sounds like the tolling of bells, and soon we hear the steady pulse of eighth notes that will run practically throughout the entire song. The opening sets the scene, but when the spirit appears, it’s not as a ghostly reminiscence but as a figure in ecstasy, a figure that’s beyond pain or sorrow. Then, before the singer’s eyes, the spirit ascends into the heavens, wrapped in a flame, and takes her place amid “the choir of angels.” Following this powerful ascent, the song trails away and concludes with music from its subdued beginning.
Schubert composed Viola in March of 1823, shortly after writing his Unfinished Symphony and Wanderer Fantasy. This song sets a long text by Schubert’s friend Franz von Schober (1796–1882), and it’s remarkable in many ways.
Schober described his poem as a blumenballade (“flower ballad”), and it tells a lengthy, if somewhat sentimental, story: The flower Viola, sensing the coming of spring, awakens early and finds herself alone—in the cold and the wind—without the company of spring and her sister flowers. Feeling shame and disappointment as well as fear that she’s been abandoned, Viola flees to a remote area where she’s concealed by grass and shade and sobs. When spring arrives, Viola’s sister flowers go in search of her, but they find her alone and crushed by “the pain of love and longing.”
Schober’s description of Viola as a ballad is correct, as it’s a long poem that tells a story, and this song is indeed one of Schubert’s longest. (It can run a quarter of an hour in some performances.) The song is episodic, as Viola proceeds from enraptured hope to terror and finally despair. A slow introduction establishes the wintry setting, and as the different scenes play out in front of us, Schubert casts them in different tempos, keys, and moods, all of which can change instantly. Schubert creates a particularly active role for the piano, as it not only accompanies the singer but it establishes moods and advances the drama on its own.
Schubert concludes Viola by recalling the very beginning of the song, and the piano alone draws the song down to its subdued end.
FRANZ LISZT
(1811–86)
Die Macht der Musik (The Power of Music), S. 302 (1848)
Liszt composed Die Macht der Musik in 1848, just as he was beginning his position as music director for the Weimar court. The song is a setting of text by Helene, Duchess of Orleans (1814–58), and it can be summarized, briefly, as follows: Music has the power to bring joy back to someone who’s suffered loss, and music is the best form of language, as words can convey a lie but music has never deceived anyone; music, rather, has made “many thousands of hearts glad.”
Die Macht der Musik has some unexpected similarities to Schubert’s Viola. Both are unusually long (Die Macht der Musik lasts about 10 minutes), both are through-composed rather than strophic in structure, and both either tell a story or argue a point over the course of their duration.
Die Macht der Musik begins with a substantial piano introduction, and Liszt notes that the piano arpeggios should be played quasi arpa (“like a harp”). The singer enters on a note of suffering, but once the possibility of regaining happiness through music becomes clear, the music presses ahead on ever-quicker tempos and becomes almost heroic in its declaration of the power of music; at the soaring climax Liszt instructs the singer to sing con somma passione (“with great passion”). The point having been driven home very firmly, a piano postlude brings this song to its ringing conclusion.
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840–93)
“Ya li v pole da ne travushka bila?” (“Was I Not a Blade of Grass in the Field?”), Op. 47, No. 7 (1880)
“Nam zvyozdï krotkiye siyali” (“The Gentle Stars Were Shining Upon Us”), Op. 60, No. 12 (1887)
“Den’ li tsarit” (“Whether the Day Reigns”), Op. 47, No. 6 (1880)
Audiences automatically think of Tchaikovsky as the composer of colorful ballet scores and dramatic music, and many admire his chamber music works, but very few
know his songs. In fact, Tchaikovsky composed more than 100 songs, and they span his career: He wrote his first one at age 19 and his last one in the year of his death. Not surprisingly, there’s some lovely music in these songs, and some of it is so lovely that collections have been recorded in versions for solo violin and orchestra, with the violin wordlessly “singing” the melodies.
This afternoon’s recital concludes with selections from Tchaikovsky’s Seven Songs, Op. 47, written in 1880, and Twelve Songs, Opus 60, written in 1886. Those years weren’t good ones for the composer. In the aftermath of his disastrous marriage in 1877, Tchaikovsky had a nervous breakdown, and his recovery was slow. The breakdown also brought a creative withdrawal: In the decade after his marriage, Tchaikovsky wrote no symphonies or ballets and was content (largely) to compose piano pieces and small-scale orchestral suites. Perhaps his songs, in which he set the words of other people, allowed him a measure of emotional expression.
The lovely “Ya li v pole da ne travushka bila?” sets a three-stanza poem by Ivan Surikov (1841–80): Just as the grass and crops are inexorably cut down, so the speaker recognizes that she, too, has been cut down— her joy and spirit and potential destroyed by being forced into marriage with an old man she doesn’t love. The song is built on its haunting main theme, which makes many welcome returns; the piano has a prominent part, and the song concludes with its long postlude.
The brief but expressive “Nochi bezumnïye, nochi bessonnye” is on a text by Aleksey Apukhtin (1840–93), a poet Tchaikovsky knew and admired. The speaker of the poem is restless, sleepless, and angst-ridden due to feelings and desires for a lover they can’t let go of even though they aren’t good for them.
“Solovey” sets a poem by Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), who in turn had based his poem on a text by the Serbian linguist Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787–1864). The young speaker of the poem addresses a nightingale and says how, just as the bird has three songs, he has three sorrows. The first sorrow is that he was married off at too young of an age, the second is that his horse has grown weary, and the third is that cruel people have separated him and his true love. He requests that a grave be dug for him in a field and that it be surrounded by planted flowers and pure spring water so that he, and it, will be useful to others. Tchaikovsky specifies that this dramatic song, full of pauses and episodes, should be performed molto rubato e capriccioso (“with a lot of freedom of time and also capriciously”).
“Nam zvyozdï krotkiye siyali” is the final song of the Opus 60 set. The text is a setting of a poem by Aleksey Pleshcheyev (1825–93) that features a speaker wondering where the days of being young, in love, and full of hopes and dreams have gone. Tchaikovsky marks the beginning of his setting Andante tenero (“Moderately slow and tender”), but the song then goes through a range of expression.
This afternoon’s recital concludes with “Den’ li tsarit,” which is another setting of text by Apukhtin. Following a piano introduction marked Andantino, the music surges ahead, and the voice enters at the Allegro agitato. This is an extremely dramatic and impassioned love song; at moments it’s almost operatic as the singer pours out the most rapt feelings for their beloved. A long piano coda, at first marked triple forte and marcatissimo (“with very strong accentuation”), gradually relaxes this passion in the song’s calm final measures. ◗
JENNIFER RHODES (supertitle translations) teaches literature and philosophy at Columbia University, where she also directs Core Studio, an interdisciplinary arts program. Her research focuses on sites of interchange across the visual and performing arts, and her current book projects explore avant-garde creative practices and Richard Wagner's influence on the modern novel. She has been a member of the Santa Fe Opera Titles Department since 2000.
JULY 30
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
Generously sponsored by
ORION WEISS, Piano
JENNIFER FRAUTSCHI, Violin
IDA KAVAFIAN, Violin
BENNY KIM, Violin
TOBY APPEL, Viola
SCOTT LEE, Viola
FELIX FAN, Cello
KEITH ROBINSON, Cello
ROBERT INGLISS, Oboe*
KEVIN VIGNEAU, Oboe*
JULIA D eROSA, English Horn*
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Variations on Mozart’s “Là ci darem la mano” for Two Oboes (1770–1827) and English Horn, WoO 28 (1795)
Robert Ingliss, Kevin Vigneau, Julia DeRosa
FRANK BRIDGE
Piano Trio No. 2, H. 178 (1929) (1879–1941)
FELIX MENDELSSOHN
Allegretto ben moderato—
Molto allegro
Andante molto moderato—
Allegro ma non troppo
Orion Weiss, Jennifer Frautschi, Felix Fan
INTERMISSION
String Quintet in B-flat Major, Op. 87 (1845) (1809–47)
Allegro vivace
Andante scherzando
Adagio e lento
Allegro molto vivace
Ida Kavafian, Benny Kim, Toby Appel, Scott Lee, Keith Robinson
*Santa Fe Opera artist
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Wednesday, 6 p.m.
JULY 30
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
Variations on Mozart’s “Là ci darem la mano” for Two Oboes and English Horn, WoO 28 (1795)
The combination of two oboes and an English horn is almost unique, but Beethoven wrote for it twice. In 1795, during his first years in Vienna, he wrote a trio in four movements for those three instruments, and it was published much later (in 1806) with the misleadingly high opus number of 87. Soon after composing that trio, he returned to that combination and wrote a set of variations on the duet “Là ci darem la mano” from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, which had been premiered in Prague eight years earlier, in 1787.
Beethoven didn’t particularly like Don Giovanni —he thought its subject matter was “scandalous”—but, like everyone else, he was unable to resist this particular melody. “Là ci darem la mano” (“Give Me Your Hand”) comes from act 1 of Mozart’s opera, when Don Giovanni is attempting to seduce the pretty peasant girl Zerlina while his servant, Leporello, is distracting her fiancé, Masetto. In the duet, Don Giovanni takes Zerlina by the hand and leads her off to his house as her defenses collapse.
Beethoven transposed Mozart’s theme from its key of A major to C major and then wrote eight good-natured variations on it. The first performance of the work took place on December 23, 1797, at Vienna’s Court Theatre as part of a benefit program called the Widows and Orphans Concert. Beethoven tried to get the music published later in his life but couldn’t interest a publisher in so unusual a combination of instruments. These variations went unpublished for more than a century: they finally appeared in Leipzig in 1914.
FRANK BRIDGE (1879–1941)
Piano Trio No. 2, H. 178 (1929)
Frank Bridge studied viola and composition at London’s Royal College of Music and then made his career as a violist, conductor, and composer. He played viola in several string quartets and conducted in both England and the United States; as a composer, he made the gradual evolution from a conservative musician who was heir to
the 19th-century English-music tradition to an explorer who was interested in new ideas and was willing to experiment with a new harmonic language. Also notably, Bridge was Benjamin Britten’s (demanding) composition teacher (beginning when Britten was 15 years old), and it’s said that his concern for craftsmanship, his selfcriticism, and his economy of expression made a strong impression on the budding composer.
Bridge wrote his Piano Trio No. 2 in 1929, just as he was turning 50 (and just as he was beginning to teach Britten). The trio is an unusual piece of music, and that may, in part, explain why it received negative reviews following its premiere. On the surface, the trio seems “regular” enough—its four movements are in standard forms—but Bridge had very original ideas about harmony, sonority, and theme, and this trio embodies some of the new directions he was exploring in the years after World War I.
The Piano Trio No. 2’s movements are divided into two parts: The first two movements are joined, and the third and fourth movements are joined. The Allegretto ben moderato is harmonically ambiguous. There are no key signatures in this work, which is common enough in 20th-century music, but much of the writing for piano consists of great, sweeping arpeggios that pass through several different keys as they unfold. Metrically, the music can surprise as well: The fundamental meter is 6/8, but Bridge breaks into this with measures of 5/8, 9/8, and 12/8. A second subject, also for piano, is marked grazioso e piacevole (“graceful and relaxed”), and throughout the movement Bridge repeatedly asks the musicians to play dolce (“sweetly”) and grazioso (“gracefully”)—instructions that can feel sharply at odds with the harmonic ambiguity of the music. This long opening movement drives to a climax marked appassionato and poco energico (“a little energetic”) before falling away to a quiet conclusion that relaxes none of the movement’s tensions.
Bridge marks the final measure of the first movement perdendosi (“dying away, losing strength”), and out of that very brief silence the music goes directly into the second movement, marked Molto allegro. The sound world in this scherzo is completely different: The violin and cello play pizzicato throughout much of it, and the writing for piano is often set high in its register, which gives this music its ringing, sparkling sound. Bridge repeatedly marks the
score capriccioso (meaning it should be played in a free or whimsical style), and the movement skitters almost breathlessly to a sudden stop.
The Andante molto moderato movement returns to some of the manner and sound of the first movement. The piano resumes its harmonic uncertainty, while overhead the strings are muted once again. Gradually this opening gives way to what is, in effect, a slow march: Over a steady rhythmic pulse from the piano, the violin and viola sing a long and often ornate duet that’s unremittingly somber in character, as if the music has become a spooky, spectral procession. This slow march fades into silence, and the music proceeds without pause into the finale.
This Allegro ma non troppo gets off to a blistering start with saltando (“leaping”) triplets from the strings and a brilliant part for the piano, and then matters quickly turn spiky and aggressive. A second subject brings more relaxed material, and soon we encounter reminiscences of music heard earlier: a recall of the trio’s very beginning and material from the slow movement. All this builds to a sonorous climax, and just as we’re prepared for a grand conclusion, Bridge surprises us: the energy suddenly evaporates, the music turns tranquillo and then calmato, and the trio fades delicately into silence.
Bridge’s Piano Trio No. 2 received its first performance on November 4, 1929, by some very distinguished musicians: violinist Antonio Brosa (who would give the first performance of Britten’s Violin Concerto in 1940), cellist Anthony Pini, and pianist Harriet Cohen. Bridge dedicated the trio to the generous patron of the arts Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who had supported him during the 1920s.
FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–47)
String Quintet in B-flat Major, Op. 87 (1845)
Mendelssohn was one of the most gifted composers of all time, and he drove himself mercilessly—not just as a composer but as a conductor, a performer, an administrator, and an educator, too. (He was also a talented painter.) His death at age 38 was at least partially the result of exhaustion. Mendelssohn was the conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra from 1835 to 1846, and he founded the Leipzig Conservatory of Music in 1843 and served as its director as well. Such demands kept him from doing much composing during the concert season and academic year, so he became, in effect, a “summer” composer who wrote during those sunny, happy months when he could take his wife and children away from Leipzig and relax.
The String Quintet in B-flat Major is one of these summer compositions—Mendelssohn finished it in Frankfurt on July 8, 1845, just a few months after the premiere of his Violin Concerto. One of the most distinctive things about this quintet, particularly in its outer movements, is its concertante first violin part, which features writing so brilliant that it demands a virtuoso performer.
The very beginning of the Allegro vivace opening movement has reminded many of the beginning of Mendelssohn’s own Octet. Over rustling accompaniment, the first violin leaps upward with a melody that goes on to surge and fall back through two octaves. The falling, lyric second subject is introduced by the first viola, and the energetic development flies along over omnipresent triplets. The movement concludes with a majestic coda that’s built on both main ideas.
The brief Andante scherzando isn’t the quicksilveryfast movement one might expect from Mendelssohn at this point but rather a piquant little dance instead. Mendelssohn varies the texture by combining bowed and pizzicato passages and surprising the listener with uneven rhythms and shifting harmonies before the movement concludes nicely with all five instruments playing pizzicato.
The marking for the third movement, Adagio e lento, seems redundant, as both terms mean “slow.” The movement is built on a grieving main theme that’s heard immediately in the first violin. The accompaniment is unusually busy, and the huge climax to this movement— which features buzzing tremolos—seems more orchestral than chamber-like in its sonority. (Toscanini once performed this movement with the entire string section of the NBC Symphony Orchestra.)
Energy is the keynote of the finale, marked Allegro molto vivace. This movement returns somewhat to the manner of the opening movement with the first violin part being particularly brilliant, but Mendelssohn varies the pulse here by sharply syncopating the secondary theme group. The development is spirited and the coda is exuberant—all of which befits music written by a man on his summer vacation. ◗
Generously sponsored by the Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation in memory of Edgar Foster Daniels
Thursday, 12 p.m. JULY 31
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
MIAMI STRING QUARTET
BENNY KIM, Violin
CATHY MENG ROBINSON, Violin
SCOTT LEE, Viola
KEITH ROBINSON, Cello
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN
Quartet for Strings in C Major, Hob. III:77 (Op. 76, No. 3), (1732–1809)
Emperor (1797)
Allegro
Poco adagio cantabile
Menuetto: Allegro
Finale: Presto
ERWIN SCHULHOFF
String Quartet in G Major, Op. 25 (1918) (1894–1942)
Frisch und kräftig Langsam, getragen und ausdrucksvoll Menuet
Rondo
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Sunday & Monday, 6 p.m.
JULY 13 & 14
Thursday, 12 p.m. 31
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN (1732–1809)
Quartet for Strings in C Major, Hob. III:77 (Op. 76, No. 3), Emperor (1797)
In August 1795, Haydn returned to Vienna from the second of his two wildly successful visits to England. He was in his mid-60s, an age when an honorable retirement might have seemed appropriate, but he showed signs of renewed creative freshness. The most notable feature of this renewal was that he turned away from instrumental music in favor of vocal music. He’d completed all 104 of his symphonies at this point, and now he was beginning to write the series of Masses and the two oratorios that would mark the summit of his achievement.
Before he said goodbye completely to instrumental music, however, Haydn wrote a few final string quartets. The six quartets of his Opus 76 were composed in 1797, and they show the hand of a master at every moment. Several have acquired nicknames—the Sunrise and the Fifths —and they’re among the most famous of Haydn’s quartets. The third of this cycle, in C major, has taken the nickname Emperor from its variation-form slow movement, which is based on a tune that would become the Austrian national hymn. Beyond this, the quartet is distinguished by the brilliance of its writing and its interesting harmonic freedom.
The opening Allegro is in the home key of C major, but it often seems to prefer G major and occasionally edges into even more remote keys. It features an extroverted part for the first violin, whose crisply dotted rhythms propel the music forward with unusual vigor. In the midst of the development comes what’s been referred to as a “Hungarian” episode: The violins continue their furious dance as the lower strings provide a drone-like accompaniment beneath them. Haydn offers the players not just an exposition repeat but the opportunity to repeat the entire second half of the movement as well.
The Poco adagio cantabile is a set of four variations on a theme that Haydn had composed by adapting and altering an old Austrian folk tune. Under the title “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser” (“God Save Francis the Emperor”), it served as the Austrian national hymn from 1797 until 1918; under a more ominous title, it was the hymn of the German republic from 1922 until 1945. In this
quartet, stripped of its subsequent associations, this tune becomes the basis for a very pleasing and imaginative set of variations. The first violin announces Haydn’s stately tune, which then passes in turn to the other voices. The second violin has the theme at the first variation, where it’s accompanied by a racing first violin; the cello takes it at the second, the viola at the third, and, in the final variation, which serves as a recapitulation, the first violin takes it up again, now in a slightly modified form.
The last two movements should be considered together because they show some similarities: The shape of the main theme of each movement is quite similar. In the Menuetto, this theme is heard immediately in the sturdy first violin part, and this theme-shape becomes the basis for the last movement. The Finale is interesting for several reasons. It opens with huge chords that return to punctuate this sonata-form movement at various points, and the writing here is brilliant, with flying triplets and virtuoso demands in all four parts and a development that’s full of ingenious contrapuntal writing. But perhaps the most unusual feature of this quartet is its key: The work is nominally in C major, but this Finale is unequivocally in C minor, and that dark tonality generates the serious mood of this music. Haydn relents in the final measures, switching to C major for the coda and the cadence, but it’s the grim C-minor spirit of this movement that stays in the memory.
ERWIN SCHULHOFF (1894–1942)
String Quartet in G Major, Op. 25 (1918)
Erwin Schulhoff received early professional encouragement from a powerful source: Antonín Dvořák, who heard him play piano when he was seven years old and recommended that he devote his life to music.
Following his initial training as a pianist, Schulhoff studied composition in his native Prague as well as in Leipzig and Cologne, and he took private lessons with Reger and Debussy. After serving in the Austrian Army during World War I, he made his home in Dresden, where his music reflected the artistic ferment of the postwar decade. Among the influences on his music in the 1920s were expressionism and Dadaism as well as Schoenberg
and serialism, Bartók and folk music, Gershwin and American jazz, and Alois Hába’s experiments with quarter-tone composition.
Alarmed by the rise of the Nazis, Schulhoff moved from Dresden back to Prague and joined the Communist Party. He used his art to support his new cause, composing a giant setting of The Communist Manifesto in 1932. For protection against the growing influence of the Nazis, Schulhoff took Soviet citizenship in 1938. With war looming, he tried to flee to Russia, but he was captured by the Germans. His mixture of identities—Jew, Communist, and Soviet citizen—proved fatal: Schulhoff was sent to the concentration camp at Wülzburg, and he died there of tuberculosis during the summer of 1942 at the age 48.
Schulhoff’s two string quartets, composed in 1924 and 1925, have become part of the repertoire, but there’s another string quartet, in G major, that Schulhoff wrote in 1918, when he was 24 years old and on leave from the Austrian Army. To make room for that quartet in Schulhoff’s roster of his works, it’s sometimes referred to as his Quartet No. 0.
Schulhoff’s pre-war works, composed while he was still a teenager, had been in Classical forms and included a piano concerto and sonatas for violin and for cello. For his Quartet No. 0, he turned to another Classical form, the string quartet, and his first effort at writing in this form produced what seems at first a fairly conservative piece of music; Haydn himself would have recognized the sequence and structure of its movements.
The opening movement, aptly marked Frisch und kräftig (“Fresh and Powerful”), bursts to life with a vigorous first theme, and it sustains that energy level across the span of the movement. The movement is in sonata form, and its flowing and chromatic second idea seems to offer relief, but it, too, takes wing with an almost expressionistic energy. The movement drives to a powerful climax, falls away gently in its aftermath, and concludes violently.
The second movement, Langsam, getragen und ausdrucksvoll, is slow, and Schulhoff specifies that its performance should be “solemn and expressive.” This is dark music, and one senses the influence of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht throughout in the intensity of the writing for strings, the constantly evolving harmonies, and the unsettling mixture of sweetness side-by-side with pain.
Schulhoff casts the third movement not as the expected scherzo but rather—going all the way back to the quartets of Haydn and early Beethoven—a minuet. This Menuet movement preserves the grace and good spirits of Haydn’s minuets, even if that older master might
have been astonished by the slithering main theme and the constant key shifts. Schulhoff remains true to Classical form by including a busy trio section and then returning to the opening material, although the movement comes to an utterly unexpected conclusion (but one that Haydn, with his love of surprises, would have liked).
The finale is a Rondo, and it gets off to a Haydnesque beginning with a spirited rondo tune. Schulhoff relaxes somewhat in this movement, and his performance marking is “a little bit lively.” The episodes along the way are varied and attractive, and Schulhoff’s first effort at a string quartet comes to a buoyant conclusion.
In this quartet, we hear the young Schulhoff still working to master Classical forms, but throughout there are flashes of the directions he’d explore more completely as he found his own idiom in the 1920s. ◗
AUGUST 1
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
5 p.m., Pre-Concert Talk: Composers Tyson Gholston Davis and Ania Vu Women's Board Room in the New Mexico Museum of Art
JACK QUARTET
CHRISTOPHER OTTO, Violin
AUSTIN WULLIMAN, Violin
JOHN PICKFORD RICHARDS, Viola
JAY CAMPBELL, Cello
ANTHONY CHEUNG
Twice Removed (2024) (b. 1982)
I. Stretto House (after Steven Holl/Béla Bartók)
II. 830 Fireplace Road (after John Yau/Jackson Pollock)
III. Meditation on Motion (after Dean Rader/Cy Twombly)
IV. Journey to Mount Tamalpais (after Etel Adnan)
TYSON GHOLSTON DAVIS
…echoes of river and mist… (2025; Festival Commission; (b. 2000) World Premiere)
ANIA VU
Unveiling (2025; Festival Commission; World Premiere) (b. 1994)
HELMUT LACHENMANN
String Quartet No. 3, Grido (2001) (b. 1935)
Notes on the Program
Friday, 6 p.m. AUGUST 1
ANTHONY CHEUNG (b. 1982)
Twice Removed (2024)
Anthony Cheung was born in San Francisco and earned his bachelor’s degree in music and history from Harvard University and his doctorate in music from Columbia University. He studied composition with Bernard Rands and Tristan Murail and piano with Robert Levin and Paul Hersh. From 2013 to 2020, he taught at the University of Chicago, and he currently serves on the faculty of Brown University.
The San Francisco Chronicle has described Cheung’s music as “gritty, inventive and wonderfully assured,” and his works have been performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, New York and Los Angeles philharmonics, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Ensemble intercontemporain, and many others. Among the musicians he’s written for are violinist Jennifer Koh, pianists Gilles Vonsattel and Shai Wosner, and the Escher String Quartet. Cheung’s many honors include a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Charles Ives Fellowship and Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, first prize in the 2008 International Dutilleux Competition, and a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome.
Twice Removed was commissioned by the JACK Quartet with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the 92nd Street Y, and London’s Wigmore Hall. Cheung dedicated the work “to the musicians of JACK with immense gratitude and in celebration of the group’s 20th anniversary.” The JACK Quartet gave the first performance of Twice Removed in New York City on November 10, 2024, and has performed the work widely since then. The composer has written a program note for the piece, which is included below.—The Editors
Twice Removed is a series of double reflections: four musical responses to artworks that are themselves responses to other pieces. The practice of ekphrasis—describing or evoking another work of art through a different medium—undergoes a further transformation in each of [Twice Removed ’s four] movements. Sometimes a trace of the original remains through conscious or even subconscious allusions, [and sometimes the original has] been filtered into something very different.
[In the first movement, how] much of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta—the inspiration behind architect Steven Holl’s 1991 Stretto House in Dallas—is carried over into this new reflection? The stretto device in music (a contrapuntal technique of close imitative entrances) finds its way into the “aqueous space” of Holl’s design and the overlapping curvilineal metal overhead, contrasting with orthogonal blocks that divide each section.
In the poem “830 Fireplace Road,” John Yau— long known for donning the twin hats of poet and art critic—riffs on and reorders a sentence by Jackson Pollock: “When I am in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing.” Yau’s 14 lines form a set of variations, an unconventional take on the sonnet, where words and meaning collapse into pure rhythm and sound. Reaching back to the source, Pollock’s drip technique has some bearing on the timbres of the instruments here.
A continuous line that traces itself into white circles on a gray canvas forms the unforgettable image of Cy Twombly’s Cold Stream. And Dean Rader, in his volume of ekphrastic Twombly-inspired poems Before the Borderless, writes in “Meditation on Motion”: “The line like the river does not know to stop / neither does my wonder / I would like these lines to be drawn on my skin / I would like to feel these lines beneath my skin...”
Finally, the last movement is quite different in mood and source. It reflects on moments, both verbal and visual, from Etel Adnan’s Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1986), a long-form meditation on, and paean to, the highest peak in the Marin Hills, which, for Adnan, represented a kind of transcendental beauty that she tried to capture in writings, drawings, and paintings over several decades. In it, she writes: “I make paintings and watercolors of Tamalpais. Again and again. Why do I insist? Am I trying to hold some image, to capture some meaning, to assert its presence, to measure myself to its timelessness, to fight, or to accept? … Tamalpais has an autonomy of being. So does a drawing of it. But they are mysteriously related.”
So, too, is a piece of music that engages with both of them.—Anthony Cheung
Tyson Gholston Davis and Ania Vu are the two participants in this year’s Young Composers String Quartet Project, an annual, mentorship-based program that the Festival established in 2013 to spotlight and support the work of notable up-and-coming composers. The Festival commissioned the string quartets by Davis and Vu heard on this evening’s program as part of the Project. Some of the below text is excerpted from the article “2025 Young Composers String Quartet Project,” which begins on p. 26 and provides more information about the Project and about Davis and Vu and their work.—The Editors
TYSON GHOLSTON DAVIS (b. 2000) …echoes of river and mist… (2025; Festival Commission; World Premiere)
Tyson Gholston Davis was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts’ High School Program. After graduation, he moved to New York City, where he earned his bachelor’s degree from The Juilliard School in 2023 and his master’s degree this past May.
“As a kid,” Davis says, “I was deeply curious about the arts in general. I painted, sketched little plays, and messed around on my grandmother’s piano.” When Davis was around the age of seven or eight, he became increasingly interested in the piano, so his mother gave him his first lessons, covering “basic piano techniques and notation,” Davis says. “I had been raised listening to everything from soul to rap,” he adds, “so I had a diverse musical life from the start.”
That diverse musical life has seemingly influenced Davis’s musical style as well. “I find that my style is constantly evolving," Davis says, "and, for an artist, I think being open to new ways of understanding your art is your greatest strength.”
Davis has been composing music for almost 20 years— which means for most of his life. “I wrote my first piece as soon as I began learning how to read music at age eight,” he says. “My first pieces were short little things that were influenced by piano works I was learning and listening to at the time. As I kept writing those little pieces,” he continues, “I figured out, in fifth grade, that I wanted to pursue writing music as a career.”
So far, Davis's career has been filled with such notable
honors as serving as a 2019 composer apprentice for the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America at Carnegie Hall and receiving the ASCAP Foundation’s 2020 Morton Gould Young Composer Award, BMI’s 2020 Student Composer Award, and the Copland House’s 2024 Residency Award. Davis has also received numerous commissions, including ones from The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, and the Terezin Music Foundation, which commissioned his 2023 solo piano work, …Expansions of Light, for Jonathan Biss. Davis’s music has also been performed by the Juilliard String Quartet, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and soprano Ariadne Greif, among many others. When describing his music, Davis says: “At the moment, my work tends to have gradually paced-out harmonies that emerge over several minutes, and/or energetic passages that subtly develop themselves. How music is paced has been an extremely important notion in my head over the last several years.”
Davis has provided a program note for his Festivalcommissioned quartet, …echoes of river and mist…, and we’ve included it below.—Amy Hegarty
…echoes of river and mist… is a work that draws inspiration from American abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011). Frankenthlaer’s painting Barometer (1992) is a pensive, still, whiteand-gray canvas that is slightly textured due to the thick layers of paint in certain areas. As I began my sketches of …echoes of river and mist… this spring, I took many early-morning walks along the Hudson River near the George Washington Bridge and Fort Tryon Park, where I live in New York City. I noticed that the dense mist over the river during this time was extremely similar to the atmosphere of Barometer. The thickness of the mist and fog completely obscured the land across the river in New Jersey. Nothing but the river’s gray tides could be seen as they drifted toward the Atlantic. Frankenthaler’s canvas captures the essence of this phenomenon through its expansive, cloud-like shapes and sweeping motion. This imagery is how I came up with the title of the work, and it serves as the point of inspiration.—Tyson Gholston Davis
ANIA VU (b. 1994)
Unveiling (2025; Festival Commission; World Premiere)
From grades 1 through 12, Ania Vu attended a public music school in Warsaw, Poland, where she was born and raised. “I was classically trained by a wonderful Russian piano teacher, Professor Irina Rumiancewa-Dabrowski, who profoundly shaped me as a musician,” Vu says. Additionally, Vu studied at home with her mother, Đăng H
ông Anh, “who is also a composer-pianist and Moscowtrained,” Vu notes. “If it weren’t for her,” she adds, “I don’t know if I would have ended up in music.”
Vu has been composing for most of her life, having written her first piece at the age of 15, when she learned that her school was hosting a composition competition. “As a teenager, I loved listening to film music and jazz, and my dream back then was to become a film composer,” Vu says. “For the competition, I wrote a simple jazz-inspired piece for soprano saxophone and piano, and it ended up winning first prize. A few years later, I wrote two more pieces to apply for an undergraduate composition program in the US, and the rest is history.”
That history includes Vu earning her bachelor’s degree at the Eastman School of Music and her doctoral degree at the University of Pennsylvania. It also includes serving as the 2024 composer-in-residence at the Chelsea Music Festival in Manhattan, receiving the Copland House’s 2023 Residency Award, and serving as both a 2022 composer fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and a 2021–23 Composers & the Voice fellow at the American Opera Projects in Brooklyn, among other honors. For the past few years, Vu had been based in Chicago, where she served as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Chicago and a lecturer at Northwestern University as well. In July, she relocated to California to begin a new role as an assistant professor at Pomona College.
When reflecting on her work—which has been performed by Sō Percussion, TAK, the Mivos and Daedalus quartets, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Mannes American Composers Ensemble, and others—Vu says that she’s “always been drawn to music theory and ear training, which has provided a foundation for composition.” For the past six or seven years, she notes, “my work has tended to draw inspiration from poetry, time, and sounds and laws from the natural world. But regardless of the source of inspiration or topic,” she says, “what remains constant is my awareness of music as a time-based art form: I'm always aware of form,
proportions, and the psychological journey of the listener when experiencing my music.” Overall, she adds, “I strive for my music to be both intellectually and emotionally stimulating.”—Amy Hegarty
HELMUT LACHENMANN (b. 1935)
String Quartet No. 3, Grido (2001)
Helmut Lachenmann was born in Stuttgart. He studied with Luigi Nono in Venice and lectured at Darmstadt in the late 1970s (and after). His music makes use of many unconventional playing techniques and has been highly influential in terms of innovations in music notation and technical (tactile) possibility. He currently lives in Stuttgart (and sometimes northern Italy) and is actively composing new works. He practices the art of katsugen undo to stay healthy, and he’s a good friend.
String Quartet No. 3, Grido, is the raison d’être of the JACK Quartet’s existence. We formed in 2003 to perform the work at a festival in Mexico, which is where we first worked with Lachenmann. The title Grido is derived from the first names (Graham, Rohan, Irvine, and Dov) of the then-members of the Arditti Quartet, for whom the work was written. We joked at the time that, had the piece been written for us, it would have been titled Jack. [The first names of the JACK Quartet’s founding members are John, Ari, Christopher, and Kevin.]
Lachenmann is well known for his use of extended techniques—so much so that this fame (infamy?) could falsely detract from the essential beauty of his works. Gran Torso, his first quartet, employs almost no “normal” tone-production methods whatsoever. Its title is evocative of a dismembered Greek or Roman sculptural bust, representing the husk of a classical form or perhaps the death of classical music itself. In the time since Lachenmann wrote that quartet, his musical aesthetic has greatly expanded in terms of the dimensions he deals with. I’ve heard several lectures in which he talked about scales, or continua, in all elements of music.
Grido establishes a relationship between noise and pitch that’s not only congruous but also [demonstrates] a solid conceptual continuity: Sometimes [noise and pitch] are embedded within one another; the grinding of the bow at specific points on the string produces specific pitches; extremely quiet circular bowing produces major triads veiled beneath a blanket of breathy sibilance. There is a surprising amount of “normal” tone production as well, although microtones or slow glissandi may lend
more traditional harmonies a (perhaps unintentional) spectral quality. In short, the purpose of these extended techniques is not to be contrary to tradition but rather to what playing an instrument means.
The JACK Quartet has had the good fortune of working with Lachenmann on three separate occasions, the last of which we spent in tandem with the Arditti Quartet. Lachenmann has very specific sound concepts in mind for each technique, all of which he can demonstrate. Though not a string player, he holds his violin inverted like a cello and can produce every sound with exacting precision. When demonstrating a pitched rattling sound produced using extra pressure above the fingerboard, he would joke that each click of the bow hair should be articulated and countable. In addition, these techniques are not only precise but are meant to be beautiful.
One of Lachenmann’s formal influences is the Baroque dance suite, and in Grido, the dance elements are embedded within a larger structure. [Grido] is a single continuous movement with many sections and recurring motifs, but toward the end there are two clear examples of dance movements that were pointed out to us by Lachenmann. The first is a waltz, but the triple time is masked by a duple subdivision, while dense chords are offset by saltando riffs and harmonics. The other device is a jig at the very end. A running sextuplet backdrop is sliced by brash noisy interruptions. Listen (and watch) for the “scream.” You’ll know it when you see it.—Kevin McFarland
Kevin McFarland is the founding cellist of the JACK Quartet. He performed with the ensemble from 2005, when the quartet was officially formed, until 2016.
Generously sponsored by
JACK QUARTET
CHRISTOPHER OTTO, Violin
AUSTIN WULLIMAN, Violin
JOHN PICKFORD RICHARDS, Viola
JAY CAMPBELL, Cello
CHRISTOPHER OTTO (after RODERICUS) Angelorum Psalat (2011/ca. 1390) (b. 1983)
JURI SEO
Three Imaginary Chansons (2023–24) (b. 1981) Descent of Serpent Swan Song Confronted Cocks and Running Dogs
CHRISTOPHER OTTO (after SOLAGE) Fumeux fume par fumée (2018/ca. 1390)
CHRISTOPHER OTTO Miserere (2023/1594) (after NATHANIEL GILES)
CALEB BURHANS Contritus (2009) (b. 1980)
Saturday, 5 p.m. AUGUST 2
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Sunday & Monday, 6 p.m.
JULY 13 & 14
Saturday, 5 p.m. AUGUST 2
CHRISTOPHER OTTO (after RODERICUS) (b. 1983)
Angelorum Psalat (2011/ca. 1390)
This string quartet is a re-imagination of Angelorum Psalat, a strikingly original two-voice ballade from the Chantilly Codex, which is a collection of music in the style known as ars subtilior (“subtler art”). Angelorum Psalat is the only surviving work of Rodericus, who’s known in the codex as Suciredor [Rodericus spelled backwards].
Many works of the ars subtilior style experiment with rhythmic and notational complexity, and Angelorum Psalat is one of the most extreme examples, using no fewer than 20 different varicolored note shapes. For my composition, I have relied on the transcription of Nors S. Josephson, in whose interpretation the note shapes signify a radical expansion of rhythmic possibility, specifying a much richer variety of speeds and durations than most Western music before the 20th century. The composition fractures and re-assembles these rhythms and melodies into multiple streams of kaleidoscopic patterns that diverge and merge.—Christopher Otto
Christopher Otto is a founding member of the JACK Quartet and plays first violin for the ensemble.
Original text for Angelorum Psalat:
(A)ngelorum psalat tripudium musicorum pandens armoniam orpheycam plectens sinphoniam procul pellens vanum fastidium qui operum fuit inicium delictorum frangens constantiam duplicatum ostendens animam pomum prebens cunctis letiferum
Ista gerit vices luciferi que principi suppremo voluit coequari set tandem corruit in profundum abissi inferi(ri)
Pestifera in qua superbia ingrata es deo et homini in retro mordens ut fera pessima
ante blandis ut faus innocui.
(T)enor Retro mordens ut fera pessima
Translation of original text for Angelorum Psalat:
The rejoicing of the angels sounds to the cithara, diffusing the consonance of the musicians, plucking the harmony of Orpheus, chasing far away empty haughtiness, which effected the beginning of crimes shattering faithfulness, revealing doubled arrogance, offering all a death-bringing apple.
This acts in place of Lucifer, who wished to be to his first leader equal, but finally plunged into the deep abyss of Hell
through this plague-bringing pride, unwelcome to God and men, behind, biting like an evil wild beast, in front, flattering with innocent mouth.
Tenor: Behind, biting like an evil wild beast
—Translation by Crawford Young
JURI SEO (b. 1981)
Three Imaginary Chansons (2023–24)
Juri Seo is an American composer and pianist who was born in Korea and now lives in New Jersey, where she’s an associate professor of music at Princeton University. She earned her doctor-of-musical-arts degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and she studied for a year at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Seo’s numerous honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Otto Eckstein Fellowship from Tanglewood, a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress, and both a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and the Andrew Imbrie Award from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters, among others. Seo has also received commissions from Tanglewood, the Fromm Music Foundation, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Barlow Endowment, and the Goethe Institute. Her discography includes the albums Toy Store, Mostly Piano, and Respiri
Seo has stated that she “seeks to write music that encompasses extreme contrast through compositions that are unified and fluid yet complex” and that she “merges many of the fascinating aspects of music from the past century—in particular its expanded timbral palette and unorthodox approach to structure—with a deep love of functional tonality, counterpoint, and Classical form.”
Seo has provided the following program note for the work heard on this evening’s concert, Three Imaginary Chansons. The note references “just intonation,” which Encyclopedia Britannica describes as a “system of tuning in which the correct size of all the intervals of the scale is calculated by different additions and subtractions of pure natural thirds and fifths.”—The Editors
Three Imaginary Chansons is inspired by the speculative music of the late-Medieval [musical style] ars subtilior, in which the refinement of notation led to an unprecedented rhythmic complexity. I wanted to extend the same kind of exercise to pitch, utilizing the new intervals of extended just intonation.
The first song of Three Imaginary Chansons, Descent of Serpent, opens with a series of harmonic shifts downward by justly tuned minor thirds, overshooting the octave by “the greater diesis,” about 62 cents. The following section erupts in bitonality a diesis apart. The song roughly follows the rondeau form, ABAABAB, with textual variations reinterpreted as musical variations.
The second song, Swan Song, is inspired by lute music. The ending descent is marked by a series of septimal commas, symbolizing a sinking heart and dying breaths.
The third song, Confronted Cocks and Running Dogs, takes its name from an elaborate Byzantine tapestry that dates to around the fourth through the sixth centuries. The symmetrical image is striking in its invocation of vigor, violence, and speed. The song unfolds in a quasi-virelai form, following roughly the number of syllables and rhyme schemes of virelai. Most of the materials are presented in hockets.
Three Imaginary Chansons was written in the winter of 2023–24 for the JACK Quartet for their
program Modern Medieval, [which JACK describes as exploring “the connections of musicality and thought between European composers of the past and the voices of American music today.”]—Juri Seo
CHRISTOPHER OTTO (after SOLAGE) (b. 1983) Fumeux fume par fumée (2018/ca. 1390)
Solage lived in France in the late 14th century, but “Solage” is little more than a name that’s on a number of pieces retained in the Chantilly Codex, a collection of works that exemplify a musical style called ars subtilior (“subtler art”). Solage is likely a nom de plume, a variant spelling of solace that means “joy,” “entertainment,” or “consolation.”
Fumeux fume par fumée (approximately translated as “The Smoker Smokes Through Smoke”) is a song for three voices. In it, Solage seems to lampoon an ostentatious group of poets who are known for their outrageous dress and bohemian lifestyle and who named their clique after the poet Jean Fumeux.
The interpretation of this title and this work is up for debate: Is the smoke “smoke in the brain” (referring to mental confusion or “vapours” that might be broken up by a morning drink), or is it a reference to the literal smoking of hashish or opium? (Tobacco wasn’t known in Europe at that time.)
Solage takes this haziness to the brink in this rondeau, using some of the most outré chromaticism and lowest vocal range of the period. Chris has adapted this piece to highlight its extremes: He’s taken the major and minor thirds that run through the harmonies of the piece and retuned them, widening and compressing them by the “septimal” interval or seventh partial of the harmonic series. By the end of his microtonal adaptation, after winding through some perception-altering modulations, the refrain is presented in its original low range in the viola and cello. By now, the smoke has clouded our usual grasp of pitches and harmonies that we imagined to be familiar. Where are we, exactly? Or when?—Austin Wulliman
Austin Wulliman is a violinist for the JACK Quartet.
Original text for Fumeux fume par fumée:
Fumeux fume par fumée, Fumeuse speculacion. Qu’antre fummet sa pensee, Fumeux fume par fumée.
Quar fumer molt li agree’ Tant qu’il ait son entencion’. Fumeux fume par fumée, Fumeuse speculacion.
Translation of original text for Fumeux fume par fumée:
The smoker smokes through smoke, A smoky speculation.
While others smoke in thought, The smoker smokes through smoke, Because smoke pleases him greatly As he meditates.
The smoker smokes through smoke, A smoky speculation.
KEIR GoGWILT (b. 1991)
Treatise on Limited Freedoms: Ornamentation Game and Future Mode 1 (2024)
Keir GoGwilt was born in Edinburgh and grew up in New York City. He studied literature at Harvard University and earned his PhD in music at UC San Diego. An accomplished violinist, he’s been hailed as a “formidable performer” by The New York Times and praised for his “finger-busting virtuosity” by The San Diego Union-Tribune; as a soloist, he’s appeared with the La Jolla Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Sinfonieorchester Basel, and Orquesta Filarmónica de Santiago, among other ensembles. This past spring, he released an album of Scottish fiddle music with the early-music group Ruckus called The Edinburgh Rollick.
GoGwilt is a founding member of the American Modern Opera Company, which he’s composed for and performed with at a wide range of venues, including the 92nd Street Y and Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City and the Ojai Music Festival. He’s also a 2023–25 artist-in-residence with the JACK Quartet’s JACK Studio, which JACK created in 2019 “to support commissions, recordings, and workshops with emerging music artists who are interested in exploring and expanding the repertory for string quartet.” GoGwilt wrote the work on today’s program as part of his residency, and he’s also written the below program note.—The Editors
These two pieces come out of a body of work called Treatise on Limited Freedoms, a set of modules and games I’m developing to encourage improvisation
and composition in just intonation.
The first piece, Ornamentation Game, presents the players with a progression of chords that they repeat, each time with more florid improvisations in the melody part (moving from player to player).
The second piece, Future Mode 1, is a study on a single mode drawn from partials 8 through 14 of the natural harmonic series: a resonant series of intervals with characteristics including a lowered 7th, a raised 4th, and a lowered major-6th scale degree. This mode is explored through improvisatory-sounding melodies, stacked harmonically atop bass notes and transposed and modulated to create subtle tonal drifts.
While the tuning system used in these pieces suggests a contemporary sound, the materials that organize the composition—counterpoint, figured bass lines, stepwise voice-leading, and ornamentation— are in large part inspired by techniques from the Baroque and Renaissance periods.
This project was inspired by an invitation to write for the JACK Quartet through their JACK Studio program. A huge thanks to Chris, Austin, John, and Jay for taking this piece on board with sincere interest and enthusiasm.—Keir GoGwilt
CHRISTOPHER OTTO (after NATHANIEL GILES) (b. 1983) Miserere (2023/1594)
I have long been fascinated by pieces of music that challenge linear notions of musical history, transcending their original contexts and finding new resonances. From time to time, I lose myself in obscure corners of 14ththrough early-17th-century European music, seeking loose strands of polyrhythmic contrapuntal practice that cry out for continued weaving.
English composer Nathaniel Giles (1558–1633/34) called his Miserere “a lesson of descant of thirtie-eight proportions of sundry kinds.” Two voices intertwine harmoniously, one repeating steadily and the other speeding up and slowing down so that their relative speeds are ratios of whole numbers such as 2:1, 4:1, 3:1, 3:2, 9:2, 5:1, 5:2, 5:4, 15:4, 7:3, 14:3, 5:3, 10:3, 20:3, 7:1, 7:2, 7:4, 21:4, 21:8, 2:3, 4:3, 8:3, 16:3, 6:1, 2:5, 4:5, 8:5, 16:5, 32:5, 8:1, 2:7, 4:7, 8:7, 16:7, 32:7, 3:4, 9:4, and 9:1.
By the spring of 2020, both Giles’s music and its sequence of ratios had taken root in my imagination,
yielding two new tendrils: plucked violin parts that dance through a latticework of speeds, braiding with the original two voices to create another layer of embellishment.
Miserere, after Nathaniel Giles, is my homage to a timeless play of proportions, embodying a harmony that encompasses wide-ranging temporal frameworks and manifests the scratchings of ancient pens as present-day consciousness.—Christopher Otto
CALEB BURHANS (b. 1980)
Contritus (2009)
Caleb Burhans was born in Monterey, California, and came to music very early: He trained as a boy soprano, and along the way he learned to play violin and viola. He attended the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Eastman School of Music, and he’s currently based in Brooklyn.
Burhans is a musician of extremely wide interests and influences, which include not just classical music but also new music, early music, pop, improvisation, punk, and jazz. He’s a founding member of Alarm Will Sound, the Wordless Music Orchestra, and Ensemble Signal, and he performs with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble and, with guitarist Grey Mcmurray, as the duo itsnotyouitsme. Burhans has worked with musicians from Paul McCartney to Bruce Springsteen to Lady Gaga, and for two years (2018–20) he was the concertmaster for the Broadway production of Mean Girls the Musical
As a composer, Burhans has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Library of Congress, among others, and his music has been played by Eighth Blackbird, Roomful of Teeth, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, and the JACK Quartet. He has an extensive discography as both a composer and a performer, and NPR named his debut album, Evensong, one of the top 50 albums of 2013.
Burhans has provided the following program note for the work heard on this evening’s program, Contritus —The Editors
Contritus is Latin for “crushed by guilt.” In the Catholic Church, there are many prayers of contrition and penance.
Contritus, composed in the fall and winter of 2009, is in three sections that organically flow into one another. These sections represent three different prayers of contrition.
Much of the string writing in Contritus is evocative of early music and viol consorts while still portraying a sense of modern guilt.—Caleb Burhans ◗
Sunday & Monday, 6 p.m.
AUGUST 3 & 4
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
SHAI WOSNER, Piano
JENNIFER FRAUTSCHI, Violin
JOSEPH JOHNSON, Cello*
MIAMI STRING QUARTET
BENNY KIM, Violin
CATHY MENG ROBINSON, Violin
SCOTT LEE, Viola
KEITH ROBINSON, Cello
DAVID SHIFRIN, Clarinet
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
String Trio in D Major, Op. 9, No. 2 (1798) (1770–1827)
Allegretto
BÉLA BARTÓK
CARL MARIA VON WEBER
Andante quasi allegretto
Menuetto
Rondo
Jennifer Frautschi, Scott Lee, Joseph Johnson
Sonata in C Major for Violin and Piano, Sz. 76 (1922) (1881–1945)
Allegretto
*Santa Fe Opera artist
Molto moderato
Jennifer Frautschi, Shai Wosner
INTERMISSION
Clarinet Quintet in B-flat Major, Op. 34 (1811–15) (1786–1826)
Allegro
Fantasia: Adagio
Menuetto
Rondo: Allegro
David Shifrin, Benny Kim, Cathy Meng Robinson, Scott Lee, Keith Robinson
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Sunday & Monday, 6 p.m. AUGUST 3 & 4
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
String Trio in D Major, Op. 9, No. 2 (1798)
Some composers are born with an instinctive sense of form while others must work to master it. Mozart is a perfect example of the former and Beethoven of the latter.
Beethoven arrived in Vienna in the fall of 1792 and spent the rest of that decade working on various forms: In his first years in the city, he published sets of piano trios, piano sonatas, cello sonatas, and violin sonatas, and some have speculated that he was practicing with those forms in order to prepare himself for the most challenging ones of all: the string quartet and symphony. Before he turned to those forms, however, he mastered one more (unusual) form: the string trio.
Comprising a violin, viola, and cello, the string trio presents a particularly difficult challenge for a composer, as it lacks the second violin that’s used in the string quartet to “complete” the harmony. Perhaps it’s for that reason that it’s never been frequently employed. One great example of a string trio is Mozart’s Divertimento in E-flat Major, K. 563, although even Mozart was generally content to steer clear of the form.
During the 1790s, Beethoven wrote five works for string trio. The first two were individual trios: the String Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 3, of 1794, and the Serenade in D Major, Op. 8, of 1797—both of which look back to the multimovement serenade style of the 18th century. But in 1797 and 1798, Beethoven faced the form squarely and wrote the three trios of his Opus 9, each of which is in the four-movement Classical style.
The second of these, the String Trio in D Major, is the shortest and least familiar of that set, and it’s a consciously nondramatic work. The other two trios have first movements marked Allegro con brio, but here Beethoven marks the first movement Allegretto, and that more moderate tempo is a key to the music’s character. A gentle opening marked pianissimo leads to more spirited material, but the flowing second subject, presented first as a duet for violin and viola, is characteristically marked dolce. The movement may not be unusually dramatic, but it does demand first-rate performers. After a focused development, the music drives to a firm close.
This trio is also distinctive because, unlike the other two in its set, it doesn’t have a true slow movement: Beethoven marks the second movement Andante quasi allegretto, and it flows along a fairly steady pulse. He also moves into the key of D minor, which creates dark shadows at certain moments. Those shadows blow away at the beginning of the Menuetto, which returns to D major and, with its Allegro marking, is fast paced. In sharp contrast to such energy, however, the Menuetto’s trio section feels strangely subdued: it’s performed both pianissimo and staccato throughout.
The finale is a substantial Rondo, and some have felt that this movement edges toward sonata form with its introduction of further themes and its complex extending of them. It does bring the trio to an impressive close, and the very ending, where the violin comes cascading down across two octaves of D-major chords, is most emphatic.
Beethoven was very enthusiastic about the three trios of his Opus 9. In a letter to the works’ dedicatee, Count Johann Georg von Browne, Beethoven described them as “the best of my works.” He may have been right, as the clear sense of form and the clarity of writing in the set suggests Beethoven’s continuing growth as a composer. But by the time these trios were published, in 1798, Beethoven was deeply involved in the writing of his first set of string quartets, and he’d find the string quartet a much more powerful and expressive form. He never wrote a string trio again.
BÉLA BARTÓK (1881–1945)
Sonata in C Major for Violin and Piano, Sz. 76 (1922)
The World War I years were bleak and unproductive for Bartók. Depressed by the fighting, the political turmoil, and the disruption of musical life in Hungary, Bartók withdrew. He stopped performing, composed very little, and concentrated instead on conducting folk-music research. After the war, however, Bartók, then in his early 40s, came into contact with recent works by Schoenberg and Stravinsky, and the effect on him was profound.
Schoenberg’s influence in particular can be felt in Bartók’s two violin sonatas (1921–22), where traditional tonality is often blurred. And while he was tempted by
Schoenberg’s theories, he could never bring himself to renounce tonality completely. Looking back several years later, he noted that “it is an unmistakable characteristic of my works of that period that they are built upon a tonal base.”
Such a description is a good introduction to Bartók’s Second Violin Sonata—the Sonata in C Major— composed in 1922. While this work can seem bracing and dissonant, Bartók believed it to be firmly anchored in the key of C major, and the dissonance seems almost incidental. Bartók’s biographer Halsey Stevens noted that in this sonata, it’s “as if the players [are] engaged upon different works simultaneously: works which correspond in length and structure and complement each other at every point but share no themes or motives.” For all its thorny harmonies, however, the Second Violin Sonata is immediately appealing music, echoing throughout with the sound of folk fiddling that was part of Bartók’s soul.
The Molto moderato is marked by extraordinary rhythmic freedom. The meter changes almost constantly, which gives the music an improvisatory quality; the haunting violin part is full of swirls, glissandos, and a variety of other decorations. The entire sonata is unified around the violin’s simple rising-and-falling figure heard at the very beginning of this movement, which will reappear in a variety of shapes.
Bartók proceeds with almost no pause into the Allegretto, which is introduced by the piano’s brusque chords; the violin’s main theme, played pizzicato, is a variant of the first movement’s opening melody. Some have compared this movement to a folk dance in rondo form, as it offers a series of extremely animated episodes that are full of energy and bright color. It’s also marked by wild mood swings: Sometimes its music is languorous and sultry, sometimes it’s almost brutal. At its close, the violin sings a broad restatement of the sonata’s opening theme, and gradually the music trails off to its extraordinary ending: The violin has a harmonic E at the extreme top of its range, while the piano has a low C; into this, Bartók inserts a solitary G, completing the sonata in quietly shimmering C major. It’s a convincing conclusion to a very impressive piece of music.
Bartók, a pianist, performed this sonata with the Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, in April 1940, shortly before the composer moved to this country. That exciting performance, full of expressive freedom and distinguished musicianship, was recorded with good sound and is readily available.
CARL
MARIA VON WEBER (1786–1826)
Clarinet Quintet in B-flat Major, Op. 34 (1811–15)
Though he was a virtuoso pianist, Carl Maria von Weber developed a special fondness for an instrument he didn’t play—the clarinet—which had only been accepted into the family of Classical instruments a few decades earlier. Weber’s love of the clarinet and his friendship with the clarinetist Heinrich Baermann (1784–1847) led him to compose several works for the instrument, including two concertos, a concertino for clarinet and orchestra, a set of variations for clarinet and piano, a duo for clarinet and piano, and—most famous of all—his Clarinet Quintet in B-flat Major. Weber began composing this quintet in 1811 but wound up working on it over a period of several years and didn’t finish it until the night before its premiere in Munich on August 25, 1815.
The two great clarinet quintets of the 19th century are those of Weber and Brahms, and they couldn’t be more different. Whereas Brahms carefully integrates the clarinet with the string quartet and stresses the partnership of the five instruments through rigorous motivic development, Weber makes the clarinet the star of his work and casts the string quartet in a purely supporting role.
The very opening of the first movement, the Allegro, suggests the nature of this music: Over steady and unobtrusive string accompaniment, the clarinet makes its fluid entrance. The Allegro shows off the clarinet’s agility, contrasting it with the instrument’s ability to sustain a long, mellifluous line, and it concludes with a reminiscence of the clarinet’s opening melody.
With its lyric melodies and brilliant runs, the Fantasia inevitably reminds commentators of an opera aria; in the second half, Weber contrasts loud runs of speedy 128th notes with their very soft echoes.
The third movement, the Menuetto, is outwardly in Classical minuet form, but Weber’s marking of capriccio presto (“in a whimsical style and very fast”) suggests its true character: With a dark G-minor tonality, chirping grace notes, and chromatic melodies, this music evokes an exotic atmosphere. The Rondo finale is the most concerto-like: Over a steadily galloping accompaniment, the clarinetist has ample opportunity to demonstrate their skills with long runs, shining passagework, and a coda that spills over with athletic triplets.
Weber’s Clarinet Quintet may not plumb great depths, but it makes no pretense of doing so. Rather, it’s eminently agreeable music that continues to delight clarinetists and audiences alike more than two centuries after it was written. ◗
Presentation Synopsis
BAM!! is generously sponsored by an anonymous donor and by John Hart and Carol Prins
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
“Music, Memory & the Aging Brain”
Concetta M. Tomaino, DA, LCAT, MT-BC Executive Director and Co-Founder, Institute for Music and Neurologic Function
Both research and clinical work in music therapy point to the importance of music as a therapeutic tool to help facilitate preserved function in people with various neurologic diseases—especially ones that involve movement disorders and neurocognitive impairment— and the field of cognitive neuroscience is starting to provide information about how and why this is the case.
“Music, Memory & the Aging Brain” gives an overview of how music-based interventions can be used to enhance memory and stimulate associations and personal connections in those with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. The presentation will also address issues related to motor timing and expectation, improvisation and disinhibition, attention and memory, and language processing as well as strategies for including music to enhance senior wellness and healthcare.
About Dr. Concetta M. Tomaino
Dr. Concetta M. Tomaino is the executive director and cofounder—with the renowned neurologist and author Oliver Sacks—of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF). Previously, she was the senior vice president for music therapy for the CenterLight Health System (formerly the Beth Abraham Family of Health Services), where she worked from 1980 to 2016. In 2017, Dr. Tomaino and the IMNF relocated to the campus of Wartburg, a senior residential and healthcare facility in Mt. Vernon, New York.
Dr. Tomaino is known internationally for her research in the clinical applications of music and neurologic
rehabilitation, and she lectures around the world on music therapy. Her work has been featured on national television programs, such as 48 Hours and 60 Minutes; on international broadcast channels, including the BBC; and in books on health and healing. Dr. Sacks’s book Musicophilia is dedicated to her. Dr. Tomaino’s book, Music Has Power in Senior Wellness and Healthcare: Best Practices from Music Therapy, was published in 2023 by Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Dr. Tomaino is the past president of the American Association for Music Therapy and the past vice president and founding board member for the International Association for Music and Medicine; she also received the Award of Accomplishment from Music Therapists for Peace at the United Nations. Her additional honors include, among others, receiving the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association for Music Therapy; the 2011 inaugural Burton Grebin Innovator of the Year Award from the New York Continuing Care Leadership Coalition; the 2010 Professional Practice Award from the American Association for Music Therapy; and a 1999 Touchstone Award from Women in Music for her visionary spirit.
Dr. Tomaino is an adjunct professor at CUNY Lehman College. ◗
For more information on this topic and about Dr. Tomaino’s work, visit the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function’s website at imnf.org.
The Festival is grateful to Michael Hindus and Lynne Withey and David Muck and Cole Martelli, whose generosity has made the filming of this afternoon's presentation possible.
Tuesday, 12 p.m.
AUGUST 5
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
Generously sponsored by the Lorlee and Arnold Tenenbaum Memorial Fund
SHAI WOSNER, Piano
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Italian Concerto in F Major, BWV 971 (1735) (1685–1750)
[Allegro]
Andante
Presto
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Bagatelle in C Major, Op. 119, No. 2 (1820–22) (1770–1827)
GEORGE BENJAMIN
Relativity Rag (1984) (b. 1960)
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN
Andante and Variations in F Minor, Hob. XVII:6, Un piccolo (1732–1809) divertimento (1793)
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Sonata in F Minor, Op. 57, Appassionata (1804–06)
Allegro assai
Andante con moto
Allegro ma non troppo—Presto
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Tuesday, 12 p.m. AUGUST 5
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
Italian Concerto in F Major, BWV 971 (1735)
In 1735, Bach turned 50. He’d been the cantor at the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church) in Leipzig for 12 years, and during that time he’d put aside the kind of composing for keyboard that he’d done while he was the kapellmeister (music director) in Cöthen from 1717 to 1723. In Leipzig, he’d been immersed in composing for religious observances and, later, for the small orchestra he conducted in the city’s coffeehouses; in the mid1730s, however, he resumed composing for keyboard, beginning with the Italian Concerto and then Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Goldberg Variations.
Bach had for many years greatly admired Italian orchestral concertos: He’d made transcriptions of concertos by Vivaldi and other composers and sometimes even adapted their music for his own use. He was particularly intrigued by the contrast between the solo instruments and the orchestral tuttis, and he exploited those contrasts in his own concertos for violin and for keyboard as well as in his Brandenburg Concertos—all of which he wrote in Cöthen in the early 1720s. Now, in 1735, he returned to the form of the Italian orchestral concerto and set out to write an original work for keyboard that would embody the features of the form that he liked so well.
Bach called this new work his Concerto in the Italian Style (although it’s come to be known as just his Italian Concerto), but this isn’t a concerto in the sense of how we understand that term today. Rather, it’s a keyboard work that employs the structure and dynamic contrasts of the Baroque concerto. Because the harpsichord can’t make dynamic contrasts, Bach created the contrasts between the solo and tutti passages that he was so fond of by employing the harpsichord’s two keyboards. (The dynamic contrasts he wished to make are, of course, much easier on the piano, an instrument that was just being invented at the time.)
The Italian Concerto’s outer movements show the structure of the Baroque orchestral concerto. (Bach didn’t specify a tempo for the opening movement, but it clearly should be a form of Allegro. The closing movement is marked Presto.) Both movements open and close
with declarative passages reminiscent of orchestral tuttis, while the middle sections offer music of a more soloistic character that’s broken by occasional “tutti” interjections. The Andante is very much in the manner of the slow movements of Bach’s own violin concertos: over an ostinato-like accompaniment in the left hand, Bach, in the right hand, spins a long aria-like melody that soars and grows more complex as the movement proceeds.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
Bagatelle in C Major, Op. 119, No. 2 (1820–22)
Beethoven wrote about 20 pieces for piano that he titled Bagatelle (most of them dating to the final decade of his life), but that title can be a slippery one. Composers as different as Couperin, Dvořák, Sibelius, and Bartók wrote brief, lighter works under that name, and Beethoven himself referred to his bagatelles as kleinigkeiten (“trifles”). That doesn’t mean, however, that we should underestimate this music, as the Austrian piano pedagogue Ernest Hutcheson (1871–1951) described the bagatelles as “truly Beethovenish” and noted that the composer “had a high regard for them.”
Beethoven wrote the 11 bagatelles of his Opus 119 in an unusual sequence and for different purposes. Around 1820, just as he was beginning work on his three final piano sonatas, Beethoven received a request for five bagatelles from Friedrich Starke, the kapellmeister of an Austrian infantry regiment and a longtime friend of the composer. Starke was preparing a piano methodology, and Beethoven was quite willing to furnish five brief pieces (some of which emphasize specific technical skills) for that methodology.
Having supplied those pieces, Beethoven found that he liked composing short piano pieces, so he continued to do so. He returned to earlier sketches and ideas— some dating back as far as 20 years—and wrote five more bagatelles; then he composed one more new piece (No. 6), completing the set in 1822. The resulting collection of 11 separate pieces has no particular unity beyond the fact that the final five were intended as pedagogical pieces.
The Bagatelle in C Major depends on the contrast between a steady progression of eighth notes (usually
in the right hand) and triplets (usually in the left hand), although sometimes the hands exchange rhythms. As the right hand lays out its steady rhythm, the left spins out showers of triplets, and this sometimes requires handcrossings. The entire piece lasts only about one minute, and it winks out on a nicely understated conclusion.
GEORGE BENJAMIN (b. 1960) Relativity Rag (1984)
George Benjamin’s talent was evident early. The Londonborn composer began playing the piano as a small boy and began writing music at age seven. At 16, he entered the Paris Conservatory, where he was a student of Olivier Messiaen, and Benjamin remained a close friend and confidant of Messiaen’s for the remainder of the French master’s life. From Paris, Benjamin returned to England to study at King’s College, Cambridge, and while he was a student, the BBC Symphony Orchestra performed his work Ringed by the Flat Horizon at the BBC Proms, making him, at the time (at age 20), the youngest living composer to have a work performed at the Proms.
Benjamin’s music has been the focus of celebrations by the London Symphony Orchestra, Southbank Centre, Barbican, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, and others, and in 2019, The Guardian named his opera Written on Skin the second-best work to have been written the 21st century. His numerous honors include receiving the Arnold Schoenberg Prize, the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement. Benjamin was also made a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture, and he was knighted at the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Benjamin taught at London’s Royal College of Music, and since 2001, he’s been the Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King’s College, London. He served as composer-in-residence for the Berlin Philharmonic during the 2018–19 season, and this September he begins his tenure as composer-in-residence for the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
The work heard on this afternoon’s recital, Relativity Rag, dates to 1984, and Bejamin gave its world premiere on November 23 of that year at the Cardiff Festival at King’s College, Cardiff. Benjamin wrote a brief note for the piece, which we’ve included below.—The Editors
Relativity Rag begins with a simple two-section
ragtime. As it progresses, however, things begin to change—phrases are cut up like bits of film, the tempi of the hands separate, the harmony distorts, and eventually the rag is transformed beyond recognition. It re-forms out of a dense cloud of sound towards the end and briefly flourishes before being finally crushed and sent spinning off the top of the keyboard.—George Benjamin
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN (1732–1809)
Andante and Variations in F Minor, Hob. XVII:6, Un piccolo divertimento (1793)
This extraordinary music is one of Haydn’s final compositions for piano. He wrote it in Vienna in 1793— between his two successful visits to London—and evidence suggests he was unsure what form it would take. The manuscript is headed “Sonata,” and it’s possible that Haydn intended it to be the first movement of an actual sonata but then changed his mind when it became clear that this music should stand alone. He revised the score carefully, and its final form is unusual: it’s a set of double variations that’s then completed by a powerful 83-measure-long coda.
The somber opening theme, in the key of F minor and marked Andante, is heard immediately and passes between both hands, extending through two strains. Haydn then switches to F major for the second theme, and that florid melody—full of swirls and arabesques—shows subtle harmonic relations to the subdued opening subject, which means that there’s already a unifying bond between the work’s two themes before the variations begin.
Haydn then offers two variations on the two themes. The variations on the F-minor theme remain restrained, chromatic, and expressive, while the variations on the F-major theme are more florid, full of trills and flowing triplets. Haydn begins the coda with a literal reprise of the opening theme, and suddenly this music takes off: Over rising harmonic tension, the coda grows more powerful, more expressive, and more dynamic as it drives to a fortissimo climax. And then—in an equally original stroke— Haydn has the music fall back, shatter, and fade into silence on bits of the original theme.
Haydn dedicated the Andante and Variations to Babette (or Barbara) von Ployer, who had been one of Mozart’s students. Scholars, though, have been nearly unanimous in sensing another woman as the real inspiration behind this music. In 1789, Haydn had become good friends with
Marianne von Genzinger, the wife of a Viennese physician, and their friendship took the form of a lengthy series of letters in which the older composer was able to pour out a notable depth of feeling and observation. These letters, in fact, remain one of the clearest records of Haydn’s character and thinking at this time.
In January 1793, Marianne died suddenly at the age of 38, and many music historians regard the Andante and Variations as Haydn’s response to that devastating event. Until more evidence is available, such a connection must remain conjectural, but this somber and expressive music—composed and very carefully revised in the months after Marianne’s death—has seemed to many to be Haydn’s homage to a friend he held very dear.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
Sonata in F Minor, Op. 57, Appassionata (1804–06)
Between May and November 1803, Beethoven sketched his Third Symphony, the Eroica, which was on a scale that had never been imagined. The Third was nearly half an hour longer than Beethoven’s Second, and it thrust the whole conception of the symphony, and sonata form, into a new world—one in which music became a heroic struggle and sonata form became the stage for this drama rather than an end in itself. It was a world of new dimensions, new sonorities, and new possibilities of expression, and with the Eroica behind him, Beethoven began to plan two piano sonatas. These sonatas, later nicknamed the Waldstein and Appassionata, would be governed by the same impulse that shaped the Eroica.
While Beethoven completed the Waldstein Sonata quickly, he didn’t finish the Appassionata—the Sonata in F Minor, Op. 57—until early in 1806 due to his work on his opera. The nickname Appassionata appears to have originated with a publisher rather than with the composer, but few works so deserve their nickname as this one. There are moments in this music where one feels that Beethoven is striving for a texture and intensity of sound that’s unavailable to the piano—that he’s reaching for what his biographer Maynard Solomon called “quasiorchestral sonorities.” That said, Beethoven clearly conceived of this music in terms of a pianistic, rather than an orchestral, sonority.
The ominous opening of the Allegro assai is marked pianissimo, but it’s alive with energy and the potential for development. As this long first theme slowly unfolds, the four-note motto that will later open Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony is heard deep in the left hand, and out of this motto suddenly bursts a great eruption of sound. The movement’s extraordinary unity becomes clear with the arrival of the second theme, which is effectively an inversion of the opening one, and there’s even a third subject, which boils out of a furious torrent of 16th notes. The movement develops in sonata form, although Beethoven doesn’t repeat the exposition, choosing instead to press directly into the turbulent development. The opening rhythm is stamped out in the coda, and, after so much energy, the movement concludes as the first theme descends into near inaudibility.
The second movement, a theme and four variations marked Andante con moto, brings a measure of relief. The theme—a calm chordal melody in two eight-bar phrases— is heard immediately, and the tempo remains constant throughout, though the variations become increasingly complex and ornate. Beethoven insists that the gentle mood remain constant; in the score, he keeps reminding the pianist to play dolce, and even the swirls of 32nd notes near the end remain serene.
The sonata-form finale, marked Allegro ma non troppo, bursts upon the conclusion of the second movement with a fanfare of dotted notes, and the main theme—an almost moto-perpetuo shower of 16th notes—launches the movement. The searing energy of the first movement returns here, but now Beethoven offers a repeat of the development rather than of the exposition. The fiery coda, marked Presto, introduces an entirely new theme.
Beethoven offered no program for this sonata, and it’s best not to guess what external drama was being played out here. The musicologist Sir Donald Francis Tovey (1875–1940), while trying to take some measure of this sonata’s extraordinary power and its unrelenting conclusion, noted that “there is not a moment’s doubt that the tragic passion is rushing deathwards.” That may be going too far, but it’s true that this sonata ends with an abrupt plunge into darkness. ◗
Wednesday, 12 p.m. AUGUST 6
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
ESCHER STRING QUARTET
ADAM BARNETT-HART, Violin
JAMES THOMPSON, Violin
PIERRE LAPOINTE, Viola
BROOK SPELTZ, Cello
FELIX MENDELSSOHN
Andante and Scherzo for String Quartet, Op. 81 (1847) (1809–47)
JULIAN ANDERSON
String Quartet No. 4 (2024; Festival Co-Commission; (b. 1967) US Premiere)◊
I. = 56
II. Presto . = 72
III. = 52
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
String Quartet in A-flat Major, Op. 105 (1895) (1841–1904)
Adagio ma non troppo—Allegro appassionato Molto vivace
Lento e molto cantabile
Allegro non tanto
◊Julian Anderson's String Quartet No. 4 was co-commissioned by the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Wigmore Hall, the Wiener Konzerthaus, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Mogens Dahl Koncertsal, the National Concert Hall Ireland, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.
The Festival is grateful to Michael Hindus and Lynne Withey and David Muck and Cole Martelli, whose generosity has made the filming of this afternoon's concert possible.
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Wednesday, 12 p.m. AUGUST 6
FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–47)
Andante and Scherzo for String Quartet, Op. 81 (1847)
The death of Mendelssohn’s sister Fanny in May 1847, at the age of 41, devastated the composer and seemingly triggered his own death, as he collapsed upon hearing the news and never recovered. In an effort to restore Mendelssohn’s spirits, his family took him on an extended vacation to Switzerland, where they were joined by Fanny’s husband and son. At Interlaken, Mendelssohn painted and worked on string quartets, completing one and making sketches for another, but the trip brought the agonized composer scant relief. An English visitor that summer described his last view of Mendelssohn by saying: “I thought even then, as I followed his figure, looking none the younger for the loose dark coat and the wide-brimmed straw hat bound with black crape, which he wore, that he was too much depressed and worn and walked too heavily.” Mendelssohn returned to Leipzig that fall but was unable to work. He canceled his engagements, took to bed, and slipped in and out of consciousness. He died on the evening of November 4 at the age of 38.
Mendelssohn was clearly in an agitated state of mind that summer, and the string quartet he completed—the Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80—is restless music, driven and uneasy. But the other music he wrote for a string quartet that summer, comprising two individual movements, is quite different: It’s gentler and more relaxed. After his death, these two movements were published as Mendelssohn’s Opus 81, along with two other pieces for string quartet—a capriccio and a fugue—that he’d written some years earlier.
The Andante (it’s actually marked Andante sostenuto) is a theme-and-variation movement that’s based on the first violin’s opening melody, and the variations grow faster and more animated as they proceed. Mendelssohn eventually reins in all this energy, and the variations conclude with a quiet restatement of the theme and a peaceful cadence on the first violin’s shimmering high E.
The other movement, a Scherzo marked Allegro leggiero, is one of those infinitely graceful and fluid scherzos that Mendelssohn seemed to write with such ease. For all its grace, though, this is very tough music
technically, and it demands four very accomplished performers. The infectious opening tune returns throughout until this scherzo, its energy spent, winks out on two quiet pizzicato strokes.
JULIAN ANDERSON (b. 1967)
String Quartet No. 4 (2024; Festival Co-Commission, US Premiere)
Julian Anderson’s String Quartet No. 4 was cocommissioned by the Festival and by the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Wigmore Hall, the Wiener Konzerthaus, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Mogens Dahl Koncertsal, and the National Concert Hall Ireland, and it’s receiving its US premiere at this afternoon’s concert. For more information about Anderson and his work, please see “2025 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Commissioned Works,” which begins on p. 22. Julian Anderson has provided the following program note for his String Quartet No. 4.—The Editors
This work is in a very different shape from my three previous works for this medium. The short First (1984) was a single, concentrated movement; the Second (2014) is in seven contrasted movements, each featuring a different tuning; and the six-movement Third (2018) is a thorough exploration of a particular type of resonance.
The Fourth Quartet is in three movements: medium, very fast, slow. The opening movement is discursive, abrupt, and discontinuous—starting from and persistently returning to the initial chord, with varying episodes in between. The rapid second movement is hard-edged, manic, at times violent—a scherzo with trios in which the boundaries between the two become increasingly confused in the growing mayhem. The work concludes with a sustained, intense slow movement, a song for the whole ensemble which steadily grows in intensity.
The background to this work is a semi-private evocation of an event in my 14th year (1981), when a Polish philosopher—a member of the rebellious Solidarity trade union—came to my school to explain (in perfect English) the struggles of the Polish people against the Communist dictatorship then in power. That was in mid-September;
on 13th December, martial law was declared, and all members of Solidarity—many millions of people—were arrested. The school made repeated attempts to discover what had happened to the philosopher, to no avail. We never heard of him again.
Later that month, by chance, I heard and recorded (off shortwave radio) a fragment of Polish folk music—góral fiddle music from the Tatra Mountains. It was a thrilling and wild oberek, whose propulsive and defiant rhythmic freedoms left their impression on the middle movement of my Fourth Quartet. Something of the defiant, desperate atmosphere of those terrible months may be reflected in especially the second and third movements.—Julian Anderson
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
(1841–1904)
String Quartet in A-flat Major, Op. 105 (1895)
In April 1895, after serving in New York City as the director of the National Conservatory of Music for three years, 54-year-old Dvořák left the United States and returned to his Czech homeland and his family. In America, he’d written music that was influenced by his temporary home—including the New World Symphony, the American Quartet, and the Viola Quintet—and in March 1895, he began a new string quartet that he wound up finishing in Prague that December. The striking thing about this quartet is that, despite containing the last music Dvořák ever wrote in America, it shows no American influences whatsoever. Instead, saturated with Czech musical forms and the spirit of Czech music, it reflects Dvořák’s relief at being home. As he was completing the quartet that Christmas, Dvořák wrote to a friend:
We are, praise be to God, all well and rejoice at being spared after three years to spend this dear and happy Christmas festival in Bohemia. How different did we feel last year in America, where we were so far away in a foreign country and separated from all our children and friends. But the Lord God has vouchsafed us this happy moment and that is why we feel so inexpressibly content!
This happy spirit runs through the String Quartet in A-flat Major. There are some moments of shade, but the general mood of this music is one of celebration.
The first movement opens with a slow introduction marked Adagio ma non troppo that’s built on terraced entrances. The shape of these entrances leaps ahead
at the Allegro appassionato to become the movement’s main theme, and at this faster speed, the theme has been compared to a trumpet call. Dvořák derives much of the first movement from this theme, although there’s an attractive second idea built on triplets and dotted rhythms before the movement drives to a vigorous close.
The scherzo movement, marked Molto vivace, is in ABA form, with the outer sections based on the Czech furiant (a spirited and accented dance); the violin parts intermesh beautifully, even at a blistering tempo. By contrast, the middle section is calm and melodic, and Dvořák derives one of the themes here from the aria “The Smile of a Child” from his opera The Jacobin.
The marking for the third movement, Lento e molto cantabile (“Slow and very singable”), makes clear its character. It, too, is in ABA form, with a lyric opening and a somewhat gruff chromatic middle section. This rises to a climax marked molto appassionato before the return of the opening material, now subtly varied.
Dvořák rounds off the quartet with a finale, marked Allegro non tanto, that’s built on three separate themes. There are some striking features here: tremolos used as accompaniment, fugal entrances, and a distinctly Czech third theme marked molto cantabile. The development of this movement is extended, and Dvořák drives the quartet to its close on a quick-paced coda. ◗
Generously sponsored by
SOYEON KATE LEE, Piano
JENNIFER FRAUTSCHI, Violin
DANIEL PHILLIPS, Violin
TOBY APPEL, Viola
IDA KAVAFIAN, Viola
ERIC KIM, Cello
DAVID SHIFRIN, Clarinet
STEFAN DOHR, Horn
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
String Quintet in C Minor, K. 406 (1782–84) (1756–91)
Allegro
Andante
Menuetto in canone
Allegro
Jennifer Frautschi, Daniel Phillips, Ida Kavafian, Toby Appel, Eric Kim
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Sonata in A Minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 105 (1851) (1810–56)
Mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck
Allegretto
Finale: Lebhaft
Daniel Phillips, Soyeon Kate Lee
INTERMISSION
ERNST VON DOHNÁNYI
Sextet in C Major for Clarinet, Horn, Violin, Viola, Cello, (1877–1960) and Piano, Op. 37 (1935)
Allegro appassionato
Intermezzo: Adagio
Allegro con sentimento
Finale: Allegro vivace, giocoso
David Shifrin, Stefan Dohr, Jennifer Frautschi, Toby Appel, Eric Kim, Soyeon Kate Lee
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Sunday & Monday, 6 p.m.
JULY 13 & 14
Wednesday, 6 p.m. AUGUST 6
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–91)
String Quintet in C Minor, K. 406 (1782–84)
The premiere of The Marriage of Figaro in May 1786 is universally regarded as the high point of Mozart’s fortunes in Vienna, and over the next year his fortunes began to wane. The reasons for this aren’t entirely clear, but Mozart suddenly began to have financial problems. His music—always regarded as sophisticated and complex—began to slip out of fashion, he had trouble attracting audiences to his concerts, and he began to find that the revenue streams he’d relied on had become precarious. From 1787 to 1788 come a series of painful letters to friends asking for a loan.
By the spring of 1788, Mozart needed cash, and he came up with what seemed like a sensible plan. The previous year, he’d written the great string quintets in C major and G minor but hadn’t published them yet. He therefore decided to sell manuscript copies—in his own hand—of those quintets, which he announced would be “finely and correctly written.” Those quintets would be sold by subscription, but a subscription typically comprised three works. Rather than write a new quintet, however, Mozart turned to music he’d written six years earlier and arranged it for string quintet.
Mozart had composed his Serenade in C Minor, K. 388, for two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, and two horns in July 1782. Usually scored for strings and almost invariably in the bright key of D major, Mozart’s serenades were intended as background music for social occasions (including ones held outside), and—unlike the Serenade in C Minor (which is in the key Mozart reserved for some of his most dramatic music) —they tended to be lighthearted. (It’s hard to imagine how music as intense as the Serenade in C Minor could have been intended as a background for anything.)
When arranging this Serenade for string quintet, Mozart had to not only reduce the number of voices from eight to five, but he also had to negotiate the loss of the tone colors and pairings of sonorities that helped make the wind version so distinctive. But Mozart was Mozart, so his string quintet version is quite effective.
The powerful opening of the Allegro moves up the notes of a C-minor chord, and this fierce beginning is answered
by plaintive responses—a wide emotional palette has already been introduced in just the first few seconds. Still, this is passionate, urgent music, full of explosive accents and often chromatic in its development.
The Andante is the odd movement out in an otherwise dark composition. Mozart moves to radiant E-flat major here and creates heartfelt music that’s based on two themes, both of which are introduced by the first violin. These two ideas grow more complex as they’re repeated, and the movement moves to a swirling climax and gentle close.
The third movement, Menuetto in canone, returns to the C-minor urgency of the first movement. This minuet is in canon form, with the trailing voice only a measure behind the lead. Mozart marks the trio section al roverscio, which doesn’t mean “in reverse” but rather “upside down”: This section is also in canon form, but this time the trailing voice is inverted. Despite Mozart’s taut counterpoint, the movement never sounds labored.
The final movement, marked Allegro, is in theme-andvariation form. The finale is in the home key of C minor, and the first four variations remain within that key. In the fifth, however, Mozart moves to E-flat major, and now the theme takes on a measure of breadth and repose. That calm is short-lived, as Mozart returns to C minor for the ensuing variations, but the very end brings a surprise: after all the dark places in this music, Mozart slips into C major for the cheerful coda and concluding fanfares.
On a rather sad note, Mozart’s plan to sell his “finely and correctly written” manuscript copies of the three string quintets failed for lack of interest among the public. In June 1788, he announced: “As the number of subscribers is very small, I find myself obliged to postpone the publication of my three quintets until January 1, 1789.” What would any of us today give to own Mozart’s own manuscript copies of these works?
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–56)
Sonata in A Minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 105 (1851)
Schumann was a pianist, and he found the prospect of writing for stringed instruments intimidating. He appears to have been made the most nervous by the violin, as he wrote several chamber music pieces for viola and for
cello before finally turning to that instrument. Once he did, however, the music came to him in a rush: during the final years of his brief creative career, Schumann wrote three violin sonatas, a violin concerto, and a fantasy for violin and orchestra.
The Sonata in A Minor for Violin and Piano was the first of those violin works. Schumann composed it very quickly—between September 12 and September 16, 1851—during a period of personal stress. The previous year he’d become the music director for the city of Düsseldorf, and by the time he wrote this sonata, his tenure there had already become mired in clashes with local authorities and in his own suspicions about people plotting against him. Schumann reported that when he wrote this sonata, he was “very angry with certain people,” though the music shouldn’t be understood as a personal reaction to artistic squabbles. Instead, Schumann’s first engagement with the violin produced a compact sonata in Classical forms.
The sonata is in three movements that offer Schumann’s customary mixture of German and Italian performance markings. The opening Mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck (“With passionate expression”) bursts to life with the violin’s forceful, surging main idea over the piano’s shimmer of constant 16th notes. This busy motion is punctuated by great swooping flourishes that lead to gentle secondary material, but it’s the opening theme that dominates the development, and Schumann rounds off the movement with a lengthy coda that drives to a dramatic close.
Relief arrives in the central Allegretto, which treats the violin’s innocent opening melody in rondo form. Tempos fluctuate throughout, with the music pulsing ahead and then reining back in; some of these episodes become animated before the movement closes on two pizzicato strokes marked pianissimo.
The Finale, marked lebhaft (“lively”), returns to the tonality and mood of the opening movement. The violin’s steady rush of 16th notes makes this feel at first like a perpetual-motion movement, but it’s actually another sonata-form movement complete with a jaunty little secondary tune and an exposition repeat. This movement shows subtle points of contact with the first movement that run beyond their joint key of A minor and impassioned mood: The rhythm of the sonata’s opening theme underlies much of the Finale, and near the close, that theme actually makes a fleeting appearance. But the Finale’s forceful main subject quickly shoulders this aside and drives the sonata to an almost superheated close.
ERNST VON DOHNÁNYI (1877–1960)
Sextet in C Major for Clarinet, Horn, Violin, Viola, Cello, and Piano, Op. 37 (1935)
Dohnányi was not only one of the greatest pianists who ever lived but also a champion of Hungarian music and one of the primal forces in Hungarian musical life in the early decades of the 20th century. He served as the conductor of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra from 1919 to 1944, and he was the music director of Hungarian Radio and the director of the Budapest Academy of Music, where he taught piano and composition. He championed the music of Bartók, Kodály, and other young Hungarian composers, and he toured internationally as a concert pianist. So great was his influence that Bartók said Dohnányi was essentially providing the musical life of the entire Hungarian nation during those years.
All those activities took a toll, however, and in the mid1930s, Dohnányi began to experience health problems. He cut back on his touring, his teaching, and his composing, and between 1933 and 1937 he wrote only one work: his Sextet in C Major.
Dohnányi wrote this Sextet in 1935, following a bout of thrombosis, but there’s no sign of any ailing here. This is a big work that’s scored for unusual forces that generate a huge sonority: The Sextet has a wind section (clarinet and horn), string section (violin, viola, and cello), and virtuoso piano part. (Dohnányi played the piano part at the work’s premiere in Budapest on June 17, 1935.)
The aptly titled Allegro appassionato is a big movement in various ways, and it opens with an orchestral sound: Over heavy piano chords and busy cello arpeggios, the horn plays the commanding opening theme, which recurs throughout the Sextet. The second subject arrives soon after in the viola, and Dohnányi builds this often-dramatic movement from these materials. The first three notes of the opening horn call go on to figure prominently in this movement, which they also drive to a full-throated close.
The mood changes completely in the Intermezzo, which is nocturne-like in its subdued atmosphere as it glides along a 12/8 meter. Dohnányi interrupts this reverie with a malevolent march that breaks in upon the peace of the opening, and these two quite different kinds of music alternate across the movement.
The Allegro con sentimento opens with an elegant and good-spirited clarinet solo that sets the mood: When the piano enters, its part is marked both dolce and tranquillo.
This movement is episodic—the opening gives way to a Presto that races along its 6/8 meter, and this in turn is followed by a suave interlude for strings. Along the way, alert listeners will hear reminiscences of the opening horn call.
The music accelerates and then rushes without pause into the fast Finale, which Dohnányi specifies should sound giocoso (“happy”). This movement has been called a “jazz parody,” and certainly its main idea has a perkiness that might seem to recall jazz. A second theme dances jauntily, and these high spirits prevail until the horn call from the very beginning returns to drive the Sextet to its most emphatic conclusion. ◗
Generously sponsored by the Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation in memory of Edgar Foster Daniels
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
2. El verano feliz de la señora Forbes (Miss Forbes’s Summer of Happiness)
3. El ahogado más hermoso del mundo (The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World)
4. Buen viaje, señor presidente (Bon Voyage, Mr. President)
5. Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormas (A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings)
6. La luz es como el agua—1 (Light Is Like Water—1)
7. Diálogo del espejo (Dialogue with the Mirror)
8. La noche de los alcaravanes (The Night of the Curlews)
9. El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (No One Writes to the Colonel)
10. El cuento más corto del mundo (The Shortest Story in the World)
11. La luz es como el agua—2 (Light Is Like Water—2)
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Sunday & Monday, 6 p.m.
JULY 13 & 14
Thursday, 12 p.m. AUGUST 7
Colin Currie has generously provided notes for all the works he’s performing at this afternoon's recital, and we're pleased to share them below.—The Editors
On three separate occasions in my career, I have made a concerted effort to lock horns with that most challenging of percussion formats: the entirely solo recital. In each case, I have combined classics from the existing repertoire with a major new work in premiere. As such, in 2001, Dave Maric’s Trilogy launched in Glasgow, Chicago, and Tokyo; 2014 saw Rolf Wallin’s Realismos Mágicos at Wigmore Hall, the Bergen Festival, and Princeton University; and this year sees Dani Howard’s Vasa at Wigmore Hall, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and the Milngavie Music Club.—Colin Currie
KEVIN VOLANS (b. 1949) Asanga (1997)
Kevin Volans was born in South Africa, where he earned his undergraduate degree and where he also became interested in African music: its rhythms, its approach to musical form, its general sound. After college, Volans moved to Cologne to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel, and in 1986, he moved to Ireland, which is now his home.
Volans has composed prolifically in many different forms—in a 1997 list, BBC Music Magazine cited him as one of the 50 most important living composers—though he may be best-known for his (now) 12 string quartets, particularly those that incorporate aspects of African music. Two recordings by the Kronos Quartet featuring Volans’s music, White Man Sleeps and Pieces of Africa, broke sales records, and his work continues to be performed, premiered, and recorded around the world.
In a brief note about the work heard on this afternoon’s program, Asanga, Volans wrote: “The Sanskrit title Asanga means ‘freedom from attachment.’ I wrote the piece as a gift for Robyn Schulkowsky on the death of her father. It was written with no conscious techniques or concept. The first performance was in Stockholm in 1998.” Colin Currie shares some brief thoughts on this work as well.
—The Editors
Kevin Volans is a major contributor to the percussion repertoire. His pattern-based fixations and ambitious proportional perspective—often taxing the player’s stamina to its limits—suit the medium ideally. In Asanga, a collection of erudite material for unpitched sounds (mostly drums) is heard in episodes that develop deeply in some cases and only fleetingly in others. The conclusion is equivocal, perhaps as if the game has gone full circle, ready to attempt another set of permutations for an alternative structural solution.—Colin Currie
DANI HOWARD (b. 1993)
Vasa (2025; US Premiere)
British composer Dani Howard was born and raised in Hong Kong and graduated with first-class honors from the Royal College of Music in London. She made her first major mark as a composer in 2017 with her symphonic work Argentum, which was co-commissioned by Classic FM (in honor of its 25th anniversary) and the Royal Philharmonic Society and was premiered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Since then, Howard’s earned an international reputation for building what Gramophone called a “luminous and effervescent sound world” across a wide range of forms. Her award-winning 2021 Trombone Concerto was hailed as “an instant classic” by The Times, while Bachtrack praised her for being “amongst the best of contemporary British opera composers”; the Financial Times called her “one of the most sought-after British composers of the younger generation.”
Howard’s music has been commissioned and premiered by many leading ensembles, including the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, which designated her their “celebrated composer” for the 2024–25 season. In the 2022–23 season, Howard served as composer-in-residence for the London Chamber Orchestra, and in 2024, she was the resident artist for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain; a highlight of
the latter role included writing the orchestral work Three, Four AND…, which the youth orchestra premiered at the BBC Proms.
Howard wrote the work heard on this afternoon’s recital, Vasa, for Colin Currie, who premiered the piece at London’s Wigmore Hall on May 26 and gives its US premiere today.—The Editors
The US premiere this evening is by the brilliant British composer Dani Howard. This composition responds directly to a modest plan of my own to create a work that uses multiple percussion keyboards to galvanize a deepened sonic palette and a potential for sustain alongside perhaps an element of ritual spiced with dexterity. Dani has embraced this template with fantastic care and precision to create a piece of gentle fragility, beauty, space, and tension.
The work’s title refers to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm and its foreboding tale of historical maritime hubris. This mood channels into the work in various ways, as the marimba creaks into action, gets ahead of itself perhaps, and has to come to terms with a journey that is forced into a great degree of contemplation and humility—elements that are not overabundant in our world today.—Colin Currie
TANSY DAVIES (b. 1973)
Dark Ground (2005)
Tansy Davies was born in Bristol, England; grew up singing and playing French horn and electric guitar; and started composing in her teens. She was named a BBC Young Composer in 1996 and went on to study composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Royal Holloway, University of London.
Davies’s music has been performed around the world by the BBC, London, Tokyo, and Toronto symphony orchestras; BBC National Orchestra of Wales; New York Philharmonic; and Ensemble intercontemporain, among many others. She’s cited a wide range of inspiration for her compositions—from the works of the Iraqi British architect Zaha Hadid to the music of troubadours—and several pieces reference nature, including Forest for four horns and orchestra, Aquatic for English horn and piano, Cave (an award-winning chamber opera that addresses climate change), and The Ice Core Sample Says. Davies’s 9/11-inspired debut opera, Between Worlds, was pre-
miered by English National Opera in 2015, and the following year it won the 2016 British Composer Award for Stage Work. In an interview with The Independent, Davies once said:
I love dark colours and bass instruments, but generally I’m interested in things which surprise me. That could be music from absolutely any genre—just anything that has an undercurrent which changes something in me. One thing I keep coming back to, maybe unconsciously, is going into dark places and transforming them, finding the beauty in darkness. In a way, it’s musical alchemy.
Davies has taught at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and London’s Royal Academy of Music, and for the 2018–19 season, she was composer-inresidence for The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. In a brief note about the work heard on this afternoon’s program, Davies writes:
Dark Ground inhabits an imaginary space where a ritual takes place. I see the space as a circle, and within that circle, cyclic patterns and formations are enacted, each leaving a mark on the space or an echo that resounds beneath what follows.
Everything grows up from a root—the pedal bass drum—a dead sound with a cycle in a simple yet deceptive 7/8. The shapes and patterns that grow from the bass drum have directions of their own, but when they stray too far they lose power and disappear. Like gravity, the bass drum pulls things to the ground.
Colin Currie also shares his thoughts about the experience of performing and listening to this compelling piece.—The Editors
Tansy Davies writes a stridently disquieting work with her Dark Ground, a piece with an occasionally torrid identity crisis. It seems that it could be a popstyle drum kit that is near to hand for the music, but conflicting sounds from another kind of place are never far away to halt any development that could be deemed too—for want of a better expression— vernacular. A crotale fanfare does intervene, offering some actual pitched material by way of arbitration, but the rabble is roused, and the piece plays out with the various strands mostly superimposed in different
combinations without reaching any kind of stylistic truce. A fascinating work that plays skillfully with one’s percussive preconceptions.—Colin Currie
ANDY AKIHO (b. 1979)
Spiel (2013; rev 2020)
Andy Akiho—a Pulitzer Prize finalist and seven-time Grammy nominee—once said in an interview with New Music USA that, when he was around nine years old, his older sister, who “was like kind of a rock star,” taught him to play drums and that he “got a little obsessed.” He went on to major in percussion at the University of South Carolina, in his home state, and that’s where he first encountered his main instrument, the steel pan, which, after graduation, he studied further in Trinidad.
Akiho eventually moved to New York City, where he learned about (and was accepted into) the Bang on a Can Summer Residency Program, and it’s also where he earned his master’s degree in contemporary performance from the Manhattan School of Music. Akiho earned a second master’s degree in composition from the Yale School of Music, and his honors include an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award, the Yale School of Music Alumni Award, and the Luciano Berio Rome Prize, among many others. His works have been commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic; National, Oregon, and Shanghai symphony orchestras; American Composers Orchestra; and other ensembles. He’s currently the Oregon Symphony’s composer-in-residence for the 2024–25 season.
The work heard on this afternoon’s program, Spiel, is one of 11 movements that make up Seven Pillars, which was Akiho’s Pulitzer finalist. Seven Pillars runs 80 minutes long, and it’s been described as “a boldly genre-defying audio and video collaboration for percussion quartet.”
Akiho wrote Seven Pillars for Sandbox Percussion, which premiered the work at Emerald City Music in Seattle in December 2021. Of the 11 movements, 7 are for percussion quartet and 4 are for the quartet’s individual players. Spiel, for solo glockenspiel, is the fifth movement, and it’s a roughly seven-minute-long tour de force. It gives us the traditional glockenspiel sound—silvery, ringing, delicate—combined with some very non-traditional percussion sounds, all played at a very fast tempo.
Colin Currie has written some brief words about Spiel, and we're including them here.—The Editors
Andy Akiho is indeed the composer whose music I am performing the most this season. This is my first-ever performance of Spiel, so wish me luck as it wheels and spins at breakneck speed, using the most extraordinary extended techniques on a standard glockenspiel that one could ever imagine!—Colin
Currie
TOSHIO HOSOKAWA (b. 1955) Reminiscence (2002)
Born in Hiroshima, Toshio Hosokawa studied piano and composition in Tokyo before moving, at age 21, to Germany, where he studied first at the Berlin University of the Arts and then at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. After 10 years abroad, Hosokawa moved back to Japan and cultivated a compositional style across vocal and instrumental forms that reflected traditional Japanese cultural influences ranging from calligraphy to the Noh dance-drama. Some of his standout works include the oratorio Voiceless Voice in Hiroshima, the orchestral piece Circulating Ocean, his operas Vision of Lear and Hanjo, and the chamber music series Landscapes Hosokawa served as composer-in-residence for the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra from 1998 to 2007 and for such leading festivals as the Venice Biennale (in 1995 and 2001), the Warsaw Autumn (in 2005 and 2007), the Lucerne Festival, and Munich’s musica viva. His numerous honors include, among others, the Suntory Music Award, the Rheingau Musik Preis from the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Musikpreis der Stadt Duisburg, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and Japan’s Kyoto Prize (the country’s highest private award) for lifetime achievement.—The Editors
Toshio Hosokawa’s somber and mysterious Reminiscence harnesses probably the strongest side of the marimba’s sonority in a work of slow-moving grandeur. The music has both grace and dignity in its beautifully structured ritualesque nobility. A chorale of extraordinarily slow-moving proportions—and as murky as they come in terms of the instrument’s register—gradually gathers pace and tension as it rises from the sonic depths. A cadenza is eventually hard won, hinting more strongly at an anguished side of the work’s character, before finally breaking into an Escher’s staircase of triplets that deposits the line into the
higher register. At last, some light is shed. The foreboding returns, however, as a chorale that switches toyingly between major and minor in E-flat brings the music to rest.
Reminiscence is a profoundly moving piece of music that lies at the heart of the marimba literature.—Colin Currie
ROLF WALLIN (b. 1957)
Realismos Mágicos (Magical Realisms) (2014)
Oslo-born composer Rolf Wallin, who trained originally as a trumpeter, completed his undergraduate studies at the Norwegian State Academy of Music and did graduate work at the University of California San Diego, where he studied with Roger Reynolds and Vinko Globokar. Over the past 30 years, he’s carved out a reputation as one of Norway’s leading composers, and his music has been performed widely.
That music can be complex—Wallin has been particularly interested in applying mathematics to the creation of both harmony and melody—and he’s spoken about the impact of fractal mathematics and quantum theory on his compositions. But Wallin has also shown a sharp social conscience in his music: His opera, Elysium, set in the distant future, explores the human fear of change and the impact of technology, and his string quartet Concerning King is a “spectral plotting” of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, 1967 speech against the Vietnam War. Among his many other notable works are Fisher King, a trumpet concerto written for Håken Hardenberger; Whirld, a violin concerto premiered at the BBC Proms by Alina Ibragimova; Manyworlds, co-commissioned by the Bergen and Helsinki philharmonic orchestras and NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover; and Stonewave for six percussionists. Wallin received the 1998 Nordic Council Music Prize for his Clarinet Concerto and 1997 Norwegian Society of Composers Award for …though what made it has gone for mezzo-soprano and piano.
Wallin wrote the solo marimba work heard on this afternoon’s recital, Realismos Mágicos , for Colin Currie, who gave the work’s premiere at London’s Wigmore Hall on April 7, 2014. Both Wallin and Currie have written notes about the work, and we’ve included them below.—Eric Bromberger
Developed from the balaphones of West African slaves, the marimba became essential for
many of Latin America’s ethnic cultures: Native American, Afro-American, Jewish, Hispanic. Upon Guatemala’s independence in 1821, the marimba was proclaimed the national instrument.
I have a vivid memory of my first real-life encounter with a marimba in my mid-teens. The sound so rich and luscious I wanted to eat it; the sensual ballet of arms reaching across a vast expanse of keys; the electrifying crispness when the mallets meet the rosewood surprisingly followed by a deep, burgundy-like resonance.
I find a similarly fascinating constellation in the writing of Gabriel García Márquez, the foremost exponent of Latin American magical realism: a striking and unpredictable wit leaving behind a resonance of great emotional depth. I borrowed the title of 11 of García Márquez’s magnificent short stories and wrote 11 marimba pieces for them. The pieces are not descriptive of the plot of the stories; they spring out of the poetry of the titles themselves.—Rolf Wallin
[In 2014, we welcomed] a major addition to the solo marimba repertoire in the shape of Rolf Wallin’s highly heterogeneous suite of pieces called Realismos Mágicos. These pieces collide effectively with each other, much like the short stories by Gabriel García Márquez that they take their titles from do.
One frequently feels the surreality of this magical world but also its claustrophobia, its instability, and its unpredictability. With 11 movements ranging from five seconds to three-and-a-half minutes, this suite is supple, malleable, and by turns graceful and vehement.—Colin Currie ◗
Saturday, 5 p.m.
AUGUST 9
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
PAOLO BORDIGNON, Harpsichord
DANIEL PHILLIPS, Violin
FELIX FAN, Cello
TARA HELEN O’CONNOR, Flute
FRANK ROSENWEIN, Oboe
GIOVANNI BENEDETTO PLATTI
Trio Sonata in G Minor (ca. 1745) (1697–1763)
Adagio
Allegro
Adagio
Allegro
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Generously sponsored by
Frank Rosenwein, Felix Fan, Paolo Bordignon
Sonata “Sopr’il Soggetto Reale” for Flute, Violin, and Continuo (1685–1750) from A Musical Offering, BWV 1079 (1747)
Largo
Allegro moderato
Andante larghetto
Allegro
Tara Helen O’Connor, Daniel Phillips, Felix Fan, Paolo Bordignon
GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN
Quartet in G Major from Tafelmusik, TWV 43:G2 (1733) (1681–1767)
Largo—Allegro—Largo Vivace—Moderato—Vivace Grave
Vivace
Tara Helen O’Connor, Frank Rosenwein, Daniel Phillips, Felix Fan, Paolo Bordignon
HEINRICH VON BIBER
Sonata No. 3 in F Major for Violin and Continuo, C. 140 (1681) (1644–1704)
Adagio—Presto Aria—Variatio
Daniel Phillips, Paolo Bordignon
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Saturday, 5 p.m. AUGUST 9
GIOVANNI BENEDETTO PLATTI (1697–1763)
Trio Sonata in G Minor (ca. 1745)
Platti was born in Padua, received all his early training in Italy, and turned out to be a versatile musician: He played both the oboe and violin, was a fine (tenor) singer, and composed as well. Platti might well have made his career in Italy, but at the age of 26, he made a surprising choice: He moved to Würzburg, in northern Bavaria, where he became a court musician in service to the prince-bishop of Bamberg and Würzburg, Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn. Johann Philipp was apparently a difficult person, but he died two years after Platti took up his post there, and Platti spent the remaining 40 years of his life in service to the court.
Part of that service included composing, and Platti wrote such works as his Stabat Mater and other liturgical settings as well as a vast number of instrumental compositions, such as concertos for the harpsichord, the violin, and the oboe plus a great deal of keyboard and chamber music. His keyboard sonatas are regarded by some as being among the earliest works in Classical sonata form, and there’s evidence that in his later years, Platti, like Bach, had the opportunity to play one of the earliest pianofortes and write for that instrument.
Platti's Trio Sonata in G Minor for oboe and continuo dates from about 1745, when the composer was nearing 50, and it’s in the four-movement slow-fast-slow-fast sequence of the Baroque instrumental sonata. The continuo part is played by the cello and harpsichord, but it should be noted that the cello has an unusually active part here: rather than just being part of the bass line accompaniment, it has a melodic role and often trades phrases and participates thematically with the oboe.
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
Sonata “Sopr’il Soggetto Reale” for Flute, Violin, and Continuo from A Musical Offering, BWV 1079 (1747)
In the spring of 1747, Johann Sebastian Bach, then 62 years old, went to visit his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in Potsdam, where the younger Bach was a court musician to Frederick the Great of Prussia. Frederick, a flutist and
keen musical enthusiast, learned of the aging composer’s visit and asked to meet him. By that point, Bach was famous enough that such a meeting was an occasion, and on May 11, the Berlin News published an account:
We hear from Potsdam that last Sunday the famous kapellmeister from Leipzig, Mr. Bach, arrived with the intention of hearing the excellent Royal music at that place. In the evening, at about the time when the regular chamber music in the Royal apartments usually begins, His Majesty was informed that Kapellmeister Bach had arrived at Potsdam and was waiting in His Majesty’s antechamber for His Majesty’s most gracious permission to listen to the music. His august self immediately gave orders that Bach be admitted and went, at his entrance, to the so-called “forte and piano,” condescending also to play, in person and without any preparation, a theme to be executed by Kapellmeister Bach in a fugue. This was done so happily by the aforementioned kapellmeister that not only His Majesty was pleased to show his satisfaction thereat, but also all those present were seized with astonishment.
Frederick, in fact, played a theme of his own composition and asked Bach to extemporize a sixpart fugue on it. Bach begged off doing something as complicated as that, but he did extemporize a three-part fugue on the theme, playing it on the piano (the “forte and piano”) that was in Frederick’s chambers and that was one of the earliest examples of that instrument.
Back in Leipzig, Bach decided to press ahead with further contrapuntal treatment of Frederick’s theme, and over the next several months, he wrote a series of 13 pieces that treated the “royal” theme several ways. Proud of this music, Bach had it engraved and bound in leather as a handsome presentation copy for Frederick and titled it A Musical Offering, suggesting that this was his offering or gift to the king.
The 13 pieces in A Musical Offering (often played in varying order and instrumentation) treat Frederick’s theme in several ways. There are two complex ricercars and a series of 10 equally complex canons, and there’s also a trio sonata in four movements for flute, violin,
and continuo. The sonata—which is the work heard on this evening’s program—is in the slow-fast-slowfast sequence of movements found in a sonata da chiesa (church sonata), and its treatment of the “royal” theme is less rigorous than in the other pieces of A Musical Offering. Nevertheless, the strongly chromatic original theme appears here in several guises, and its contrapuntal extension—even in music as genial as this—is impressive. Here and throughout A Musical Offering, the prominent use of the flute is a nod toward Frederick, who was a combination of a great statesman and a discriminating musician.
GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN (1681–1767)
Quartet in G Major from Tafelmusik, TWV 43:G2 (1733)
The tradition of using music to accompany banquets and feasts is probably as old as music itself. By the 16th century, this sort of music had become a genre of its own: tafelmusik (“table music”), which the royalty or nobility (or whoever could afford it) had played for them while they ate or partied. The tradition gradually vanished, but Mozart’s divertimentos probably had a similar function, and as late as the 1780s, a teenaged Beethoven was writing music for the wind octet that Archduke Maximilian Franz of Bonn maintained to serenade him during mealtime.
As music director of the city of Hamburg, Telemann supplied music for civic functions of all sorts, and in 1733, he published three sets of tafelmusik, which he presented under the French title Musique de table. Each set (or “production,” as Telemann called it) consists of six different pieces that might accompany a festive banquet, and the surprising thing is how varied this music is—from works for solo instruments to orchestral pieces. Each set opens with an overture and suite, followed by a quartet, a concerto, a trio sonata, a solo sonata, and a “conclusion,” which might take many forms.
The Quartet in G Major, the second piece of the first set, is scored for transverse flute, oboe, violin, and continuo, which is made up of a cello and a harpsichord. The opening movement is in ternary form: the Largo, in 12/8, features the three upper voices in long melodic lines, while the propulsive central Allegro is in common time; music from the Largo then returns to round off the movement.
The second movement is also in ternary form, but now the sequence is fast-slow-fast: a lively Vivace in 2/4 gives way to a Moderato in 3/8, and Telemann asks for a da capo repeat.
The Grave isn’t a slow movement but rather a transitional passage that’s only six measures long. It begins with three bare chords, although Telemann would have expected the performers to embellish them individually. The movement ends on an expectant trill, and the concluding Vivace, in binary form, gallops happily along its 6/8 meter and concludes on a resounding G-major chord.
It’s hard to imagine this music—so spirited, bright, and fun—as background for anything. Upon hearing this music played at a meal, as tafelmusik, one might set down their knife and fork and just listen.
HEINRICH VON BIBER (1644–1704)
Sonata No. 3 in F Major for Violin and Continuo, C. 140 (1681)
In 1681, the Bohemian composer and violin virtuoso Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber published a set of eight sonatas for violin and continuo in Nuremberg. At the time, he was a musician at the Salzburg court, and he dedicated the sonatas to Maximilian Gandolph von Kuenburg, PrinceArchbishop of Salzburg, whom Biber, in three years’ time, would go on to serve as kapellmeister (music director).
The sonata heard on this evening’s program—the third from that set of eight—is typical of Biber’s best music in that it’s utterly original in form and calls for the greatest virtuosity from its violinist thanks to its brilliant passagework, wide skips, complex string crossings, very high positions, and demands for endless energy. Although Biber carefully wrote out the violin part, he would have expected the violinist to embellish it, particularly in the sonata’s many repeated phrases. However, he left the accompanying continuo line bare so that the performer could bring that line to life in their own way. That continuo part has been undertaken by such varied instruments as organ, cello, theorbo, and harpsichord as well as a combination of those and other instruments. For this evening’s performance, the continuo part is played on the harpsichord.
Listeners expecting a Classical violin sonata or even one based on the pattern of Bach’s violin and keyboard sonatas will find this piece provides a wholly different experience. There are two movements here, but they’re divided into short sections with vastly differing tempos and expressions. There are numerous short repeats, and the familiar outlines of sonata form are often lost in the originality and virtuosity of Biber’s writing.
In its most general sense, the opening movement alternates the slow opening tempo (Adagio) with much faster (Presto) music; these in turn alternate with racing runs that send the violinist to the extreme ranges of the instrument. The second movement is in variation form, and its theme, marked Aria, undergoes an imaginative set of variations, often over the simplest ground-bass accompaniment.
While audiences can be mindful of the work’s structure while listening to it, it may be more rewarding (and more fun) to simply listen for the wild originality of this music and for the brilliance of Biber’s writing. The very ending of the sonata will convince all listeners of Biber’s virtuosity and originality, and even his sense of humor. ◗
The Lensic Performing Arts Center
KIRILL GERSTEIN, Piano
SOYEON KATE LEE, Piano
WILLIAM HAGEN, Violin
CHAD HOOPES, Violin
IDA KAVAFIAN, Violin
MILENA PAJARO-VAN DE STADT, Viola
ERIC KIM, Cello
BÉLA BARTÓK
ESCHER STRING QUARTET
ADAM BARNETT-HART, Violin
JAMES THOMPSON, Violin
PIERRE LAPOINTE, Viola
BROOK SPELTZ, Cello
CAROL Mc GONNELL, Clarinet
STEFAN DOHR, Horn
Contrasts, Sz. 111 (1938) (1881–1945)
Verbunkos (Recruiting Dance)
Pihenö (Relaxation)
Sebes (Fast Dance)
Ida Kavafian, Carol McGonnell, Soyeon Kate Lee
GYÖRGY LIGETI
Trio for Horn, Violin, and Piano, Hommage à Brahms (1982) (1923–2006)
Andantino con tenerezza
Vivacissimo molto ritmico
Alla marcia
Lamento: Adagio
Stefan Dohr, William Hagen, Kirill Gerstein
INTERMISSION
GEORGE ENESCU
Octet in C Major, Op. 7 (1900) (1881–1955)
Très modéré
Très fougueux—
Lentement—
Mouvement de valse bien rythmée
Chad Hoopes, Ida Kavafian, Adam Barnett-Hart, James Thompson, Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, Pierre Lapointe, Eric Kim, Brook Speltz
The Festival is grateful to Michael Hindus and Lynne Withey and David Muck and Cole Martelli, whose generosity has made the filming of this evening's concert possible.
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival thanks The Lensic Performing Arts Center for their support of our concerts.
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Sunday, 6 p.m. AUGUST 10
BÉLA BARTÓK (1881–1945)
Contrast s, Sz. 111 (1938)
Bartók wrote Contrasts during the late summer of 1938, on a commission from clarinetist Benny Goodman that had been facilitated by violinist Joseph Szigeti, Bartók’s good friend and frequent recital partner. Szigeti had long been interested in jazz, and Goodman was both a jazzband leader and classical musician. (He commissioned the clarinet concertos of Copland and Hindemith.)
Bartók was somewhat familiar with American jazz, and Szigeti sent him several recordings of Goodman’s band before he started work on Contrasts, but this music shows the influence of jazz—if it does at all—only in the springy bounce of its final pages.
One of the stipulations of Goodman’s commission was that the piece be short enough to fit on the two sides of a 78-rpm record (each of which could hold about five minutes of music). Bartók’s original version of Contrasts, therefore, had only two sections: the current first and third movements. But even before the first performance of that version, in January 1939, Bartók decided the piece needed a central slow section and composed the Pihenö movement accordingly.
Bartók, Szigeti, and Goodman premiered the final, three-movement version of Contrasts, which runs about a quarter hour in length, at Carnegie Hall on April 21, 1940, and they made a recording of the work, which is still available, the following month. Several charming photographs from that recording session exist: Szigeti looks elegant in a white rehearsal jacket, while Goodman—wearing shirtsleeves and suspenders and sitting with his legs crossed—is more informal. Bartók, who had removed the coat of his three-piece suit, sits severely at the piano in a white shirt, tie, and black vest.
Listeners unfamiliar with this music might best approach it through its incredible sonorities. Contrasts is the only one of Bartók’s chamber music works to include a wind instrument, and, as the title implies, the composer was interested in contrasting the smooth sound of the clarinet, the resonant sound of the violin, and the percussive sound of the piano. Perhaps surprisingly, even though Bartók was a virtuoso pianist, he gave the piano a somewhat lower profile than the other two instruments, each of which has its own cadenza.
The work’s first movement is titled Verbunkos (“Recruiting Dance”), which refers to an old Hungarian ceremonial dance performed when the army was seeking recruits. The clarinet has the opening melody here, while the violin presents the syncopated second theme. Near the end, the clarinet has an elaborate cadenza, and the movement closes quietly.
Pihenö (“Relaxation”) is a slow movement full of “night music,” a Bartók specialty. The violin has the principal idea, but the writing for piano—with its deep growls, turns, and trills—is particularly effective. The eerie, spooky swirls of sound is what makes this movement so distinctive.
Sebes (“Fast Dance”), the wonderful last movement, is built on dance rhythms and blazes with vitality. It also calls for extra instruments. The clarinet part is written for a clarinet in A, but the movement’s middle section calls for a B-flat clarinet. Bartók also asks that, for the first 30 bars, the violinist use an extra violin tuned to G-sharp-DA-E-flat (instead of the usual G-D-A-E). The malevolent sound of the violin’s resulting open-string tritones makes the beginning of this movement sound like the opening of Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre, which also calls for a retuned violin. A calmer middle section for clarinet leads to a brilliant violin cadenza; then the other instruments return, and Contrasts swirls and dances its way to one of the happiest conclusions Bartók ever wrote.
GYÖRGY LIGETI (1923–2006)
Trio for Horn, Violin, and Piano, Hommage à Brahms (1982)
Any work for horn, violin, and piano inevitably calls to mind Brahms’s Horn Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 40, composed, in part, as a memorial to his mother in 1865. (The same musicians performing the Ligeti Horn Trio this evening are performing the Brahms Horn Trio tomorrow evening.)
Ligeti was very aware of Brahms’s example, and he subtitled his own such trio Hommage à Brahms —though listeners would be hard-pressed to find any similarities between the two works beyond the fact that each one is in four movements. There are, however, several larger cultural references in Ligeti’s trio, and the composer spoke of being influenced by Beethoven, characteristic
national dances, and Classical forms. Yet nothing is ever quite as it seems in this original music, which Ligeti said “cannot be pigeonholed into any neat stylistic category” due to its “odd angles and trick floors” and which needs to be heard and understood for itself rather than compared to another work.
Ligeti composed his trio in 1982, following a five-year break that saw him attempt to sort out his own place in the evolving late-20th-century musical landscape. Serialism and the avant-garde had lost much of their appeal, but Ligeti was by no means anxious to embrace the “new expressionism.” His trio comes from a time when he was reaching for new directions of his own, and he referred to this work as “conservative/post-modern.”
In certain respects, this piece is indeed conservative— it uses a Classical model and employs such Classical forms as the scherzo and passacaglia—but the music has layers of meaning beyond its forms. In a program note, Ligeti wrote that he used “a false quotation from Beethoven’s Les Adieux Sonata as [a] germinal motive” and adds that, in the third movement, he used a “pseudo-Beethoven gesture” that suggests “Beethoven’s scherzi” but lacks “a true quotation.”
Ligeti marks the opening movement Andantino con tenerezza (“with tenderness”). That germinal Beethoveninspired motive—a falling three-note pattern—recurs in a variety of forms here. A Più mosso central episode, introduced by pizzicato violin, leads to a return of the opening material and a sustained, near-silent close.
The second movement is a lot of fun. Ligeti marks it Vivacissimo molto ritmico (“Very lively, very rhythmic”), but he also specifies that it should be “fresh, sparkling, light, gliding, dancing.” The movement is in 4/4, but Ligeti subdivides that rhythm into an eighth-note pulse stressed in a 3+3+2 pattern, giving the music the feel of an Eastern European folk dance. At the same time, the piano’s jazzy ostinato seems to come from a different world altogether, and then, after all this energy, the movement comes to an unexpected close: there’s a moment of silence, the piano recalls the three-note pattern from the very beginning, and the music again fades into silence.
The third movement, marked Alla marcia and also nominally in 4/4, preserves some of the rhythmic asymmetry of the second movement. This is a powerful march that makes its way along heavy accents. The movement is in ternary form: a flowing middle section, played with mutes, leads to an abbreviated return of the opening section, which has a particularly brilliant part for the horn.
Ligeti establishes the mood of the final movement with its title, Lamento, and this finale—like that of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony—takes the form of a passacaglia. Here, a slowly descending bass line provides the foundation for a set of variations. The pervasive three-note pattern emerges from these textures—Ligeti marks them dolente (“grieving”)—as the movement builds to a strident climax and then falls away and fades into nothingness.
This music is extraordinarily difficult for its performers. The violinist plays much of it in multiple stops and artificial harmonics, and the hornist has moments that require unbelievable breath control while sustaining high, quiet notes for long periods. Ligeti is also quite specific about the sounds he wants from the individual instruments. He makes clear, for example, that the piano must be kept open throughout the performance, and he writes much of the horn part in natural harmonics so that the modern valved horn will sound like its predecessor, the valveless natural horn.
GEORGE ENESCU (1881–1955)
Octet in C Major, Op. 7 (1900)
George Enescu, a child prodigy, left his home in Romania at age 7 to study at the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna and then at the Paris Conservatory. Along the way, he worked with a spectacular array of musicians: In Vienna, he played in orchestras conducted by Brahms, and in Paris, he studied with Massenet and Fauré, became friends with Saint-Saëns, and was a classmate of Ravel. He graduated from the Paris Conservatory with a first prize in violin in 1899, at the age of 18, and then embarked on a career as a violinist and composer.
Enescu finished writing his Octet for Strings in 1900, when he was still a teenager, and this work calls to mind another great octet for strings that was written by a teenager: the Octet by Felix Mendelssohn, who wrote his work in 1825, when he was 16 years old. But how different these two works are! Mendelssohn’s Octet is all fleetness, grace, and polish, while Enescu’s plunges listeners into a world of violence, sonority, and conflict. And one of the reasons these works are so different is that the principal influence on Enescu’s Octet wasn’t Mendelssohn but rather—surprisingly—Berlioz, who wrote no chamber music of his own.
Enescu saw a role model in Berlioz (who’d been dead for 30 years when Enescu began working on his Octet), as he’d fought against hidebound French musical traditions
and introduced a nightmare element into his music—one that strongly attracted Enescu. “Sometimes,” Enescu said, “I felt myself like a Berlioz in chamber music, if it is possible to imagine the man who used five orchestras composing such a kind of music.”
The opening of Enescu’s Octet instantly establishes the character of this powerful music. Over a steady accompaniment played by the second cello, the seven other instruments hammer out the opening theme—a sinuous, angular, and propulsive idea that takes nearly a minute to unfold. This is the seminal subject of the Octet, and all the work’s subsequent material will in some way be related to it.
In this opening movement, marked Très modéré (“Very moderate”), Enescu creates a very densely argued exposition: Much of it unfolds canonically, and the writing makes virtuoso demands on all eight players. The second subject, announced by the first viola and marked “expressive and grieving,” seems to strike a different note, but this theme is simply a derivation of the powerful opening one. After a dynamic development, this extended movement trails into silence on a muted re-statement of the main idea.
Enescu calls for only a brief pause between the first and second movements (a pause that’s just long enough for the musicians to remove their mutes), and then the second movement leaps violently to life. Marked Très fougueux (“Very fiery”), the movement opens with the same sort of unison explosion that launched the first movement, but now the theme has evolved into something spiky and fierce. Enescu marks this opening statement agité, and it alternates with slower, gentler material marked caressant (“caressing”). The movement develops principally through a violent fugue that’s based on its opening gesture; along the way, however, the principal theme from the first movement makes a reappearance, and the music drives to a huge climax full of massed chords.
This fury subsides, and the music proceeds without pause into the third movement, which is marked Lentement (“Slowly”). This movement opens with a series of slow, muted chords (once again derived from the seminal theme), and soon the first violin sings the grieving main idea. (One of Enescu’s recurring markings in this movement is velouté: “velvety.”) Gentle as its opening may be, this movement also rises to a conflicted climax, recalling themes from the opening movement as it proceeds.
The finale, which begins without pause and is titled Mouvement de valse bien rythmée (“Well-paced waltz
movement”), is a sort of grand waltz, full of energy and sweep. The movement drives aggressively to its closing pages, which bring a surprise: The music slows, and the first violin sings a phrase that appears to be derived from the theme of the Beloved in Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. After all the violence of the Octet, this episode, however brief, seems to offer a moment of relief and purity. But then the furies return and drive the Octet to its surprisingly fierce conclusion. ◗
Monday, 12 p.m.
BAM!! is generously sponsored by an anonymous donor and by John Hart and Carol Prins
Presentation Synopsis
“Music & Child Brain Development”
Assal Habibi, PhD
Associate Research Professor of Psychology and Neurology, USC Brain and Creativity Institute, and Director, USC Center for Music, Brain, and Society
In her presentation “Music & Child Brain Development,”
Assal Habibi, PhD, discusses insights from a series of longitudinal and cross-sectional studies that explore the impact of musical training on the development of auditory, cognitive, and executive skills during childhood. The studies’collective results demonstrate that musical training in school-age children leads to improvements in those skills, and—through the use of MRIs and EEGs— they reveal neuroplastic structural and functional changes in the auditory regions associated with those skills.
Habibi’s research also highlights musical training’s positive association with executive function (specifically in terms of inhibition control), manifesting differences in both behavioral outcomes and neural responses. While this suggests that musical training can expedite and support the maturation of auditory, cognitive, and executive skills in childhood, Habibi proposes that the timing of musical training and experiences may be a critical factor when considering a child’s response to intervention and that the trajectory of change may vary significantly depending on a child’s individual characteristics and developmental stage.
About Assal Habibi
Assal Habib is an associate research professor of psychology and neurology and the director of the
Center for Music, Brain, and Society at the University of Southern California. Her interdisciplinary research explores the impact of the arts—particularly music— on health and human development. She investigates how innate biological factors and experiential learning shape the development of cognitive, emotional, and social abilities across one’s lifespan.
Habibi has been a principal investigator on several innovative studies, including projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). An expert in electrophysiological and neuroimaging methods, her work extensively employs longitudinal and crosssectional models to examine the effects of integrating music-based activities into school curricula and elder care, especially for those from underserved communities. Her research not only highlights the essential role of the arts in education but also explores the therapeutic potential of music for individuals across different age groups, including the elderly. ◗
For more information on this topic and about Assal Habibi’s work, visit the website for the Brain and Music Lab at USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute at dornsife.usc .edu/brainandmusic.
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
The Festival is grateful to Michael Hindus and Lynne Withey and David Muck and Cole Martelli, whose generosity has made the filming of this afternoon's presentation possible.
The Lensic Performing Arts Center
KIRILL GERSTEIN, Piano
MARTIN BEAVER, Violin
WILLIAM HAGEN, Violin
MILENA PAJARO-VAN DE STADT, Viola
ERIC KIM, Cello
STEFAN DOHR, Horn
COLIN CURRIE, Percussion
DANIEL DRUCKMAN, Percussion
DOUG PERKINS, Percussion
GREGORY ZUBER, Percussion
STEVE REICH
Mallet Quartet (2009) (b. 1936) Fast Slow Fast
Colin Currie, Doug Perkins, Daniel Druckman, Gregory Zuber
ERNST VON DOHNÁNYI
Serenade in C Major, Op. 10 (1902) (1877–1960)
Marcia: Allegro
Romanza: Adagio non troppo, quasi andante
Scherzo: Vivace
Tema con variazioni: Andante con moto
Rondo: Allegro vivace
Martin Beaver, Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, Eric Kim
INTERMISSION
FREYA WALEY-COHEN
Stone Fruit (2024; Festival Co-Commission; US Premiere)◊ (b. 1989)
Gregory Zuber, Colin Currie, Doug Perkins, Daniel Druckman
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Horn Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 40 (1865) (1833–97) Andante
Scherzo: Allegro
Adagio mesto
Finale: Allegro con brio
Kirill Gerstein, William Hagen, Stefan Dohr
◊Freya Waley-Cohen's Stone Fruit was co-commissioned by Wigmore Hall and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival thanks The Lensic Performing Arts Center for their support of our concerts.
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Monday, 6 p.m. AUGUST 11
STEVE REICH (b. 1936)
Mallet Quartet (2009)
It’s difficult to believe that Steve Reich, one of the earliest and most important practitioners of minimalism, turns 89 this fall. Over the course of his long and influential career, he’s won and received many of the world’s highest honors, including the Pulitzer Prize (for his Double Sextet) and two Grammy Awards. The New Yorker has called him “the most original musical thinker of our time.”
Reich was born in New York City and grew up in both New York and California. He attended Cornell University (where he was a philosophy major and music minor), The Juilliard School, and Mills College, where he earned a master’s degree in composition and studied with Darius Milhaud and Luciano Berio. Before he received his formal training, however, he became fascinated with rhythm and drumming.
In 1950, at the age of 14, Reich began studying percussion with Roland Kohloff, who became the principal timpanist for the San Francisco Symphony and New York Philharmonic. Later, in the 1970s, he became interested in African and Balinese music and immersed himself in the study of those complex languages. He studied African drumming at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana and Balinese drumming at the American Society for Eastern Arts in both Berkeley and Seattle. These interests began to show up in his own music as a fascination with rhythm, pulse, and rhythmic phases, while through performances with his own ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians (founded in 1966), he explored these possibilities. One of his early successes, which followed his trip to Ghana, was his 1971 work Drumming, in which a single rhythmic cell is elaborated over a 90-minute span. The critic K. Robert Schwarz called Drumming “minimalism’s first masterpiece.”
Across his long career, Reich has written for varied (and sometimes quite large) ensembles that can use voice and tape and other non-traditional instruments, but his fascination with rhythm, percussive sounds, and rhythmic phases has remained a constant in his music.
Reich composed his Mallet Quartet for two marimbas and two vibraphones (and “additional technological components and/or amplification”) in 2009. A note he wrote for this work is included here.—Eric Bromberger
Mallet Quartet (2009) is scored for two vibraphones and two five-octave marimbas. I had never written for five-octave marimbas extending down to cello C. On the one hand, I was delighted to have the possibility of a low bass, and on the other hand [I was] apprehensive since just slightly too hard a mallet that low can produce noise instead of pitch. Eventually, after a bit of experimentation, this was well worked out.
The piece is in three movements, fast, slow, fast. In the two outer fast movements, the marimbas set the harmonic background, which remains rather static compared to [other] pieces of mine like Double Sextet. The marimbas interlock in canon, also a procedure I have used in many other works. The vibes present the melodic material first solo and then in canon. However, in the central slow movement, the texture changes into a thinner, more transparent one with very spare use of notes, particularly in the marimbas. I was originally concerned this movement might just be “too thin,” but I think it ends up being the most striking, and certainly the least expected, of the piece.—Steve Reich
ERNST
VON DOHNÁNYI (1877–1960)
Serenade in C Major, Op. 10 (1902)
Music for string trio—violin, viola, and cello—is rare. Taking one violin away from the string quartet presents the composer with several problems (especially harmonically), and it’s no surprise that many have shied away from such complex challenges. Mozart wrote one great string trio late in his brief life, Beethoven wrote three as a young man but never returned to the form, Hindemith wrote two, and Schoenberg wrote one.
Dohnányi’s Serenade in C Major, which is scored for a string trio, dates from 1902, when the 25-year-old composer was touring the world as a virtuoso pianist. Dohnányi didn’t play a stringed instrument, which makes the beautifully idiomatic writing in this work all the more remarkable. Here he balances the three instruments carefully, emphasizes their lyric possibilities, and achieves
harmonic interest in various ways, often using the pizzicato cello as a foundation for the two higher voices.
The term serenade was originally used solely for vocal music, but by Mozart’s time, it had come to refer to lighter instrumental music intended for enjoyment or diversion, and it’s in that sense that Dohnányi employs the term. Such a title shouldn’t keep us from taking this music seriously, however. Good-spirited and carefully crafted, the Serenade has become one of Dohnányi’s most popular works.
The brief opening movement, titled Marcia, is a stirring march propelled along by dotted figures that give the main theme its energy. Dohnányi then gives the trio section to the cello before briefly reprising the movement’s opening march.
A lovely viola cantilena opens the Romanza, and here the soaring violin dominates the middle section; the return of the opening material—with violin and viola singing above pizzicato cello accompaniment—is especially effective.
Next is the Scherzo, which is a fugue. The three voices make swirling entrances here, and the music presses forward constantly. A lyric trio section gives way to the return of the fugue, which now uses the trio theme as a countermelody.
The Andante con moto is a theme-with-variations movement, and it’s also the work’s longest. The wistful main theme is heard immediately, and it’s followed by five brief variations that are all within the subdued character of that theme.
The Serenade’s buoyant finale is a Rondo, in which, near the close, we hear themes from the opening Marcia briefly reprised before Dohnányi concludes the work with a powerful single chord.
FREYA WALEY-COHEN (b. 1989)
Stone Fruit (2024; Festival Co-Commission; US Premiere)
Freya Waley-Cohen’s Stone Fruit was co-commissioned by the Festival and London’s Wigmore Hall, and it’s receiving its US premiere at this evening’s concert. For more information about Waley-Cohen—who was one of the participants in the Festival’s 2017 Young Composers String Quartet Project—and her work, please see “2025 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Commissioned Works,” which begins on p. 22. WaleyCohen has provided the following program note for Stone Fruit .—The Editors
The spark for this piece came from thinking about the delicacy and intensity of daily domestic rituals. The instruments in Stone Fruit include a set of tuned mixing bowls as well as vintage teacups and saucers. I mixed these instruments with temple blocks, wood blocks, glockenspiel, and tom-toms. The vintage teacups look delicate and dainty, but the sound can become quite fierce. I think of the piece as being a little bit like a peach or any type of stone fruit with the sweet softness of the fruit hiding the hard stone inside, where you might chip your teeth if not careful.—Freya Waley-Cohen
Colin Currie, with his Colin Currie Quartet, gave the world premiere of Stone Fruit on February 27 at London’s Wigmore Hall, and he’s provided the following note about the work.—The Editors
Much of the music [in Stone Fruit] is for Teacups and Saucers (note the capitals!). Yet there is a vulnerability to proceedings. Such delicate sounds, and wielded with such kinetic intent! What, like the stone fruit, lies underneath the soft and attractive exterior? Will we bite something more rigid and less palatable? Or will the charming sheen endure and keep the listener safe? This ingenious piece teases and tempts and looks back as well as forward in time.—Colin Currie
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–97)
Horn Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 40 (1865)
Brahms liked to get away from Vienna during the hot months, and he spent the summer of 1864 in the little town of Lichtenthal in the Black Forest near Baden-Baden. Lichtenthal was home to a flourishing artists’ colony during the summer, and there Brahms, surrounded by congenial friends, could indulge his passion for long walks through the woods. He returned the following summer, but this time he had a special reason to seek the solitude of the forests: His mother had died on January 31 of that year, and he was still coming to terms with the loss. He composed his Horn Trio that summer, and the music was intended, at least in part, as a memorial to his mother. The beautiful slow movement contains a quotation from the Rhenish folk song “In den Weiden steht ein Haus” (“In the Willows Stands a House”), an evocation of happy childhood memories.
The lovely and peaceful forest setting seems to have had a profound effect on the Horn Trio. Brahms said that the opening theme came to him during a walk along “wooded heights among fir trees,” and many have noted the calm, almost pastoral nature of this music. The Horn Trio isn’t so much elegiac, though, as it is reflective and commemorative. Brahms observes the death of his mother not by wearing his heart on his sleeve but by writing gentle and beautiful music.
The opening movement is remarkable for not being in sonata form. Aware that sonata form brings a type of musical drama alien to the spirit of this trio, Brahms instead cast it in rondo form: The opening Andante episode occurs three times, separated by a slightly quicker section marked Poco più animato (“A little more lively”). The calm beginning—the section that came to Brahms on his walk through the woods—has drawn special praise. (American composer Daniel Gregory Mason called it “a sort of symbol of all that is most Romantic in music.”) Brahms specifies that he wants this opening section played dolce, espressivo, and it alternates with the violin’s surging, rising line of the Poco più animato before the movement comes to a quiet close. By contrast, the boisterous Scherzo flies along on resounding triplets. Its brief trio section, in the unusual key of A-flat minor, features a long duet for violin and horn.
Brahms gave the third movement the unusual marking Adagio mesto (“Slow, sad”), and the piano’s rolled chords at the very beginning set the mood for this somber and grieving music. Again, violin and horn trade expressive melodic lines, and the music rises to a climax marked passionata, where violin and horn soar high above the piano accompaniment before the music drifts into silence.
The Finale, marked Allegro con brio, has struck many as the most “horn-like” of the movements, as it’s built on a brilliant 6/8 meter that inevitably evokes the calls of hunting horns. Brahms has prepared the way for this movement by quietly inserting (at a very slow tempo) the shape of its main theme into the slow movement. The Finale seems never to slow down, never to lose its energy, and the Horn Trio rushes to its close in a blaze of color and excitement.
Brahms originally wrote this trio for the Waldhorn (or natural horn). This was the precursor of the modern valved French horn, and the player had to use their lips or stop the bell with their hand to generate each different pitch. It was an extremely difficult instrument to play accurately, and virtually every performance today uses the valved horn.
Recognizing that the unusual combination of horn, violin, and piano might result in few performances, Brahms made arrangements of this trio that substituted either the viola or cello for the horn, but these versions are almost never played. The music may suit their range but not their temperament, as the trio takes much of its character from the rich, noble sonority of the horn. ◗
Generously sponsored by the Lorlee and Arnold Tenenbaum Memorial Fund
Tuesday, 12 p.m.
AUGUST 12
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
CHAD HOOPES, Violin KATIA SKANAVI, Piano
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano, Op. 100 (1886) (1833–97)
Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 47, Kreutzer (1802–03) (1770–1827)
Adagio sostenuto—Presto Andante con variazioni
Finale: Presto
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Tuesday, 12 p.m. AUGUST 12
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–97)
Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano, Op. 100 (1886)
Brahms spent the summer of 1886 at Lake Thun in Switzerland. At 53, he was at the height of his creative powers—he recently conducted performances of his Fourth Symphony throughout Germany following the work’s premiere the previous fall—and now he decided to travel to a beautiful setting in Switzerland to compose and relax.
Working in a room with a view of glistening glaciers across the magnificent lake, Brahms turned to writing chamber music. From that summer came his Second Cello Sonata, Piano Trio in C Minor, and Second Violin Sonata; he returned to the same room over the course of the next two summers, completing his Double Concerto for Violin and Cello and his Third Violin Sonata and grumbling the whole time that writing for stringed instruments should be left to “someone who understands fiddles better than I do.”
The Sonata in A Major is one of Brahms’s finest chamber works and one of the most good-natured pieces he ever wrote. Characterized by gracious melodies and an easy partnership between the violin and piano, this genial music also offers some of Brahms’s most idiomatic writing for the violin. The score is filled with Brahms’s constant reminders to the performers about how they should play: dolce (“sweetly”), teneramente (“tenderly”), espressivo (“expressively”), sempre dolce (“always sweetly”). Even the tempo indication for the first movement spells out clearly the mood Brahms wishes to project: Allegro amabile (“Fast but pleasant”).
That first movement begins with a graceful, flowing melody for piano alone, its four-bar phrases always answered by the violin. The violin itself soon picks up this melody and later shares the equally relaxed second subject with the piano. In the same year that he wrote this sonata, Brahms used this theme as the basis for his song “Wie Melodien” (“Like Melodies”), and it may be worth quoting the opening of the text of that song (in a translation by Richard Stokes), since some of its spirit flavors this movement: “Thoughts, like melodies / steal softly through my mind / like spring flowers they blossom / and drift away like fragrance.” The development is powerful, but the music remains amiable throughout, and an extended coda rises nobly to the dramatic close.
In the second movement, Brahms combines a slow movement and a scherzo. The opening Andante tranquillo
soon gives way to a tautly sprung Vivace, and these sections alternate throughout the movement. Particularly impressive is the gentle opening theme, marked dolce on each appearance. With each repetition, it rises higher in the violin’s register until, at last, it soars high above the piano accompaniment. The music comes to a quiet close, and then Brahms ends with a quick joke: a seven-bar fragment of the scherzo section jumps up to bring the movement to its real close.
The concluding Allegretto grazioso (“Moderately quick but graceful”) is a rondo. The violin has the stirring main theme, which stays entirely on the G string. (It remains a mystery how anyone who could write such glorious music for the violin could say that they felt incapable of writing for the instrument.) Alternating episodes grow more impassioned as the movement proceeds, but the noble main idea dominates.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 47, Kreutzer (1802–03)
By the beginning of the 19th century, Beethoven was starting to get restless. The young man who’d arrived in Vienna in 1792 was a tremendous pianist; as a composer, however, he still had much to learn, and he spent the next decade slowly mastering the high Classical forms of Haydn and Mozart. By 1802, he’d composed two symphonies, three piano concertos, a set of six string quartets, and numerous sonatas for piano, for violin, and for cello. These works had all been acclaimed in Vienna, but in that same year, Beethoven wrote to a friend: “I’m not satisfied with what I’ve composed up to now. From now on I intend to embark on a new path.” That new path would become clear late in 1803 with the Eroica Symphony, which revolutionized music. It engaged the most serious issues, and in music of unparalleled drama and scope it resolved them.
But even before the Eroica, there were indications of Beethoven’s new path. Early in 1803, the composer met George Bridgetower (1778–1860). The young violinist, who was the son of a West Indian father and a European mother, had played in the orchestra for Haydn’s concerts in London a decade earlier and was now establishing himself as a touring virtuoso on the continent. Bridgetower
and Beethoven quickly became friends, and when the violinist proposed a joint concert where they’d perform a new sonata together, the composer agreed.
As was often the case, Beethoven found himself pressed for time while composing that sonata. He tried to speed the process along by using a final movement he’d written for a violin sonata the previous year and discarded, but now, in effect, he was working backwards. He rushed to get the first two movements done in time for the scheduled concert on May 22, but he didn’t make it. The concert had to be postponed two days, and even then, Beethoven barely got the work done. He called on his copyist at 4:30 that morning to begin copying a part for him, and at the concert he and Bridgetower had to perform some of the music from Beethoven’s manuscript. The piano part for the first movement was still in such a fragmentary state that Beethoven was probably playing some of it just from sketches.
As soon as he completed this sonata, Beethoven set to work on the Eroica, which would occupy him for the next six months. While the sonata doesn’t engage the heroic issues of that symphony’s first movement, it does have something of the work’s slashing power and vast scope. Beethoven was well aware of this and warned performers that the sonata was “written in a very concertante style, quasi-concerto-like.”
From the first instant, one senses that this is music that was conceived on a grand scale. The sonata opens with a slow introduction (the only one in Beethoven’s 10 violin sonatas), and it’s marked Adagio sostenuto and serves as a cadenza-like entrance for the violin alone. The piano makes a similarly dramatic entrance, and gradually the two instruments outline the interval of a rising second (E to F sharp). At the Presto, that interval collapses into a half step, the movement jumps into A minor, and the music whips ahead. Beethoven provides a chorale-like second subject marked dolce, but this island of calm makes only the briefest of returns in the course of this furious movement. The burning energy of that Presto opening is never far off: the music rips along an almost machinegun-like patter of eighth notes, and after a hyperactive development, the movement drives to its abrupt cadence.
Relief comes in the Andante con variazioni. The piano introduces the melody (which is amiable but already fairly complex), the violin repeats it, and then the two instruments briefly extend it. Next comes four lengthy and highly elaborated variations, which call for some demanding playing, but for all its complexities, this is a lovely movement.
The Finale opens with a bang—a stark A-major chord—and off the music goes. Beethoven had composed this movement, a tarantella, a year earlier, intending it to be the finale of his Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 30, No. 1, but he pulled it out and wrote a new finale for that earlier sonata instead. That proved to be a wise decision, as this fiery finale would have overpowered that gentle work; here, however, it dances with a furious energy that makes it a worthy counterpart to the first movement. At several points, Beethoven moves out of the driving 6/8 tarantella meter and offers brief interludes in 2/4. These stately, reserved moments bring the only relief in a movement that overflows with seething energy—a movement that here becomes the perfect conclusion to one of the most powerful pieces of chamber music ever written.
Beethoven was so taken with Bridgetower’s playing that he intended to dedicate this sonata to him, and so we might know this work as the Bridgetower Sonata had the composer and the violinist not quarreled and had a falling out. The two eventually made up, but, in the meantime, Beethoven had dedicated the sonata to the French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer, who, apparently, wound up not taking to the music. Berlioz reported that “the celebrated violinist could never bring himself to play this outrageously incomprehensible composition.” ◗
Wednesday, 12 p.m.
AUGUST
13
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
KIRILL GERSTEIN, Piano
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Blumenstück, Op. 19 (1839) (1810–56)
GYÖRGY KURTÁG
Selections from Játékok (Games), Vol. VIII (2010) (b. 1926)
Flowers We Are, Frail Flowers… (1a)
Flowers We Are, Frail Flowers… (1b) …flowers also the stars…
Flowers We Are… (3)
Flowers We Are… (4a)
Flowers We Are… (4b) …and once more: Flowers We Are…
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
Lilacs, Op. 21, No. 5 (1902/1913) (1873–1943)
PERCY GRAINGER
Paraphrase on Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers (1901; rev. 1904) (1882–1961)
FRANCISCO COLL
Two Waltzes Toward Civilization (after Lorca’s Poet in New York) (b. 1985) (2024)
MAURICE RAVEL
La Valse (1920) (1875–1937)
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Wednesday, 12 p.m. AUGUST 13
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–56)
Blumenstück (Flower Piece), Op. 19 (1839)
Schumann composed Blumenstück, which he described as a “delicate” piano piece, while visiting Vienna in January 1839, around the same time he composed his Arabeske. Blumenstück’s title doesn’t translate easily; literally, it means “Flower Piece,” but the actual meaning implies something particularly romantic and pleasing.
The roughly seven-minute-long work opens with a gentle, ingratiating melody and then falls into a series of sections—all of which seem to be variations on that opening melody. Some of those sections are in minor keys, and one, marked Lebhaft (“Lively”), speeds ahead.
Essentially, however, all the parts of Blumenstück are cut from the same cloth, and Schumann simply rearranges the tapestry in each section. And while such a description may seem to condescend a bit, it’s not intended to: Blumenstück is a lovely piece of music.
GYÖRGY KURTÁG (b. 1926)
Selections from Játékok (Games), Vol. VIII (2010)
In 1975, the Hungarian composer György Kurtág began to write a series of very short piano pieces that he called Játékok (Games). The number of pieces continued to grow over the following years, and the works have been collected and published in a series of volumes. A note in the published score suggests how this series evolved from its simple beginning:
The first volumes (1975–79) were suggested by children playing spontaneously and for whom the piano still meant a toy. The second series, beginning with book 5, includes diary entries and personal messages to the composer’s contemporaries and friends that have been composed since the 1980s. Performers are welcome to play their personal selection from the full range of Játékok, while medium- and high-grade students can perfectly cope with the technical requirements of the later pieces.
Kurtág’s Játékok bears some resemblance to Bartók’s Mikrokosmos, which Kurtág’s fellow countryman composed from 1926 to 1939: Both are collections of short piano pieces that are intended primarily for children and pose different technical challenges, and both appeal to adult performers as well as children. In Játékok, the technical challenges can be quite imposing, and each published volume is prefaced by a multipage explanation of all the “signs” Kurtág uses in the score to explain what he wants from the performers. These signs indicate things as diverse as note duration, different methods of touching and striking the keys, tempo indications, and so on. Some of these pieces present specific technical challenges while others were written for musical figures or the composer’s friends (many individual titles begin “Homage to . . .”). All the pieces in Játékok are extremely short, and listeners should remember that the overall title of the series translates to games.
In 2010, Kurtág published his eighth volume of Játékok, which consists of 16 pieces composed earlier. Flowers We Are, Frail Flowers had originally appeared in the very first volume of Játékok, but Kurtág returned to it often, and the piece exists in several versions. This is extremely fragmentary music—it involves no harmony or counterpoint at all. It offers only a bare melodic line of just a few notes, it lasts for just a few seconds, and then it’s gone.
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873–1943)
Lilacs, Op. 21, No. 5 (1902/1913)
We instinctively think of Rachmaninoff as a composer of piano music and opulent works for orchestra, and too few of us know his many works for voice. Rachmaninoff had a considerable melodic gift, and his vocal output includes some of his finest music: the all-night vigil Vespers, the choral symphony The Bells, and about 80 songs.
Rachmaninoff composed his Twelve Songs, Op. 21, in the spring of 1902. That was a good moment in the composer’s life: After a long and debilitating depression, he’d found his way back to creativity and had just savored the public successes of his Second Piano Concerto and Cello Sonata. In April of 1902, as he was completing these
songs, he married Natalia Satina, so it’s not surprising that many of the songs are love songs.
In 1913, 11 years after composing his Twelve Songs, Rachmaninoff arranged the fifth one, Lilacs, for solo piano. This has become one of his most popular short works for piano, and Rachmaninoff himself would later record it three times. While Lilacs will be heard at today’s recital in the composer’s arrangement for piano, it might be useful to know something about the song itself. The brief text is based on a poem by the Russian poet Ekaterina Beketova (1855–92), and in it, the speaker tells of going at dawn to a field of lilacs; the speaker has known nothing but pain in their life, and they find their only happiness in this vista of lilacs and the flower’s intoxicating fragrance. The song’s beautiful melodic line, gentle yet lamenting, rides above a constantly murmuring accompaniment.
PERCY GRAINGER
(1882–1961)
Paraphrase on Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers (1901; rev. 1904)
Liszt and many other 19th-century virtuoso composers often used themes by other composers to write pieces that were specifically intended to show off their virtuosity. Some composers called these pieces variations, but Liszt referred to them as reminiscences, paraphrases, transformations, or divertissements. The pieces allowed audiences to hear familiar tunes (often from operas) transformed into virtuoso showpieces, but the practice of writing such pieces pretty much died out in the 20th century. Percy Grainger—one of the most individual (and quirky) musical figures of the 20thcentury—was one composer who maintained that practice.
Grainger left his native Australia at age 13 to study in Germany. He became a successful concert pianist and was a truly original composer, too—one who rethought both the materials and language of music itself. Yet today he’s remembered not so much for his own music but for his many arrangements.
The Paraphrase on Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers was Grainger’s first effort at writing a piece based on another composer’s music. He was only 19 when he made his initial version of this work in 1901, and he performed it at Steinway Hall in London. He then apparently had further thoughts and revised the piece: The final score— dated April 4, 1904—was completed while Grainger was on an ocean voyage aboard the SS Sophocles
The Paraphrase is lots of fun. Despite being only around six minutes long, it takes one of the best-known (and best-
loved) pieces in the classical music repertoire and puts it through the full virtuoso treatment by adding thundering octaves, rippling runs, hand-crossings, passages so complex they’re written on three staves, and writing that takes the pianist across the full range of the keyboard.
FRANCISCO COLL (b. 1985)
Two Waltzes Toward Civilization (after Lorca’s Poet in New York) (2024)
Valencia-born composer Francisco Coll studied trombone at the conservatories in his home city and Madrid before moving to London, where here earned his master’s in composition from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and studied privately with Thomas Àdes, who’s said of Coll: “His music displays an original and powerful sense of drama, and his ideas about music proceed from a strikingly individual and unusual mind.”
Coll’s music has been performed around the world by such leading ensembles as the Los Angeles, Luxembourg, and Munich philharmonics; the BBC, Cincinnati, City of Birmingham, London, Lucerne, and SWR symphony orchestras; the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France; and Ensemble Modern. It’s also been heard at renowned festivals, including Aldeburgh, Aspen, Aix-en-Provence, Verbier, Tanglewood, and the BBC Proms. Coll—who was the first composer to ever receive an International Classical Music Award—has served as composer-in-residence for both the Orquesta de València and Camerata Bern, and a highlight of the latter position included composing Les Plaisirs Illuminés, a double concerto for violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and cellist Sol Gabetta that won BBC Music Magazine’s Concerto Award. In 2022, Coll began a multi-season role as artistic partner with the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias.
Two Waltzes Toward Civilization is a recent composition that Coll wrote for Kirill Gerstein on a commission from John Kongsgaard and Chamber Music in Napa Valley. Gerstein premiered the work in Napa on December 2, 2024, and since then he’s performed it at Carnegie Hall in New York City and Severance Music Center in Cleveland as well as in Montreal and throughout Europe. Following Gerstein’s performance at Carnegie Hall, the New York Classical Review called the work “fascinating” and noted that it “grabs standard clichés of romanticera pianism and does the equivalent of smashing them apart and then twisting and stretching the fragments before tossing them away and picking up the next.” Coll’s
publisher, Faber Music, features the following note about Two Waltzes on its website.—The Editors
Inspired by [the book of poems Poet in New York by the Spanish writer Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)], Coll has created a pair of waltzes that are named for poems in Lorca’s hallucinatory, hardedged collection.
Just as Lorca’s verse teeters on the point of crisis, Coll’s dramatic, colorful music of extremes exists on a knife-edge. Waltz in the Branches begins with flourishes and bell-like sounds before settling into the characteristic triple time, capturing the capricious and magical mood of the poem’s opening. Little Viennese Waltz follows, borrowing its imaginative pattern from Lorca’s poem. This is a cheerful, beautiful waltz warped into something much more macabre. A longing, freewheeling melody is underpinned by surreal harmonic and rhythmic changes and breaks down into its constituent gestures as if falling over its own feet. The atmosphere, like that of the poem, grows heavy, heightened, and obsessive.
MAURICE RAVEL (1875–1937)
La Valse (1920)
Ravel had a great affection for the waltz form. As a young piano student in Paris, he fell under the spell of Schubert’s waltzes for piano, which led him, in 1911, to compose his own Valses nobles et sentimentales, a set of charming waltzes modeled on the Schubert dances that he loved so much.
Five years earlier, in 1906, Ravel had planned to write a great waltz for orchestra. His working title for the piece was Wien (Vienna), but the piece was delayed, and Ravel didn’t return to it until the fall of 1919, a year after the conclusion of World War I. (Ravel had served as an ambulance driver in the French army during the war.) By December, he was madly at work, and he wrote to a friend: “I’m working again on Wien. It’s going great guns. I was able to take off at last, and in high gear.” Ravel completed the orchestration the following March, and the first performance took place in Paris on December 12, 1920. By that time, however, perhaps wary of wartime associations, Ravel had renamed his piece La Valse. If La Valse is one of Ravel’s most opulent and exciting scores, it’s also one of his most troubling. Certainly the original conception was clear enough, and the composer
left a description of what he was getting at, writing:
Whirling clouds give glimpses, through rifts, of couples waltzing. The clouds scatter little by little. One sees an immense hall peopled with a twirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of chandeliers bursts forth fortissimo. An Imperial Court, about 1855.
Ravel’s music gives us this scene exactly. Out of the murky, misty beginning, we hear bits of waltz rhythms, which gradually come together and plunge into an animated waltz in D major. If La Valse concluded with all this elegant vitality, our sense of the music might be clear. However, the music gradually darkens and drives to an ending that’s full of frenzied violence, and we come away from La Valse not so much exhilarated as shaken.
Ravel made a telling comment about this conclusion, writing: “I had intended this work to be a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, with which was associated in my imagination an impression of a fantastic and fatal sort of dervish’s dance.” Is this music a celebration of the waltz, or is it an exploration of a darker spirit behind the culture that created it? Many have opted for the latter explanation, hearing in La Valse not a Rosenkavalier-like evocation of a more graceful era but rather the snarling menace behind that elegance.
Ravel himself was evasive about the work’s ending. He was aware of the implications of the violent close, but in a letter to a friend he explained them quite differently, writing:
Some people have seen in this piece the expression of a tragic affair; some have said that it represented the end of the Second Empire, others that it was postwar Vienna. They are wrong. Certainly La Valse is tragic, but in the Greek sense: it is a fatal spinning around, the expression of vertigo, and the voluptuousness of the dance to the point of paroxysm.
While composing La Valse, Ravel arranged the work both for solo piano and two pianos, and the solo version is heard on this afternoon’s program. La Valse is a powerful score, and one understands why Ravel felt that it needed two pianos for full effect, but the solo piano version is a tour de force and quite effective on its own. In his effort to encompass the range and power of this music, Ravel often writes the solo version on three staves, and the challenge for the solitary pianist is to project this brilliant music with the full sonic opulence and impact it demands. ◗
Wednesday, 6 p.m. AUGUST 13
The Lensic Performing Arts Center
CHATTER ENSEMBLE
MICHAEL HIX, Baritone
DAVID FELBERG, Violin
JAMES HOLLAND, Cello
JESSE TATUM, Flute
JEFFREY BROOKS, Clarinet
LUKE GULLICKSON, Piano & Harpsichord
JEFFREY CORNELIUS, Percussion
TARA KHOZEIN, Director/Designer
JOHN RUBINSTEIN, Actor & Director/Designer
MARC NEIKRUG, Conductor
MARTIN BEAVER, Violin
STEVEN TENENBOM, Viola
FELIX FAN, Cello
TARA HELEN O’CONNOR, Flute
FRANK ROSENWEIN, Oboe
CAROL Mc GONNELL, Clarinet
COLIN CURRIE, Percussion
KATIA SKANAVI, Piano
PETER MAXWELL DAVIES
Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969) (1934–2016)
The Sentry (King Prussia’s Minuet)
The Country Walk (La Promenade)
The Lady-in-Waiting (Miss Musgrave’s Fancy)
To Be Sung on the Water (The Waterman)
The Phantom Queen (He’s Ay A-Kissing Me)
The Counterfeit (Le Conterfaite)
Country Dance (Scotch Bonnett)
The Review (A Spanish March)
Chatter Ensemble (Michael Hix, David Felberg, James Holland, Jesse Tatum, Jeffrey Brooks, Luke Gullickson, Jeffrey Cornelius, Tara Khozein)
INTERMISSION
MARC NEIKRUG Through Roses (1980) (b. 1946)
John Rubinstein, Martin Beaver, Steven Tenenbom, Felix Fan, Tara Helen O’Connor, Frank Rosenwein, Carol McGonnell, Colin Currie, Katia Skanavi, Marc Neikrug
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival thanks The Lensic Performing Arts Center for their support of our concerts.
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Wednesday, 6
p.m.
AUGUST 13
PETER MAXWELL DAVIES (1934–2016)
Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969)
King George III (1738–1820) was the longest-reigning male monarch in English history. He was king for 60 years, from 1760 to 1820, and only Victoria and Elizabeth II served longer. George’s long reign spanned a tumultuous time in English history that saw the Seven Years War, American Revolutionary War, French Revolution, and Napoleonic Wars. But George III may be best remembered for having been considered “mad.” He showed signs of instability for years before 1811, when Parliament created a Regency that allowed George’s eldest son to rule in his father’s name.
In 1965, the English composer Peter Maxwell Davies saw a performance of Euripides’s The Bacchae starring Roy Hart (1926–75), a South African actor who specialized in extended vocal techniques and was blessed with a nearly five-octave range. Davies decided to compose a theater piece for Hart and for his own newmusic ensemble, The Pierrot Players (later renamed The Fires of London). Davies conceived of a monodrama that would include music for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and keyboards, and he wrote specifically for Hart’s phenomenal vocal abilities.
The choice of subjects for this monodrama proved an interesting one. It became known that, during George III’s period of decline, he owned a tiny music box that played eight tunes, which he tried to teach to his pet bullfinches. Using this information as a starting point, Davies’s collaborator on this project, Randolph Stow (1935–2010), created a libretto that traced the king's efforts to teach his birds to sing and to make sense of what was happening to him. Stow’s text even incorporates many things George said in real life, as written down by his caregivers.
Eight Songs for a Mad King touches on madness, decline, disorientation, nostalgia, and guilt, and it’s scored for an actor-vocalist who must declaim-recite-shoutshriek the work’s text across a phenomenally wide range. The instrumentalists assume specific roles: The flute, clarinet, violin, and cello play the parts of the birds that George is teaching to sing, and in some performances, they perform in cages. Each of these four instruments has
a “solo” turn with the king: the flute in the third song, the cello in the fourth, the clarinet in the sixth, and the violin in the seventh. “The percussion player,” Davies said, “stands for the king’s ‘keeper,’” restraining his freedom and finally marching him into silence.
Davies’s music spans a startlingly wide range of styles, which can veer from disorienting atonal sounds to soothing dance music. Davies incorporates several musical quotations in his score, including ones from Handel, whose music George loved. (He owned a complete collection of Handel’s works and donated it to The British Museum.)
The score’s eight songs, which are played with little or no separation between them, span roughly half an hour. The opening of the first song, “The Sentry,” establishes the sound world of the work: A discord gives way to a mechanistic ticking that gradually goes out of phase, and this sense that order is gradually decaying will permeate the work. The actor-vocalist playing the king searches for an escape from his madness and confinement (“Undo the door!”), but he can only wonder what has become of him (“Child, child, whose son are you?”).
Eight Songs takes George on an imaginary journey of sorts, and in “The Country Walk,” he strolls through a “land of sheep and cabbages,” naming the trees he encounters along the way. “The Lady-in-Waiting” features the flute, which answers the king’s phrases with musical responses of its own. The score to this movement is a remarkable act of imagination: Davies wrote it in the likeness of a birdcage, so its six staves are written vertically rather than horizontally, and as the singer and flutist trade phrases, the other instruments offer birdcalls of their own. A mechanistic transition for percussion displaces the birdsong, and eventually all the instruments join in.
“To Be Sung on the Water” speaks to one of George’s recurring terrors—that he, the person who’s responsible for the welfare of his people, is failing them—while “The Phantom Queen” brings another terror: What’s happened to his wife? Davies accompanies the king’s worries with a series of Baroque forms: allemande, courante, and rondino. A noisy transition leads to “The Counterfeit,” which brings a solo turn for the clarinet, and here George comments on his state of being: “I am nervous. I am not ill.”
Davies’s performance marking for “Country Dance” is “smoochy,” while, musically, the movement is based on “Comfort ye my people” from Handel’s Messiah, which in turn gives way to the smoothest of foxtrots. In a note in the score, Davies writes:
The climax of the work is the end of No. 7, where the King snatches the violin through the bars of the player’s cage and breaks it. This is not just the killing of a bullfinch—it is a giving-in to insanity and a ritual murder by the King of a part of himself, after which, at the beginning of No. 8, he can announce his own death.
In the concluding “The Review,” the king surrenders to both madness and death and is led offstage by the percussionist, who beats a bass drum strapped to his chest as they exit. The king’s final anguished cry consists of one word—“howling”—which he repeats as he and the pounding drum disappear from sight and from hearing.
Marc Neikrug (b. 1946) Through Roses (1980)
Marc Neikrug has been the Artistic Director of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival since 1998. An internationally renowned pianist, he’s well known for his 35-year partnership with violinist Pinchas Zukerman, which produced highly acclaimed recitals and recordings. Also widely recognized as one of today’s leading composers, Neikrug has had his works performed at the Aspen, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hollywood Bowl, Ravinia, Schleswig-Holstein, and Tanglewood music festivals, among many others; by the Berlin State Opera and Deutsche Oper Berlin; and by ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, and the Atlanta, BBC, Boston, Houston, Jerusalem, Milwaukee, National, Pittsburgh, and Polish National Radio symphony orchestras. He’s served as composer-in-residence for Music from Angel Fire and the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, Marlboro Music Festival, and La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest.
Recent compositions by Neikrug include his Fourth Symphony, commissioned by the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, which premiered the work in Hamburg in May 2022; his Second Piano Quintet, commissioned by Music Accord for pianist Haochen Zhang and the Dover Quartet, who premiered the work at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, in October 2021; and A Song by Mahler,
a theater-and-music work that premiered at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon, in July 2021. Neikrug was born in New York City in 1946. In the 1980s, he moved to Santa Fe, where he lives with his wife, Dolly Naranjo, and their family, which now includes two great-grandchildren. His honors include winning a 2019 Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. Neikrug wrote a program note for Through Roses, which we’ve included below.—The Editors
Commissioned by the 92nd Street Y in New York, Through Roses was written over a period of 15 months in 1979–1980. The original conception evolved from various sources, foremost being my need for a non-operatic, dramatic form in which to express myself. Around this time, I heard a story about a musician who had been forced to perform in a concentration camp. Gradually an idea began to develop: to write a “play with music” in which the protagonist is a violinist who survived the death camps. This gave me the possibility of integrating music that he may have played with music of my own composition.
My objective was to create a form in which both theatrical and musical elements have unconstricted freedom. The actor moves within a set; his actual speech patterns are not regimented, the text and music being connected by means of musical cues marking only the limits within which the actor’s phrases are to be spoken. The musicians are also on stage, as figments of the protagonist’s imagination.
The musical and dramatic structures were developed simultaneously so that while both are able to exist independently, they also support each other in detail as well as in overall shape. The drama is constructed like a series of concentric circles. As the man’s memories emerge, one leads inexorably to the next. In a sort of maniacal ritual, he follows one thought after another, which brings him closer and closer to the central memory that haunts him—and gives the work its title. (One characteristic of trauma victims is the constant urge to relive the experience.)
The relationship between music, text, and action is one of psychological levels. The manifest stage action is supported by text operating on a deeper level, full of associations and traumatic memories, while the music mirrors yet a deeper
level, one beyond the possibility of verbal expression.
The musical allusions in Through Roses at relevant points in the drama include fragments of military marches and popular songs as well as Haydn (the slow movement from the Emperor Quartet, the melody of “Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles”), Beethoven, Paganini, Wagner, Berg, Mozart, Schubert, and Bach. When the protagonist recalls being forced to play Bach for the commandant of the camp, we hear this recollection as music: The violinist in the ensemble plays the opening of the Bach G-minor Sonata. But it is a distorted form of the music he plays, reflecting the distortion of the event in the man’s memory.
Without wishing to give a description of the action, I feel that certain background information is pertinent here. During World War II, there were musicians in Hitler’s death camps who were kept alive in order to perform. They were made to play marches every morning and evening for the work details leaving and returning to the camp. They gave concerts at various camp sites and played on other occasions at the whim of anyone in power; this included such sadistic ideas as having waltzes played faster and faster while old men were forced to dance until collapsing.
Some specific details of the camp at Auschwitz are relevant to Through Roses. At the arrival point of the transport trains, there was no sign to reveal where one was; there was, however, a fake clock painted on the wall. The commandant lived just beyond the fence of the camp in a two-story house with his wife and two children. The house had a garden cultivated by his wife: a lawn, rows of flowers, rose bushes. The children played in this garden, which was so close to the crematorium that on sunny days the shadows of the smokestacks fell on the lawn. Between the fence of the camp and the garden there was a pathway that went from inside the camp to the crematorium. Bodies were carried past the house along this pathway.—Marc Neikrug ◗
Thursday, 12 p.m.
AUGUST 14
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
Generously sponsored by the Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation in memory of Edgar Foster Daniels
DOVER QUARTET
JOEL LINK, Violin
BRYAN LEE, Violin
HEZEKIAH LEUNG, Viola
CAMDEN SHAW, Cello
ROBERT SCHUMANN
String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 41, No. 1 (1842) (1810–56)
Andante espressivo—Allegro
Scherzo: Presto—Intermezzo
Adagio
Presto
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96, American (1893) (1841–1904)
Allegro ma non troppo
Lento
Scherzo
Finale: Vivace ma non troppo
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Thursday, 12 p.m.
AUGUST 14
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–56)
String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 41. No. 1 (1842)
Schumann’s three string quartets are his only chamber works that don’t include the piano, and it’s perhaps not surprising that, when forced away from his own instrument, he responded by writing with great originality. In this music, he was willing to take risks, which included experimenting with polyphonic writing and unusual key relationships and basing entire movements on variants of the same theme (an idea he may have taken from Haydn’s quartets).
The first movement of the String Quartet in A Minor opens with a slow introduction that’s marked Andante espressivo and that some have claimed reveal Bach’s influence in its long contrapuntal lines. A true surprise comes in the movement’s Allegro section, where the exposition bursts to life in the “wrong” key of F major. The violin’s opening theme here furnishes all the material for this sonata-form movement, which comes to a very effective close as the first violin holds a high F over quiet pizzicato strokes from the other voices.
The exciting Scherzo, invariably described as “galloping,” flies along on its hammering 6/8 rhythm. Its middle section, which Schumann titles Intermezzo, brings a moment of calm before the pounding opening material returns.
The Adagio movement is based on the violin’s radiant main theme—a melody whose shape is somewhat reminiscent of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Schumann presents a series of variations on this theme before he brings the movement to a quiet close.
The concluding Presto is vigorous, athletic, and angular—and all its material grows out of its powerful opening theme. The second theme-group is simply an inversion of this theme, and near the end Schumann presents a third variant of this same theme: over a quiet drone, this melody sings gently, a chorale briefly comes, and then the opening tempo suddenly returns to rip this quartet to its exciting conclusion.
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904)
String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96, American (1893)
Throughout the three years (1892–95) that he served as director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City, Dvořák was fascinated by life in the New World, but he missed his family—four of his six children had remained in Bohemia—and his homeland. Dvořák’s secretary in New York City was a young violinist named Josef Jan Kovařík, who had grown up in the Czech community of Spillville, Iowa. Kovařík invited Dvořák to spend the summer of 1893 in his hometown, and the composer gladly accepted. There, with his wife and now all his children, Dvořák spent a happy and productive summer surrounded by a familiar language, familiar customs, and familiar food. He was amazed by Iowa’s vast prairies and forests, and he played the organ in the Spillville church, heard native birds, and saw local Indians come into the village to sell herbs and to dance.
Dvořák also composed that summer. He sketched the String Quartet in F Major in only three days (June 8–10), and he had it completed in fifteen. His conclusion at the end was concise: “Thank God. It went quickly. I am satisfied.” Early audiences were more than satisfied. The Kneisel Quartet gave the work’s official premiere in Boston on January 1, 1894, and they performed it 50 times over the next several seasons.
The quartet quickly acquired the nickname American, and while the source of that nickname is uncertain, it’s become an inescapable part of how we think of this music. Nationalistic Americans were quick to claim that here at last was authentic American classical music based on American materials, but Dvořák denounced that notion, saying he rejected any “nonsense” about “having made use of original American melodies” and that he “only composed in the spirit of such American national melodies.” He explained further, saying:
When I wrote this quartet in the Czech community of Spillville in 1893, I wanted to write something for once that was very melodious and straightforward, and dear Papa Haydn kept appearing before my eyes, and that is why it all turned out so simply.
And it’s good that it did.
The F-major Quartet is full of instantly memorable tunes and boundless energy, and its sunny surface is seldom clouded by harmonic or textural complexities. One might not readily identify Franz Joseph “Papa” Haydn as the father of this quartet, but that older master’s cheerful spirits and sophisticated writing for strings are very much part of this music.
It’s the viola that leads the way into the opening of the Allegro ma non troppo, and that sharply inflected, risingand-falling theme gives shape to much of the material that follows. A songful second subject in the violin has a rhythmic snap that some have felt to be American in origin, though such a snap is typical of the folk music of many lands. The development concludes with a brief fugal passage derived from the opening viola melody.
Many regard the Lento as the finest movement in this quartet—and one of the finest slow movements Dvořák ever composed. It’s virtually a continuous flow of melody, as the violin’s lamenting theme—marked molto espressivo —sings hauntingly over undulating accompaniment. At the close, the cello takes up this theme as the other instruments alternate pizzicato and bowed accompaniment.
The Scherzo rips along cheerfully, its main theme sharing the rhythm of the quartet’s opening theme. About 20 measures into this movement, Dvořák gives the first violin a melody he heard a bird singing outside his window in Spillville. (The bird was long identified as a scarlet tanager, though recent research suggests it may have been a red-eyed vireo.) The Scherzo alternates this cheerful opening section with interludes that are minorkey variants of its opening theme.
The most impressive thing about the Finale, marked Vivace ma non troppo, is its rhythmic energy in both the themes themselves and the accompanying voices. The rondo theme, introduced immediately by the first violin, is one of those sparkling melodies that’s impossible to forget. The central episode in this rondo is a quiet chorale, and some have heard it as a reminiscence of Dvořák’s experience playing the tiny organ in the church in Spillville. Some of this movement’s interludes recall the shape of themes from earlier movements, and the blazing rush to the close is one of the most exhilarating Dvořák ever wrote.
Many have argued against the notion that there’s anything distinctly “American” about this quartet, claiming instead that it’s music composed by a thoroughly Bohemian composer while on vacation in this country. And perhaps they’re right. But do we
hear the influence of spirituals in the long, plaintive violin melody in the Lento? The rhythms of Indian drums in some of the accompaniment figures of the quartet’s outer movements? The gentle remembrance of a church organ in the Finale? Listeners may decide for themselves whether the nickname American is fitting for this quartet. ◗
In celebration of Indian Market
This concert is free and open to the public.
St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art
ROBERTO CAPOCCHI, Guitar
MANUEL DE FALLA
Homenaje pour Le tombeau de Claude Debussy, G. 56 (1920) (1876–1946)
HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS
Five Preludes (1940) (1887–1959)
No. 1 in E Minor: Andantino espressivo No. 2 in E Major: Andantino No. 3 in A Minor: Andante No. 4 in E Minor: Lento No. 5 in D Major: Poco animato
LEO BROUWER
El Decameron Negro (The Black Decameron) (1981) (b. 1939)
El arpa del guerrero (The Harp of the Warrior)
La huída de los amantes por el Valle de los Ecos (The Fleeing of the Lovers through the Valley of the Echoes)
Balada de la doncella enamorada (Ballad of the Maiden in Love)
MARC NEIKRUG
Three Pieces (2015) (b. 1946)
Quasi una cadenza
Romanza
Toccata
Saturday, 6 p.m.
AUGUST 16
The Lensic Performing Arts Center
Generously sponsored by
CHAD HOOPES, Solo violin
BRYAN LEE, Solo violin
JOEL LINK, Solo violin
CAMDEN SHAW, Solo cello
DANIEL JORDAN, Violin*
CARLA ECKER, Violin*
KATHLEEN BRAUER, Violin*
ASHLEY VANDIVER, Violin*
MARLENA CHOW MORGAN, Violin*
LUIGI BOCCHERINI
PHILIP PAYTON, Violin*
MARGARET DYER HARRIS, Viola*
MELISSA TRIER KIRK, Viola*
FELIX FAN, Cello
AMY HUZJAK, Cello
ALEXANDER BICKARD, Double Bass*
PAOLO BORDIGNON, Harpsichord
GREGORY FLINT, Horn*
HUNTER SHOLAR, Horn*
Cello Concerto in B-flat Major, G. 482 (ca. late 1760s/early 1770s) (1743–1805)
Allegro moderato
Andantino grazioso
Rondo: Allegro
Camden Shaw, Daniel Jordan, Carla Ecker, Kathleen Brauer, Ashley Vandiver, Marlena Chow Morgan, Philip Payton, Margaret Dyer Harris, Melissa Trier Kirk, Felix Fan, Amy Huzjak, Alexander Bickard, Paolo Bordignon, Gregory Flint, Hunter Sholar
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Violin Concerto in A Minor, BWV 1041 (ca. 1730) (1685–1750)
[Allegro]
Andante
Allegro assai
Joel Link, Daniel Jordan, Carla Ecker, Kathleen Brauer, Ashley Vandiver, Marlena Chow Morgan, Philip Payton, Margaret Dyer Harris, Melissa Trier Kirk, Felix Fan, Amy Huzjak, Alexander Bickard, Paolo Bordignon
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
*Santa Fe Opera artist
Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, BWV 1043 (1720)
Vivace
Largo, ma non tanto
Allegro
Chad Hoopes, Bryan Lee, Daniel Jordan, Carla Ecker, Kathleen Brauer, Ashley Vandiver, Marlena Chow Morgan, Philip Payton, Margaret Dyer Harris, Melissa Trier Kirk, Felix Fan, Amy Huzjak, Alexander Bickard, Paolo Bordignon
The Festival is grateful to Michael Hindus and Lynne Withey and David Muck and Cole Martelli, whose generosity has made the filming of this evening's concert possible.
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival thanks The Lensic Performing Arts Center for their support of our concerts.
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Saturday, 6 p.m. AUGUST 16
LUIGI BOCCHERINI (1743–1805)
Cello Concerto in B-flat Major, G. 482 (ca. late 1760s/ early 1770s)
Boccherini made his early reputation as a cellist— performing in Italy, Vienna, and Paris—but he moved to Madrid in his 20s and spent virtually the rest of his life there, much of it as a court composer to Don Luis, the younger brother of Charles III.
Many have drawn parallels between Boccherini and Haydn, who were almost exact contemporaries. Both served princes who lived some distance from musical centers, and both developed in isolation as composers. Haydn made the famous remark that he was “forced to become original” in isolation, and at Esterháza, where he served knowledgeable and enthusiastic princes, he revolutionized the symphony and the string quartet. In Madrid, however, Boccherini was in the service of a court that required music as background entertainment, so that’s the sort of music he produced, composing more than 100 string quartets, around 20 symphonies, and numerous other instrumental and vocal works. The most famous of his compositions is the minuet from his String Quintet in E Major, which has become a virtual symbol of 18th-century elegance.
Most audiences today know one other work by Boccherini, the Cello Concerto in B-flat Major performed on this evening’s concert. While this work has become one of the most popular cello concertos ever written, many audiences know it in a non-authentic version. In 1895, nearly a century after Boccherini’s death, the Leipzig musicologist Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Grützmacher created a new cello concerto by substantially re-composing Boccherini’s work. To Boccherini’s original orchestra of strings and two horns, Grützmacher added a pair of oboes and considerably expanded the outer movements, fleshing out harmonies and textures in ways that Boccherini could never have imagined.
This evening’s performance features Boccherini’s original version. While much of this material will be familiar from the popular Grützmacher conflation, audiences will find the original leaner and more compact. Despite Grützmacher’s many changes, however, he had the good sense to retain Boccherini’s original cello part virtually
intact, and the solo writing in the concerto—often set in the cello’s high register and quite demanding technically— remains the real glory of this music.
The robust, soaring Allegro moderato that opens the concerto is based on two quite different themes, though Boccherini doesn’t develop them with the rigor that Haydn might have, remaining content to write beautifully and idiomatically for the cello.
The A ndantino grazioso moves to G minor, which sounds dark after the buoyant opening movement. The cello’s long and solemn opening melody forms the backbone of this movement.
The concluding Allegro is a rondo that offers extended episodes—both lyric and virtuosic—between the returns of the vigorous rondo tune. Boccherini provides opportunities for cadenzas in all three movements.
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
Violin Concerto in A Minor, BWV 1041 (ca. 1730) Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, BWV 1043 (ca. 1720)
Bach spent the years 1717 to 1723 as kapellmeister (music director) for Prince Leopold at Anhalt-Cöthen. The Cöthen court, located about 30 miles north of Leipzig, was strictly Calvinist and wouldn’t tolerate in its church services the organ music and cantatas Bach had written in Weimar, where he’d spent the previous nine years.
But Prince Leopold himself was extremely enthusiastic about music. He played clavier, violin, and viola da gamba, and he was delighted to have Bach in his employment. He was so enthusiastic about music, in fact, that he maintained a 17-piece orchestra that he was happy to put at Bach’s disposal. Bach—who once said that music exists for two purposes: the glorification of God and the refreshment of the soul—spent his six years at Cöthen refreshing his soul. From those years came the great part of his secular instrumental music, including the Brandenburg Concertos, the sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin, several of the orchestral suites, and Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier
The Violin Concerto in A Minor, one of Bach’s three surviving violin concertos, was thought to have been composed during his time at Cöthen, but more recent
scholarship dates it to roughly 1730, when he was the cantor at Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church) in Leipzig. The concerto’s opening movement is animated. (Though the movement lacks a tempo marking, it’s clearly some form of Allegro.) The upward leap of a fourth at the beginning recurs throughout, giving the movement its rhythmic energy and forward impulse. Against a vigorous orchestral accompaniment, the solo violin enters in a more lyric voice on material derived directly from the orchestral exposition, and throughout the movement, the soloist and orchestra exchange and mutually extend this material.
The Andante belongs almost entirely to the solo violin, as the orchestra is limited to a bare ostinato accompaniment. But if the accompaniment is simple, the violin’s arching cantilena is ornate, unfolding in long, lyric lines high above the orchestra. This movement is the expressive center of the concerto, and, despite the C-major tonality, its tone is dark and intense.
Bach aims for brilliance in the final movement. His marking is Allegro assai (“Very fast”), and its 9/8 meter and dancing energy give it some resemblance to a gigue. After a spirited orchestral introduction, the solo violin comes sailing into the orchestral texture. Bach’s evolution of the opening material is remarkable: as the orchestra hurtles brusquely along far below it, the violin seems to fly high, transforming this simple material into music of grace and beauty before rejoining the orchestra.
Bach’s ever-popular Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins dates to about 1720, or from the middle of the composer’s six-year tenure as music director for Prince Leopold in Anhalt-Cöthen. The “Bach Double” is a favorite of all violinists—from the greatest virtuosos to the humblest amateurs—and it’s easy to understand why. It offers pleasing melodies, an even distribution of duties between the soloists, and one of Bach’s greatest slow movements.
The opening movement, significantly, is marked Vivace rather than the usual Allegro. Bach’s marking stresses that he wants a lively performance—one that’s vivacious rather than simply fast. A long orchestral introduction presents the main theme, and soon the solo violins enter, gracefully trading phrases. Though it moves smoothly and easily, this music is much more difficult than it sounds, requiring wide melodic skips and awkward string crossings. The solo exchanges are interrupted by orchestral tuttis in a manner reminiscent of the concerto grosso (to which this concerto bears a strong resemblance), and, at the end, the orchestra brings the movement to a powerful close.
The real glory of this concerto comes in the second movement—marked Largo, ma non tanto (“Slowly, but not too much”)—which is nearly as long as the outer movements combined. The second violin sings the noble melody that will dominate this movement and then accompanies the first violin as it enters with the theme. This balanced partnership extends throughout the movement—each violin spinning out Bach’s gloriously poised melodic lines one moment and then turning to accompany the other the next.
By contrast, the concluding Allegro bristles with energy, hurtling along on a steady flow of 16th notes. This movement is more varied rhythmically than the first; the soloists have sudden bursts of triplets and break out of the orchestral texture to launch their own soaring melodies. Again, the orchestra’s tuttis punctuate the movement and bring it to a vigorous close. ◗
KIRILL GERSTEIN, Piano
WILLIAM HAGEN, Violin
BRYAN LEE, Violin
JOEL LINK, Violin
TOBY APPEL, Viola
HEZEKIAH LEUNG, Viola
STEVEN TENENBOM, Viola
FELIX FAN, Cello
ERIC KIM, Cello
CAMDEN SHAW, Cello
BART FELLER, Flute*
The Lensic Performing Arts Center
HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS
Assobio a Játo (Jet Whistle) for Flute and Cello (1950) (1887–1959)
Allegro non troppo Adagio
Vivo
Bart Feller, Felix Fan
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
String Quintet in D Major, K. 593 (1790) (1756–91)
Larghetto—Allegro
Adagio
Menuetto: Allegretto Allegro
William Hagen, Bryan Lee, Hezekiah Leung, Steven Tenenbom, Eric Kim
INTERMISSION
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Piano Quartet in A Major, Op. 26 (1861–62) (1833–97)
Allegro non troppo
Poco adagio
Scherzo: Poco allegro
Finale: Allegro
Kirill Gerstein, Joel Link, Toby Appel, Camden Shaw
*Santa Fe Opera artist
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival thanks The Lensic Performing Arts Center for their support of our concerts.
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Sunday, 6 p.m.
AUGUST 17
HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS
(1887–1959)
Assobio a Játo (Jet Whistle) for Flute and Cello (1950)
Assobio a Játo, also known as Jet Whistle, comes from late in the career of the prolific Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, who wrote the work in New York in 1950. Scored for the unusual combination of flute and cello, the piece is in three brief movements that explore the possibilities that lie in combining these two distinctly different sonorities.
At the beginning of the first movement, the Allegro non troppo, which is in binary form, the flute accompanies the cello. The instruments then exchange roles and finally end up at the opposite extremes of their ranges. In the Adagio, the mournful and dark second movement, the flute has the melodic line while the cello accompanies with a series of double stops.
The concluding Vivo is the longest and fastest of the three movements. Over the cello’s gruff ostinato, the flute sings the angular main idea, and this soon turns brilliant, with long runs that streak upward like flashes of light. The closing measures bring an unusual sound (and the source of the title): The flutist is instructed to blow sharply into the instrument to produce a series of rushing, jet-like glissandos. These striking sounds pass quickly, and Jet Whistle soon comes to its firm close.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–91)
String Quintet in D Major, K. 593 (1790)
Mozart had a special fondness for the viola. He was—like Beethoven, Schubert, and Dvořák after him—a violinist who preferred to play the viola in chamber ensembles, and some of his greatest music makes prominent use of the husky timbre of that instrument: the Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola is unquestionably his best concerto for stringed instruments, and the cycle of six viola quintets offers some of his finest chamber music.
The string quintet is a more complex form than the string quartet, and the addition of an extra instrument changes many things. It adds an extra voice to the harmony, making for a richer harmonic language; it creates a heavier texture; and it allows the composer to
set groups of instruments against each other in multiple ways. Given these new complexities, it’s not surprising that so few viola quintets have been written. It’s also not surprising that the greatest ones—those of Mozart and Dvořák—were written by composers who played the viola.
Mozart wrote his String Quintet in D Major in December 1790, exactly one year before his death. This quintet is one of his finest, but, curiously, Mozart makes very little use of the distinctive sound of the violas here. Virtually all the thematic interest is in the violins, with the violas employed to broaden and enrich textures.
The quintet opens with a 21-measure Larghetto introduction that gives way to an Allegro section. Mozart’s use of material in this movement is extremely concentrated: The dotted quarter-note trill of the Allegro gives melodic shape and rhythmic energy to the entire movement, and it’s a mark of this quintet’s sharp focus that this motive itself grows out of the Larghetto introduction. The development is long and varied, and at the close Mozart brings the music to a stop, repeats the Larghetto introduction, and concludes with the first eight measures of the Allegro. That fragment sounds abrupt, almost defiant, in such a role.
The Adagio begins simply enough in G major, but the music quickly assumes a “pathétique” quality with its dark shading and long, expressive lines spun out over steady accompaniment from the lower voices. The development is intensified by the polyphonic writing, and the movement extends over a generous span.
After two such powerful movements, the Allegretto feels straightforward, even conventional: a sturdy minuet frames a trio in which spiccato violins sing above ringing pizzicato accompaniment.
The main theme of the Allegro finale comes flashing downward like a streak of lightning. Its chromatic tension is typically Mozartean, but so, too, is what he does with it: By reordering that sequence of notes, Mozart dissolves the tension and lets the music sing with unexpected gentleness. The flying 6/8 meter gives this movement an almost breathless quality, and along the way Mozart spins off some terrific fugal writing before the quintet rushes to its close on a cadence built of the opening sequence, now back in its original form.
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–97)
Piano Quartet in A Major, Op. 26 (1861–62)
In 1860, 27-year-old Brahms was living in his native Hamburg, where he was trying to establish himself as a composer, but he found the conditions at his parents’ house impossible and decided to look for a better place to work. He took rooms in the home of Dr. Elisabeth Rösing in the quiet suburb of Hamm, and that’s where he wrote his Piano Quartet in A Major. Rösing’s home had large rooms that overlooked a pleasant garden, and every Friday night, her talented circle of friends gathered informally to play music. The home was an ideal setting for the young composer, and he dedicated his warm and intimate piano quartet to his hostess.
Brahms’s chamber music is often described as symphonic music masquerading as chamber music, and it must be admitted that the proportions of this piano quartet are very large. (For one thing, it’s roughly 45 minutes long.) Despite its length, however, it truly is chamber music: its themes are intimate, its drama unfolds subtly, and one seldom feels that it’s too large for four instruments.
Many have heard the influence of one of Brahms’s favorite composers, Franz Schubert, in the lyricism, surprising harmonic shifts, and continual gentleness of the opening Allegro non troppo. The piano’s quietly noble opening statement dominates this first movement, although there are two subordinate theme groups. Brahms varies the standard sonata form slightly by including three variations on the main idea in the center of the development, and the movement concludes on a powerful restatement of the main theme.
We don’t normally think of Brahms as a composer who was much concerned with instrumental color, but the shimmering beginning of the Poco adagio is one of the most striking moments in any of his works. He gives the lyric main idea to the piano but mutes the strings and has them anticipate the piano’s theme by one beat. This ghostly anticipation clashes gently with the piano’s theme, and the effect is both strange and lovely. The second subject explodes out of the piano, and the strings soar through the development, retaking their mutes for the movement’s final measures.
The third movement is titled Scherzo, but this isn’t a Beethovenian scherzo that’s full of fierce accents and drama. Instead, the main idea flows smoothly, almost lyrically here. Brahms keeps this movement in strict form, and the trio section is a tightly argued canon, with the
three stringed instruments following the piano by exactly one measure before the da capo repeat.
The rondo-finale, marked Allegro, shows Brahms’s love of Romani music, with the dancing main theme swirling to life in the first measures. The rondo theme makes six different appearances, and Brahms sets them off with contrasting episodes of a quiet and somewhat heavier nature. At the end, the Romani theme returns to drive this music to its thunderous final bars. ◗
Monday, 6 p.m. AUGUST 18
The Lensic Performing Arts Center
KATIA SKANAVI, Piano
WILLIAM HAGEN, Violin
IDA KAVAFIAN, Violin
BRYAN LEE, Violin
TOBY APPEL, Viola
HEZEKIAH LEUNG, Viola
STEVEN TENENBOM, Viola
ERIC KIM, Cello
CAMDEN SHAW, Cello
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
String Quintet in C Major, Op. 29, Storm (1801) (1770–1827)
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Allegro moderato
Adagio molto espressivo
Scherzo: Allegro
Presto
Ida Kavafian, Bryan Lee, Steven Tenenbom, Toby Appel, Camden Shaw
INTERMISSION
Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 87 (1889) (1841–1904)
Allegro con fuoco
Lento
Allegro moderato, grazioso
Finale: Allegro ma non troppo
Katia Skanavi, William Hagen, Hezekiah Leung, Eric Kim
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival thanks The Lensic Performing Arts Center for their support of our concerts.
Notes on the Program
by Eric Bromberger
Monday, 6 p.m. AUGUST 18
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
String Quintet in C Major, Op. 29, Storm (1801)
Beethoven composed his String Quintet in C Major in 1801, during a moment of relative calm in that oftentormented composer’s career. He’d arrived in Vienna in the fall of 1792, when he was 21 years old, and over the next nine years he worked tirelessly to master the Classical forms that Mozart seemed to have been born knowing.
In the 1790s, Beethoven began to publish piano trios, sonatas, piano concertos, and a set of six string quartets. By the close of that decade, he was ready to take on his greatest challenge so far—writing a symphony—and the premiere of his First Symphony in Vienna on April 2, 1800, brought the 29-year-old composer a great success. Now, newly confident in his abilities, he began to look forward to the new directions that would lead to the Eroica Symphony in 1803.
If this was a good moment for Beethoven professionally, it was a difficult one for him personally. It was in 1801 that Beethoven’s hearing loss became serious enough for him to reveal it to a few of his closest friends. Nothing in Beethoven’s music from this period, however, reflects the terrible stress this loss was causing him. In fact, the string quintet heard on this evening’s program—which Beethoven scored for an extra viola—is one of his most radiant and open-hearted scores.
The very beginning of the Allegro moderato conveys a feeling of unusual spaciousness and calm, and that genial opening theme brings some surprises as well: Beethoven has moved out of the home key of C major and through several different keys, even as the theme unfolds for the first time. (Clearly the young composer was now confident enough to take chances rather than write “safe” music.) And then the surprises continue: when the flowing second subject—a violin duet—arrives, it’s in the key of A major rather than the expected G major.
It’s worth noting that, while this is a viola quintet, neither viola has a particularly prominent role; the first violin generally remains the star of the show, introducing themes and dominating textures. The development is extended (and often quite vigorous), but the relaxed spirit of the opening theme flavors the entire movement, and, at the close, that theme rushes the movement to its powerful conclusion.
The Adagio molto espressivo is elegant music, and once again the first violin is firmly at the center of things as it soars above the other instruments with an extremely ornate part.
By contrast, the rollicking Scherzo, marked Allegro, is full of power. The bobbing, three-note figure of its main theme pounds through almost every measure—the ear hears it by implication even when it isn’t physically present. At the trio, the first viola finally gets to announce a theme, but this trio section brings no relief from the breathless energy of the scherzo, and it rushes with no change of tempo right back to the scherzo.
The Presto finale flies: Over a steady buzz of 16th notes in the other voices, the first violin soars and swirls. Some have found this music to be tempestuous and claimed to hear premonitions of the storm in the Pastoral Symphony Beethoven would compose seven years later. For this reason, the quintet is sometimes given the nickname Storm.
It may be a mark of Beethoven’s growing confidence as a composer that he’s willing to experiment with some modest polyrhythmic overlapping early in this final movement. Some of the instruments remain in the fundamental meter of 6/8, but others are in 2/4, and the clash of those two meters enlivens the music over a 40-measure span. Then comes a very unexpected thing: The busy rush of this music is interrupted twice by a brief section that seems to have nothing at all to do with the rest of the movement. Beethoven marks these episodes Andante con moto e scherzoso, and in them the first violin dances a little awkwardly above the other voices. After the second intrusion of this strange little interlude, the opening Presto returns to whip the quintet to its close.
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904)
Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 87 (1889)
Dvořák was compulsive about dating his compositions. When he began writing a work, he noted the date at the top of the blank page; when he finished writing a work, he wrote the date at the end of the manuscript.
Thanks to this kind of recordkeeping, we know Dvořák began his Piano Quartet in E-flat Major on July 10, 1889,
and completed it six weeks later, on August 19. That time was a very rich one in Dvořák’s life: Surrounded by a large and happy family, he was composing steadily, conducting, and being honored throughout Europe. Earlier in 1889, he’d seen his opera The Jacobin premiered in Prague, and a week after completing the E-flat-Major Piano Quartet, he went on to compose one of his finest works: the Symphony No. 8.
The composition of this piano quartet went well, and on August 10, Dvořák wrote to his publisher, saying:
I’ve now already finished three movements of a new piano quartet, and the finale will be ready in a few days. As I expected, it came easily, and the melodies just surged upon me. Thank God!
The E-flat Major is the second of Dvořák’s two piano quartets, and critics have admired it for its variety of moods, deft fusion of piano and string instruments, and easy modulation between surprising keys. Other critics have been less generous, criticizing it for its quasiorchestral writing and huge effects; one even went so far as to call it “disagreeably melodramatic.” But one person’s disagreeable melodrama is another person’s beauty, and for every critic who’s complained about this music’s grand sweep, countless concertgoers have loved it for just that reason.
The opening Allegro con fuoco is aptly named, as there’s plenty of fire here. At the very beginning, the strings make a fierce declaration only to be answered by the piano’s almost whimsical reply. Both these ideas will figure importantly in the development, and the yoking together of such dissimilar ideas is typical of the work. The viola, Dvořák’s own instrument, has the haunting second theme, and the movement fluctuates between the quietly lyrical and the dramatic.
In a similar way, the Lento is mercurial in its mood shifts. It’s based on five different themes, and the cello’s wistful opening quickly gives way to a heated section introduced by the piano, which in turn is followed by sections of varied tonality and mood.
Although it’s in ABA form, the Allegro moderato, grazioso movement is no minuet. Its outer sections are based on a waltz rhythm, and some listeners have heard Eastern influences here. The piano’s waltz tune sings languorously, and Dvořák soon has it tinkling in high registers in imitation of the Hungarian cimbalom. The trio dashes along agreeably on its omnipresent dotted rhythm.
The Finale, marked Allegro ma non troppo, is the
movement most often cited as sounding orchestral. A dramatic unison passage launches the movement on its vigorous way, and, once again, a lovely viola melody provides contrasts. Some of the work’s most attractive music is heard in this movement’s quiet passages. The coda begins quietly but soon gathers force, and the quartet rushes to a knockout conclusion. ◗
ERIC BROMBERGER earned his doctorate in American literature at UCLA and for 10 years taught literature and writing courses at Bates College and San Diego State University. Then he quit teaching to devote himself to his first love, music. Bromberger, a violinist, writes program notes for the San Diego Symphony, the La Jolla Music Society, San Francisco Performances, the University of Chicago Presents, Washington Performing Arts at The Kennedy Center, and many other organizations. He was a pre-concert lecturer for the Los Angeles Philharmonic for more than 20 seasons.
2025 FESTIVAL ARTISTS
For further details about the Festival’s artists, please visit SantaFeChamberMusic.org.
Marc Neikrug (Festival Artistic Director/ composer/conductor) has been the Artistic Director of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival since 1998. His works have been performed at major festivals and by major orchestras and opera companies around the world. Recent compositions include his Fourth Symphony, commissioned by the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, which premiered the work in Hamburg in May 2022; his Second Piano Quintet, commissioned by Music Accord for pianist Haochen Zhang and the Dover Quartet, who premiered the work at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, in October 2021; and his Oboe Quartet, commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest, Music from Angel Fire, and the Great Lakes Festival. Neikrug lives in Santa Fe with his wife, Dolly Naranjo, and they now have five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, Atlas and Ares.
Toby Appel (viola) has appeared in recital and concerto performances throughout North and South America, Europe, and the Far East. He’s been a member of such renowned ensembles as TASHI and the Lenox and Audubon quartets;
a guest artist with the Vermeer, Manhattan, Alexander, and Dover quartets; and a frequent guest with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and jazz artists Chick Corea and Gary Burton. His festival appearances include Mostly Mozart; Chamber Music Northwest; the Seattle Chamber Music Society; Music from Angel Fire; the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; the Marlboro, Manchester, Colorado College Summer, and Bravo! Vail music festivals; and festivals in England, France, Korea, Germany, Italy, Finland, and Greece. Appel is a member of the viola and chamber music faculties of The Juilliard School, where he’s been teaching for 35 years.
Erika Baikoff* (soprano) is a graduate of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at The Metropolitan Opera, where she sang the roles of Xenia in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Barbarina in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. She was also a member of the Lyon Opéra Studio at the Opéra National de Lyon and the Verbier Festival Academy’s Atelier Lyrique. Additional opera engagements have included the Bavarian State Opera, Opera Omaha, and Theater an der Wien. On the concert stage, she’s appeared with the Orchestre Métropolitain; Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra; and Atlanta, BBC, Detroit, and London symphony orchestras. Highlights of her recital engagements include the Circlo de Lied series in Madrid, the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg and Hohenems, the Heidelberger Frühling Music Festival, the Palau de la Música Catalana, the Klassinen Hietsu in Helsinki, and Alice Tully Hall in New York City.
Martin Beaver (violin) was first violin of the world-renowned Tokyo String Quartet from June 2002 until its final concert in July 2013. He performed with the quartet in the world’s major venues, and he made many notable recordings. Beaver’s concerto and recital appearances span four continents, and he’s performed with such ensembles as the San Francisco, Sapporo, and Toronto symphony orchestras and the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège. As a chamber musician, he’s collaborated with such eminent artists as Leon Fleisher, Pinchas Zukerman, Lynn Harrell, Sabine Meyer, and Yefim Bronfman, and he’s a regular guest at prominent festivals in North America and abroad, including the Santa Fe and Norfolk chamber music festivals, the Edinburgh International Festival, and the Pacific Music Festival in Japan. A devoted educator, Beaver has held teaching positions at several leading institutions. Since 2013, he’s been a member of the faculty at the Colburn School in Los Angeles.
Alexander Bickard* (double bass) joins the double bass section of The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra this fall. Previously, he served as
principal bass for the Santa Fe Opera and Opera Philadelphia orchestras and assistant principal bass for the New Jersey Symphony. Bickard has appeared with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia, New York City Ballet, and Detroit Symphony orchestras, and, as guest principal bass, with the Knights, Philadelphia Ballet Orchestra, and Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. Bickard is the bassist for the Sejong Soloists chamber orchestra, and he’s collaborated with the Ariel and Fine Arts string quartets. His festival appearances include the Castleton, Pacific, Ravinia, Spoleto, and Tanglewood festivals. Bickard served on the faculty for the Luzerne Music Center and New Jersey Symphony Youth Orchestra. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Juilliard School.
Paolo Bordignon (harpsichord) is the harpsichordist for the New York Philharmonic and the organist and choirmaster for St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City. In the 2024–25 season, he appears with the American Symphony Orchestra, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Camerata Pacifica, and Coast Live Music. Recent engagements include the Philadelphia Orchestra, Mark Morris Dance Group, and Boston Symphony Chamber Players, among many others. Bordignon has collaborated with Sir James Galway, Itzhak Perlman, Reinhard Goebel, Paul Hillier, Bobby McFerrin, Midori, Renée Fleming, and Wynton Marsalis. He’s appeared at the Bard Music Festival, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; on the Parlance Chamber Concerts series in New Jersey; and at festivals in Aspen, Jackson Hole, Palm Beach, Santa Fe, and Vail.
Kathleen Brauer (violin) made her solo debut with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra at age 15. She’s a member of the first violin sections of the Lyric Opera Orchestra and the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, and she’s an assistant concertmaster of and frequent soloist with the Music of the Baroque chamber orchestra. Previously, she was a member of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and the assistant concertmaster of the Detroit Opera Orchestra. Brauer has performed with numerous other ensembles, including the Rembrandt Chamber Players, Ensemble Modern, Fulcrum Point New Music Project, Civitas Ensemble, and the Chicago Chamber Musicians. She’s also appeared at the Aspen, Norfolk, Bowdoin, Hampden-Sydney, and Kolkata International music festivals. Brauer earned a bachelor’s degree with high honors from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree from Yale University.
The Calidore String Quartet has won grand prizes at virtually all the major US chamber music competitions as well as an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, among other honors. They’re a former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, and they currently serve as the Distinguished String Quartet in Residence at the University of Delaware. In the 2024–25 season, the
Calidore plays the complete cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets throughout New York City as part of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s new Diamonstein-Spielvogel Initiative for Music and Community Engagement; additional engagements include the Colburn School (their alma mater) in Los Angeles, San Francisco Performances, the Celebrity Series of Boston, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Spivey Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. They also release volume two of their recording of the Beethoven string quartets.
Nicholas Canellakis (cello) is a sought-after soloist, chamber musician, curator, filmmaker, composer, arranger, and teacher. Recent highlights include concerto appearances with The Orchestra Now, the New Haven Symphony (as artist-in-residence), and the American Symphony Orchestra (at Carnegie Hall). He performs recitals throughout the US with his longtime duo collaborator, pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown, and their recent engagements have included Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, New Orleans Friends of Music, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and Wolf Trap. Canellakis regularly performs with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at such leading festivals as Music@Menlo, ChamberFest Cleveland, Music in the Vineyards, Ravinia, Bard, and ones in Bridgehampton, La Jolla, Moab, and Santa Fe. He serves as artistic director of Chamber Music Sedona and as a faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Roberto Capocchi (guitar) was born in Brazil, where he studied classical guitar with Henrique Pinto and Brazilian jazz with Conrado Paulino. He later studied with Thomas Patterson at the University of Arizona and privately with Jorge Caballero. Capocchi has recorded three CDs of solo and chamber music, and in Santa Fe, where he lives, he performs with the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the New Mexico Performing Arts Society, the National Dance Institute, Guitar New Mexico, Opus OP, and other arts organizations.
Chatter* is a musical ensemble, a concert series, and a beloved community happening. It presents weekly Saturday- and Sunday-morning concerts in a durable one-hour format that pairs music with poetry, a two-minute celebration of silence, and a full-service coffee bar. Led by artistic director and violinist/conductor David Felberg and associate artistic director and clarinetist James Shields, the group presents intrepid combinations of repertoire new and old, envisioning an unbroken fabric of musical culture across eras and genres. Chatter has commissioned and premiered works by such composers as Pierre Jalbert, Sarah Hennies, Roberto Sierra, and Raven Chacon. Between its multiple series, Chatter presents more than 120 concerts annually to often sold-out audiences
in Albuquerque and Santa Fe while remaining organizationally nimble and artist led.
Marlena Chow Morgan* (violin) has been a member of the Naples Philharmonic, in Florida, since 2001 and the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra since 2003. As a soloist, she’s appeared with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, New World Symphony, National Repertory Orchestra, and Civic Orchestra of Minneapolis. She’s also attended Tanglewood and the Aspen Music Festival, and she was a member of the New World Symphony. In addition to chamber music collaborations with violinist James Ehnes, pianist Lilya Zilberstein, the Miró Quartet, and colleagues in the Naples Philharmonic, she’s been a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota and the Headwaters Music Festival. Chow Morgan, who was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, received her bachelor-of-music degree in violin performance at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she studied with Malcolm Lowe.
Colin Currie* (percussion) is a solo and chamber artist who champions new music at the highest level. Concerto highlights of his 2024–25 season include James MacMillan’s Veni, Veni, Emmanuel with the Hallé orchestra and English Chamber Orchestra; Danny Elfman’s Percussion
Concerto with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic; Andy Akiho’s Percussion Concerto with the Brussels Philharmonic, Orchestre symphonique de Québec, and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (in its UK premiere); Tan Dun’s Water Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra; Andrew Norman’s Switch with the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra; and the UK premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s Percussion Concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Currie also unveils a new solo recital program at London’s Wigmore Hall that includes the world premiere of a work by Dani Howard, and, with the Colin Currie Quartet, he premieres new works by Anna Meredith and Ben Nobuto at Kings Place and Quilter Hall Wells.
Ran Dank (piano) is a laureate of the Cleveland, Naumburg, Sydney, and Hilton Head international piano competitions. His recent engagements include the Monterey and Pasadena symphony orchestras and the Westchester Philharmonic. As a recitalist, he’s appeared at Steinway Hall, The Town Hall, and Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall and Weill Recital Hall in New York City; the Kennedy Center and Phillips Collection in Washington, DC; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston; the Ravinia Festival in Illinois; and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. He’s also appeared with Portland Ovations and San Francisco Performances, among many others. His numerous orchestral engagements have included the Cleveland Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Dank is an ardent advocate for contemporary music, and alongside his wife, pianist Soyeon Kate Lee, he’s premiered works for piano four-hands by Frederic Rzewski, Alexander Goehr, and Marc-André Hamelin. Dank is an associate professor at the Eastman School of Music.
Julia DeRosa (English horn) is principal oboe of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, second oboe and English horn of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, and second oboe of the American Symphony Orchestra. An in-demand freelancer, she regularly performs with the New York Philharmonic; Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, and American Ballet Theatre orchestras; New Jersey Symphony; and Orchestra of St. Luke’s. She’s also performed as a guest with the Orchestre National de Lyon, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and Orpheus and Saint Paul chamber orchestras, and she’s a member of the Gotham Wind Quintet. DeRosa is a faculty member at the Mannes School of Music and the reed-making instructor at The Juilliard School. She also maintains an active private studio. DeRosa received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard, and she won grand prizes at several prestigious competitions.
Stefan Dohr (horn) is widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest horn players. He’s served as principal horn of the Berlin Philharmonic since 1993, and he was previously principal horn of the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice, and Frankfurt Opera House and Museum Orchestra. Highlights of his 2024–25 season include making his solo debut at the BBC Proms, where he
performs with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra; serving as artist-in-residence for the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra; returning to the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; and playing concerts with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the BBC Scottish, Stavanger, Swedish Radio, Taipei, and Tokyo Metropolitan symphony orchestras, and the Brussels, Helsinki, and NFM Wrocław philharmonic orchestras. Dohr is a member of the Ensemble Wien-Berlin and the Berlin Philharmonic Octet. He serves as a visiting professor at the Royal College of Music in London and a guest professor at both the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin.
The two-time Grammy-nominated Dover Quartet was named one of the greatest string quartets of the last 100 years by BBC Music Magazine. They’re the Penelope P. Watkins Ensemble in Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Quartet in Residence at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music. Their honors include winning every prize at the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition, grand and first prizes at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, prizes at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award, the Avery Fisher Career Grant, and Lincoln Center’s Hunt Family Award. In the 2024–25 season, the Dover Quartet premieres newly commissioned works by Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate throughout North America; collaborates with pianists Michelle Cann, Marc-André Hamelin, and Haochen Zhang; returns to the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; and tours Europe and Asia.
Julius Drake (piano) is known as one of the finest instrumentalists in his field. Engagements this season include recitals at La Scala in Milan and the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid with baritone Ludovic Tézier; appearances at the Aldeburgh Festival with baritone Andrè Schuen, the Oxford and West Cork chamber music festivals, and Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal; a US recital tour with tenor Ian Bostridge; performances at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and the Mahler Festival at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw; duet recitals with pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja at the Schubertiade festival in Austria; recitals in the US and Europe with mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, sopranos Mercedes Gancedo, Julia Kleiter, and Anna Prohaska, tenor Christoph Prégardien, and baritone Roderick Williams; and performances at London’s Wigmore Hall on the seasoning opening concert and in recitals with mezzo-soprano Alice Coote, tenor Stuart Jackson, soprano Sofia Fomina, and bass Brindley Sherratt. Drake is a professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London.
Daniel Druckman (percussion) is the associate principal percussionist for the New York Philharmonic. He’s performed at festivals around the country, and he’s appeared as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and
American Composers Orchestra; on the New York Philharmonic’s Horizons and Sound ON series; on the San Francisco Symphony’s New and Unusual Music series; and in recital in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Tokyo. As a longtime member of the New York New Music Ensemble and Speculum Musicae, he’s premiered works by Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Jacob Druckman, Oliver Knussen, Poul Ruders, and Charles Wuorinen, among others. Druckman gave the US premiere of Steve Reich’s Quartet at Carnegie Hall in 2014 and the world premiere of George Crumb’s Kronos-Kryptos with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 2019. He’s the chair of The Juilliard School’s Percussion Department and the director of the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble.
Carla Ecker (violin) has been the concertmaster of the Rogue Valley Symphony in Ashland, Oregon, since 2017 and a member of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra since 1993. She was the associate concertmaster of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra from 1999 to 2016, and she regularly performs with The Phoenix Symphony, Arizona Opera, and the Arizona Bach Festival. As a guest artist, Ecker has served as assistant concertmaster and principal second violin for the Sarasota Opera Orchestra and concertmaster for Opera Southwest and the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra. Other engagements have included the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Santa Fe Pro Musica, the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, and the Santa Fe Symphony. Ecker was the first music director of the Artifact Dance Project in Tucson and a founding member of the Ensemble Amabile. In Phoenix, she performs with the chamber music collective Urban Nocturnes.
The Escher String Quartet is a former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Engagements for the 2024–25 season include London’s Wigmore Hall, New York City’s Alice Tully Hall, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Baltimore’s Shriver Hall Concert Series, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the University Musical Society at the University of Michigan, Chamber Music Pittsburgh, Chamber Music Houston, and Spivey Hall at Clayton State University. Last season, the Escher received critical acclaim for performing Bartók’s six string quartets in a single-concert format at The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. The Escher has an acclaimed discography, and they’ve appeared at many prestigious venues and festivals around the world, including Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Konzerthaus Berlin, Norway’s Risør Chamber Music Festival, and Germany’s Heidelberger Frühling.
Felix Fan (cello) is well known for his versatility. He’s played at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York City, The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Musikverein in Vienna, and the Royal Festival Hall in London, and he’s appeared as a soloist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan. A strong advocate for new music, Fan
has premiered more than 100 works, and he’s collaborated with such composers as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Tan Dun, and Julia Wolfe, among many others. As a member of the FLUX Quartet, Fan pushes the boundaries of contemporary music. The quartet has been featured on-screen and on soundtracks for director Matthew Barney, and they’ve collaborated with choreographers Pam Tanowitz, Shen Wei, and Christopher Wheeldon. Before joining FLUX, Fan toured for several years with Bang on a Can.
Bart Feller (flute) is principal flute of the New Jersey Symphony and the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra. He’s performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and he’s appeared at Bargemusic. Feller graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music and has given recitals and classes throughout the United States. Among the summer festivals he’s participated in are the Santa Fe and Napa Valley chamber music festivals, Marlboro and Grand Teton music festivals, OK Mozart International Festival, and Colorado College Summer Music Festival. Feller is a professor of flute at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, and he teaches in the Pre-College Division of The Juilliard School.
Gregory Flint (horn) has taught horn at the collegiate level for more than 35 years, holding
positions at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee (UWM) and Roosevelt and DePaul universities in Chicago. He serves as principal horn of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, as first horn of the Chicago Jazz Orchestra, and as a member of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra. As an orchestral musician, he’s performed with the Chicago, Colorado, Honolulu, and Key West symphony orchestras and the Grant Park, Ravinia Festival, and Lyric Opera of Chicago orchestras. He recently performed for several seasons as a long-term replacement player with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Flint has had several solo compositions written for him, and he’s given numerous premieres with the Milwaukee-based new-music ensemble Present Music, with Chicago’s Fulcrum Point New Music Project and Contemporary Chamber Players, and on the Music from Almost Yesterday and Chamber Music Milwaukee series at UWM.
Jennifer Frautschi (violin) is a two-time Grammy Award nominee and an Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient who’s appeared as a soloist with many ensembles, including the Chicago, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee symphony orchestras; Los Angeles Philharmonic; Minnesota Orchestra; and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. She’s an artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society, and she’s appeared as a chamber musician with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Seattle Chamber Music Society as well as at Chamber Music Northwest; Music@Menlo; the La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest; the Spoleto Festival USA; the Salt Bay Chamberfest; the Tippet Rise Art Center; Toronto Summer Music; the Moab, Ojai, and Valley of the Moon music festivals; and the Bridgehampton, Cape Cod, Charlottesville, Great Lakes, Lake Champlain, and Santa Fe chamber music festivals. Frautschi teaches in the graduate program at Stony Brook University in New York.
George Xiaoyuan Fu* (piano) is building an international reputation for his acclaimed interpretations of a wide range of music, and his debut solo album, Mirrors, won BBC Music Magazine’s 2024 Newcomer Award. Highlights of Fu’s 2024–25 season include solo recital debuts at Merkin Hall in New York City and The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC; debuts at the Rudolfinum in Prague and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; and the release of his second solo album, Colouring Book. Fu has performed at major venues like London’s Wigmore Hall; New York’s Carnegie Hall; Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center; and the Konzerthaus Berlin. He’s played concertos with the Baltimore and National symphony orchestras, and he’s a founding member of Trio Zimbalist alongside violinist Josef Špaček and cellist Timotheos Gavriilidis-Petrin. Fu studied at Harvard University, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the Royal Academy of Music.
Kirill Gerstein (piano) is a Grammy-nominated musician whose additional honors include winning first prize at the 10th Arthur Rubinstein Competition, a Gilmore Artist Award, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant, among others. Highlights of his 2024–25 season include performing on the season-closing concert of the Musikfest Berlin and appearing with the Berlin Philharmonic; Orchestre National de France; Atlanta, BBC,
Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Vienna symphony orchestras; Gulbenkian and Royal Concertgebouw orchestras; and Staatskapelle Dresden. He also premieres Francisco Coll’s Two Waltzes Toward Civilization at New York’s Carnegie Hall; gives recitals at Vienna’s Musikverein, Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, and London’s Wigmore Hall; and performs with and conducts the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Budapest Festival Orchestra, and Czech Philharmonic. Gerstein is on the faculty of the Kronberg Academy and a professor of piano at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin.
William Hagen (violin) has appeared as a soloist with many of the world’s leading ensembles, including the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Chicago, Frankfurt Radio, and San Francisco symphony orchestras. In 2015, he won third prize in the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, making him one of the most successful Americans in that prestigious competition’s history. Highlights of his 2024–25 season include performances with the Richmond, Lubbock, Bozeman, and Pasadena symphony orchestras, and recent engagements have included the Detroit and Utah symphony orchestras, the Brevard Music Center & Festival, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Hagen has given recitals in Paris and Brussels and at the Ravinia Festival. He studied at the Colburn School and with Itzhak Perlman at The Juilliard School, and he’s an alumnus of the Verbier Festival Academy, Perlman Music Program, Aspen Music Festival and School, and Kronberg Academy.
Argentinian-born Julia Harguindey (bassoon) is principal bassoon for both the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (starting in the 2025–26 season) and Santa Fe Opera Orchestra. Previously, she was principal bassoon for the Nashville Symphony. Harguindey has also performed with such esteemed ensembles as The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Atlanta and Detroit symphony orchestras, and Les Violons du Roy in Quebec, and she’s a frequent performer at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. After arriving in Montreal in 1991, Harguindey studied at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal and, later, at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her teachers have included Daniel Matsukawa and Mathieu Harel.
Margaret Dyer Harris (viola) is assistant principal viola of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra and a member of the New York City–based orchestra The Knights. She was a founding member of the Grammy-nominated chamber orchestra A Far Cry, and she’s performed with various other ensembles, such as the East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO) and the Moscow, Orpheus, and Saint Paul chamber orchestras. Harris has appeared as guest principal viola with the Sarasota, Santa Fe Opera, and Princeton Symphony orchestras and the Brooklyn and Long Island philharmonics. She’s been a guest artist and teacher at the Guildhall School of Music
in London, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, and she’s given master classes in Mexico City, Lima, Abu Dhabi, and cities across the United States.
Michael Hix* (baritone) has performed more than 75 major roles across oratorios, cantatas, and concert works as well as 20 opera and musical theater roles. He’s performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, the Tanglewood Music Center, and Vienna’s Musikverein. In 2019, he was awarded third place in the American Prize Competition for Oratorio and Art Song Performance. Hix’s engagements have included the International Haydn Festival in Vienna; recitals in Leipzig and Dresden; and solo appearances at the Oregon Bach Festival, on New York City’s Bach Vespers Series, and with the Boston Pops, Santa Fe Symphony, New Mexico Philharmonic, and San Juan Symphony, among many others. Hix, a musicologist, received the 2014 American Musicological Society Thomas Hampson Award. He’s a professor of voice and the chair of the Department of Music at the University of New Mexico.
Chad Hoopes (violin) won first prize at the Young Artists Division of the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition in 2008, and in 2017, he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Recent or
upcoming highlights include performances with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. Hoopes has also performed with the San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Houston, and National symphony orchestras and the Minnesota, National Arts Centre, and Colorado Music Festival orchestras. He frequently appears with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and he’s given recitals on Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series in New York City and at the Ravinia Festival in Illinois, Tonhalle Zürich, and Louvre Museum in Paris. Hoopes’s discography includes works by Mendelssohn, John Adams, and Bernstein.
Paul Huang (violin) is the recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists. During the 2024–25 season, he makes his London debut at Barbican Hall with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, his recital debut at the Minnesota Beethoven Festival, and debuts with the Oregon, Indianapolis, and Toledo symphony orchestras. Return engagements include the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan; the Residentie Orkest Den Haag; the Fort Wayne Philharmonic; the Hiroshima, Knoxville, San Diego, and Tucson symphony orchestras; The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; Camerata Pacifica; Music@Menlo; the Bravo! Vail Music Festival; and the Bridgehampton, North Shore, and Santa Fe chamber music festivals. Huang also launches the third edition of the Paul Huang & Friends International Chamber Music Festival in Taipei, Taiwan, in association with the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, and he releases his latest album, Mirrors.
Amy Huzjak* (cello) is principal cello of the New Mexico Philharmonic. Previously, she played with the Abilene Philharmonic and served as principal cello of the Midland-Odessa Symphony and Chorale and the Huntington Symphony Orchestra in West Virginia. Huzjak freelances throughout New Mexico and West Texas, and she collaborates with local ensembles and organizations, including Chatter, Opera Southwest, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, and the Santa Fe Symphony. She’s also played with orchestras in the Washington, DC, area, including the Apollo Chamber Orchestra and the Fairfax and Prince William symphony orchestras. Huzjak is a member of the Suzuki Association of the Americas and has a studio of more than 25 students. She’s also sought after as a clinician and coach for middle and high school orchestras and chamber programs. Huzjak is a founding member of the Chaski Quartet, which tours Colorado this August.
Robert Ingliss (oboe) is principal oboe of the New Jersey Symphony and the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra. He’s premiered solo and chamber music works by numerous composers, including Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Marc-André Dalbavie, Henri Dutilleux, and Charles Wuorinen. He’s performed in more than 30 countries on five continents, and, as a soloist, his engagements
have included the American Symphony Orchestra, the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, the League of Composers/ISCM Chamber Players, Santa Fe Pro Musica, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Washington Square Music Festival, among others. Most recently, he presented four performances of Strauss’s Oboe Concerto with the New Jersey Symphony to critical acclaim. Ingliss has taught at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, SUNY Purchase, and the University of Connecticut.
The multiple Grammy-nominated JACK Quartet* is dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of 20thand 21st-century string quartet music. In the 2024–25 season, they mark their 20th anniversary with a celebratory concert at the 92nd Street Y in New York City that features the world premiere of a new JACK-commissioned work by Anthony Cheung, and they give the US premiere of Juri Seo’s JACK-commissioned Three Imaginary Chansons at Lincoln Center and the world premiere of Ellen Fullman’s Energy Archive at the Beyond: Microtonal Music Festival 2025 in Pittsburgh. They also release the firstever recording of the complete string quartets by John Zorn. JACK’s international highlights include their annual marathon of performances at London’s Wigmore Hall, appearances at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, and the European premiere of the major multimedia commission Beautiful Trouble by Natacha Diels at the Konzerthaus Berlin.
Joseph Johnson (cello) is principal cello of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra. Highlights of recent seasons include performances of Brahms’s Double Concerto with the Symphony Nova Scotia, Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Niagara Symphony Orchestra, C. P. E. Bach's Cello Concerto in A Minor at the University of Toronto, and both Strauss’s Don Quixote and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Johnson has given the Canadian premieres of Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto with the Esprit Orchestra and Miguel del Aguila’s Concierto en Tango with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra as well as the North American premieres of Peter Eötvös’s Cello Concerto Grosso with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Marc-André Dalbavie’s Cello Concerto with the Esprit Orchestra. Johnson is an associate professor of cello at the Eastman School of Music, and he's a regular coach and teacher at the New World Symphony in Miami.
Daniel Jordan (violin) is concertmaster of the Sarasota Orchestra, principal second violinist of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, and director of artistic planning for the Artist Series Concerts of Sarasota. Formerly, he was assistant principal first violinist of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra and a member of the New World
Symphony in Miami Beach. He’s played as concertmaster for the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, and Erie Philharmonic; performed in the violin sections of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Naples Philharmonic, and Florida Orchestra; and returned twice to lead the New World Symphony as concertmaster in alumni concerts. He’s also spent summers serving as concertmaster of the National Repertory Orchestra, as assistant concertmaster of the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, and as a member of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony. Recent summer appearances include the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego and the Sarasota Music Festival.
Leila Josefowicz (violin) is a passionate advocate of contemporary violin music and has premiered many works written for her. In the 2024–25 season, she gives the New York premiere of Luca Francesconi’s Duende: The Dark Notes with the New York Philharmonic and Susanna Mälkki and, at the Aldeburgh Festival, the British premiere of Helen Grime’s Violin Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo. She also appears with the Minnesota and Gulbenkian orchestras and the London, Houston, San Diego, KBS, Singapore, City of Birmingham, and Prague symphony orchestras. Recent highlights include appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic; Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam; Konzerthausorchester Berlin; London, Oslo, Helsinki, and Los Angeles philharmonic orchestras; NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in Hamburg; Chicago and San Francisco symphony orchestras; and Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras. Josefowicz’s honors include a 2008 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2018 Avery Fisher Prize, and two Grammy Award nominations.
Ida Kavafian (violin/viola) is an internationally acclaimed violinist and violist. In 2019, she completed her 35-year tenure as artistic director of the Music from Angel Fire chamber music festival in New Mexico. A frequent artist of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for more than 50 years and the former violinist of the renowned Beaux Arts Trio, Kavafian currently performs as a soloist; in recital with her sister, violinist Ani Kavafian; as a guest with distinguished ensembles; and as a faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music. She’s premiered many new works, and she’s the founder of the Bravo! Vail Music Festival in Colorado and the co-founder of the ensembles TASHI, OPUS ONE, and Trio Valtorna. She holds the Nina von Maltzahn Chair in Violin Studies at Curtis, where she was awarded the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. Kavafian also breeds, trains, and shows prizewinning Hungarian Vizsla dogs.
Benny Kim (violin) is known for his versatility as a soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. He’s performed with the Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Detroit symphony orchestras; the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra; the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México; the BBC National Orchestra of Wales; and the major orchestras of South Africa. In recital, he’s performed in virtually every major city in the US, which includes
critically acclaimed engagements at New York’s 92nd St. Y and Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center. Kim is first violinist of the Miami String Quartet, and he plays chamber music at festivals around the world, including the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Music from Angel Fire, Chamber Music Northwest, Mecklenburg, Schleswig–Holstein, and the Bristol Festival. Kim earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Juilliard School and is an associate professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory.
Eric Kim (cello) made his solo debut at age 15 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Since then, he’s served as principal cello of, and been a featured soloist with, the Cincinnati, Denver, and San Diego symphony orchestras. In 2009, he joined the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. An active chamber musician, Kim has performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City, Boston Symphony Hall, and The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and toured abroad as a member of the Pinchas Zukerman and Friends chamber ensemble. He’s also appeared with such artists as pianists Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman; violinists Joshua Bell, Jaime Laredo, and Itzhak Perlman; and cellist Lynn Harrell. Kim received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Juilliard School, where he was the first recipient of the William Schuman Prize for outstanding leadership and achievement in music.
Melissa Trier Kirk (viola) is a member of the Lyric Opera and Santa Fe Opera orchestras. She began her career as principal viola of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, where she was featured as a frequent soloist and chamber musician, and she’s performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and, also in Chicago, the Haymarket Opera Orchestra and Music of the Baroque ensemble. As a chamber musician, Kirk has performed for the International Music Foundation’s Rush Hour Concerts series, WFMT’s Chamber Music series, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Chamber Music at San Miguel Chapel. She performs with and helps to organize the Bach Week Festival, a yearly spring ritual that features the music of J. S. Bach and is held in her home city of Evanston, Illinois.
Mark Kosower (cello) is principal cello of The Cleveland Orchestra. In recent seasons, he’s been a guest soloist with the Buffalo, Dayton, and Naples philharmonics; Canton, Columbus, Hawaii, Indianapolis, Phoenix, and Toledo symphony orchestras; and Columbus Pro Musica. Internationally, he’s appeared as a soloist with the Orchestre de Paris, Bamberg and Brazilian symphony orchestras, Hong Kong and Rotterdam philharmonic orchestras, China National Symphony Orchestra in Beijing, and National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, among others. His festival appearances include the Santa Fe and North Shore chamber
music festival and the Aspen, Eastern, Pacific, and Ravinia music festivals. Kosower teaches master classes at Hidden Valley Music Seminars in Carmel Valley each summer, and he’s on the faculties of Carnegie Hall’s NYO-USA program and the Colorado College Summer Music Festival. Kosower was the first cellist to record the complete music for solo cello of Alberto Ginastera.
Bryan Lee (violin) is a violinist with the Dover Quartet, the Penelope P. Watkins Ensemble in Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music. He’s performed as a soloist with The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Delaware, Lansdowne, and Temple University symphony orchestras, among others, and he was awarded the bronze medal at the Stulberg International String Competition and second prize at the Kingsville Young Performers Competition. Lee was featured on NPR’s From the Top, and he attended Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, The Perlman Music Program, the Music Academy of the West, the Encore School for Strings, the La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest, Music from Angel Fire, and the Sarasota Music Festival. He’s also a frequent performer at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Lee is a graduate of Curtis, where he became a faculty member in 2020, and he also teaches at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University.
Guild Competition and was the youngest winner in that competition’s history. He was also a topprize winner in the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, Primrose International Viola Competition, and Corpus Christi Young Artists Competition. Lee has appeared as a soloist with numerous ensembles, including the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Kansas City, San Diego, and Shanghai symphony orchestras. His recital engagements include Merkin Hall and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in New York City and The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; he's also been a featured soloist at the International Hindemith Viola Festival and the 22nd and 24th International Viola Congresses. Lee is the violist for the Miami String Quartet, and he’s a professor of viola at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory and a faculty member at the Montreal International String Quartet Academy.
is the first-prize winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition and the Concert Artist Guild International Competition. Highlights of her recent seasons include tours with Camerata Pacifica and The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as well as appearances on the Gina Bachauer Concerts series, with San Francisco Performances and Chamber Music Chicago, and at The Cleveland Museum of Art, Music@Menlo, Purdue Convocations in Indiana, and the National Gallery of Art and Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Lee is a regular performer at the Great Lakes, Santa Fe, and Music Mountain chamber music festivals, and she’s appeared with the London, San Diego, and Hawaii symphony orchestras. She’s premiered works by many leading composers, and her album Re!nvented won the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year Award. Lee serves on the piano faculties of The Juilliard School and the Bowdoin International Music Festival.
Scott Lee (viola) won the 1996 Concert Artists
Soyeon Kate Lee (piano)
Yura Lee (violin/viola) has performed with such leading ensembles as the Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles and New York philharmonics, and Baltimore, Chicago, and San Francisco symphony orchestras. She’s also given recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Musikverein, Salzburg’s Mozarteum, Brussels’s Palais des Beaux-Arts, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. Lee is a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society, and she regularly appears with the Seattle Chamber Music Society and The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as well as at Caramoor, the Marlboro and Santa Fe Chamber music festivals, the Salzburg and Verbier festivals, and the La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest. Her numerous honors include an Avery Fisher Career Grant; top prizes at the Mozart, Indianapolis, Hannover, Kreisler, Bashmet, and Paganini competitions; first prize across four categories at the 2013 ARD International Music Competition; and a Diapason d’or for her album Mozart in Paris. Lee is a professor at the USC Thornton School of Music.
Hezekiah Leung (viola) has performed throughout North America and Europe as a soloist and as the founding violist of the Rolston String Quartet, whose honors include first prize at the 12th Banff International String Quartet Competition, grand prize at the 31st Chamber Music in Yellow Springs Competition, and
winning the 2016 Astral National Auditions. The quartet has performed at such venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall; Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center; Toronto’s Koerner Hall; Paris’s Louvre Museum; and London’s Wigmore Hall. BBC Music Magazine named their debut recording, Souvenirs, 2020’s Recording of the Year. In the 2022–23 season, Leung served as the violist for the Dover Quartet. Leung is a faculty member at the University of Toronto and a chamber music coach at The Taylor Academy of The Royal Conservatory of Music. This fall, he joins the viola section of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
Todd Levy (clarinet) is principal clarinet of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra. He’s a four-time Grammy Award winner, and he’s performed as a soloist at Carnegie Hall and the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York City, with the Israel Philharmonic, and at the White House. Levy has appeared with members of the Guarneri, Juilliard, Orion, Ying, Miró, and Miami string quartets, and he’s premiered works by many of today’s leading composers. Levy has served as guest principal clarinet for the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia, Chicago Symphony, and Metropolitan Opera orchestras, among others. His latest solo CD, Rhapsodie, features 20thcentury classics for clarinet, and his latest chamber music CD is the first recording of the complete Façades by William Walton. Levy is on the clarinet faculties of Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts.
Joel Link (violin) is a violinist with the Dover Quartet, the Penelope P. Watkins Ensemble in Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music. In July, he began his new position as concertmaster for The Cleveland Orchestra. Link is an active soloist and chamber musician, and he’s been a top prizewinner at numerous competitions, including the Johansen International Competition in Washington, DC, and the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition in England. Link has also appeared on numerous radio shows, including NPR’s From the Top. He’s attended music festivals around the world, including the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and the Ravinia, Marlboro Music, and Music from Angel Fire festivals. As a member of the Dover Quartet, he won first prize and every special award at the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2013 and the gold medal and grand prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition in 2010. Link is a graduate of Curtis, where he became a faculty member in 2020. He also teaches at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University.
Carol McGonnell (clarinet) was born in Dublin and has performed chamber music with musicians from around the world, including the Danish, Elias, and Modigliani string quartets; pianists Jonathan Biss, Kit Armstrong, and
Simon Crawford-Phillips; violinists Midori and Daniel Hope; soprano Barbara Hannigan; and mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade. As a soloist, McGonnell has been featured at John Adams’s In Your Ear festival at Carnegie Hall and on the Los Angeles–based Monday Evening Concerts series curated by Esa-Pekka Salonen, and she’s appeared with the New York City–based chamber orchestra The Knights, the Ulster Orchestra, Ireland’s National Symphony Orchestra, and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. McGonnell has performed on Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, and she’s played at the Marlboro, Mecklenburg, West Cork, and Santa Fe chamber music festivals, among others. She’s a co-founder of the Argento New Music Project, and she’s on the auxiliary faculty for contrabass clarinet at The Juilliard School.
For more than 30 years, the Miami String Quartet has been one of America’s top-rank chamber music ensembles. Highlights of recent seasons include performances at the 92nd Street Y and Alice Tully Hall in New York City; The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; and venues in cities such as Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Lausanne, and Paris. The Miami has served as quartet-in-residence at the Hugh A. Glauser School of Music at Kent State University since 2004, and they’ve appeared at Chamber Music Northwest, Music from Angel Fire, the La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest, and the Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, Kent Blossom, and Santa Fe Chamber Music festivals, among many others. They’ve commissioned and premiered works by Bruce Adolphe, Ricky Ian Gordon, Annie Gosfield, Philip Maneval, Roberto Sierra, Robert Starer, Augusta Read Thomas, Joan Tower, Pēteris Vasks, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Their honors include Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award and Grand Prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.
Grammy Award–winner Jennifer Montone (horn) is principal horn of The Philadelphia Orchestra. Previously, she was principal horn of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and associate principal horn of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. She’s also appeared as a guest artist with the Berlin and New York philharmonics and the Cleveland, Metropolitan Opera, Saint Paul Chamber, and Orpheus Chamber orchestras. She performs with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; Santa Fe and Lake Champlain chamber music festivals; Strings, Bravo Vail!, and Marlboro music festivals; National Brass Ensemble; La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s SummerFest; Bay Chamber Concerts; and Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi in Italy. Montone is a faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School. Her honors include winning an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2006 and the Bob Paxman Young Horn Player of the Year Award in 1996.
Tara Helen O’Connor (flute) is an Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, a two-time Grammy Award nominee, and, as a member of the New Millennium Ensemble, a recipient of the Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award. She’s a season artist of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a Wm. S. Haynes Flute
Artist, and a member of the woodwind quintet Windscape and the Bach Aria Group. O’Connor has premiered hundreds of new works, and she’s appeared on numerous film and television soundtracks. Her festival appearances include Music@Menlo, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Bravo! Vail and Santa Fe Chamber music festivals, among many others. She’s a professor of flute at the Yale School of Music, and she also serves on the faculties of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and Manhattan School of Music. O’Connor and her husband, violinist Daniel Phillips, are the artistic directors of the Music from Angel Fire festival in New Mexico.
Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt (viola) is one of the most sought-after violists of her generation. In addition to appearances as a soloist with the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Jacksonville Symphony, and the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra, she’s performed in recitals and chamber music concerts throughout the United States, Latin America, Asia, and Europe, which includes her acclaimed 2011 debut recital at London’s Wigmore Hall and frequent appearances at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Pajaro-van de Stadt is the founding violist of the Grammynominated Dover Quartet, which she played with from 2008 to 2022, and she’s a member of the newly formed piano quartet Espressivo! with violinist Jaime Laredo, cellist Sharon Robinson, and pianist Anna Polonsky. Her awards include first prize at the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and top prizes at the Tokyo International Viola Competition and Sphinx Competition.
Philip Payton* (violin) is a member of the American Ballet Theatre Orchestra, American Modern Ensemble, American Symphony Orchestra, Furiant Trio, New York Pops, Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival, and Vital String Quartet. Previously, he was a concertmaster and principal second violin for the New World Symphony and principal viola for the Mostly Modern Festival. Payton has soloed with The Orchestra Now and other ensembles, and his performing or recording engagements have included Alarm Will Sound; the Colour of Music, Harlem Chamber Players, New Jersey Symphony, and Nu Deco Ensemble; and the Sarasota, Santa Fe Opera, and Orpheus Chamber orchestras. Payton has performed in several Broadway productions, including as concertmaster for Hello, Dolly! starring Bette Midler, and he’s performed or recorded with a wide variety of artists. He’s a faculty member at The Juilliard School’s Pre-College and Music Advancement Program, and he’s a guest coach for the New World Symphony.
Ailyn Pérez* (soprano) is celebrated around the world for her singular artistry. Highlights of her 2024–25 season include making her debut as Leonora in Verdi’s Il trovatore at Houston Grand Opera; appearing in her signature role of Mimì in Puccini’s La Bohème at The Metropolitan
Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago; performing the roles of Cio-Cio-San in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the Gran Teatre del Liceu and Nedda in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci at the Bayerische Staatsoper as well as the title role in Puccini’s Tosca at the Staatsoper Berlin; and singing Bizet’s Carmen with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in honor of the opera’s 150th anniversary. Pérez’s numerous honors include receiving The Met’s 2016 Beverly Sills Artist Award and the 2012 Richard Tucker Award, which saw her become the first Hispanic recipient in that award’s history. Pérez serves as an artistic advisor and a member of the faculty for the Vincerò Academy, and she’s an Opera for Peace Ambassador.
Doug Perkins* (percussion) is a Grammynominated percussionist, producer, and conductor known for his innovative artistry. A champion of contemporary music, he’s commissioned and premiered works by many renowned composers, including John Luther Adams, Steve Reich, Sofia Gubaidulina, Tristan Perich, and Michael Gordon. He co-founded the groundbreaking ensembles Sō Percussion and the Meehan/Perkins Duo, and he frequently performs with Ensemble Signal. A frequent dance collaborator, he recently worked with the Limón Dance Company and choreographers Lucinda Childs, Annie-B Parson, and Pam Tanowitz. Perkins specializes in creating immersive outdoor musical events, and he’s presented works like Xenakis’s Persephassa on Central Park Lake and Adams’s compositions in locations as varied as Lincoln Center and the Italian Alps. He’s also performed on the Alaskan tundra and at New York’s Carnegie Hall and London’s Barbican Centre. Perkins is an associate professor of percussion and the director of percussion at the University of Michigan.
Daniel Phillips (violin) is a founding violinist of the Orion String Quartet, which retired in the spring of 2024 after 37 years, and he’s the co-artistic director of the Music from Angel Fire chamber music festival with his wife, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor. He’s appeared as a soloist with the Boston, Houston, New Jersey, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, and Yakima symphony orchestras, and his festival appearances include Chamber Music Northwest, the Spoleto Festival USA, and the Chesapeake Music Festival. He’s performed at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival every season since 1979, and he’s participated in the International Musicians Seminar in Cornwall, England, since its inception. Phillips is a professor of violin at the Aaron Copland School of Music at CUNY Queens College, and his faculty appointments include The Juilliard School and the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Julia Pilant (horn) has been the acting third horn of the Utah Symphony/Utah Opera since 2021. Previously, she was the assistant principal horn of The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra for 14 years and, prior to that, the principal horn of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra for 10 years. She’s also played principal horn for the Mito Chamber Orchestra and Saito Kinen and Tokyo Opera Nomori music festivals in Japan, which were led by Seiji Ozawa, and she’s performed with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, New York City Ballet
Orchestra, and Orpheus and Los Angeles chamber orchestras. Pilant frequently appears as a guest artist with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and additional festival appearances have included the Strings, Affinis, and Santa Fe Chamber music festivals; Festival Napa Valley; Classical Tahoe; Mainly Mozart; and the La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest.
Juho Pohjonen (piano) is in demand internationally as a soloist and chamber music collaborator. Highlights of his 2024–25 season include a performance with London’s Philharmonia orchestra and recitals and chamber music performances presented by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Washington University in St. Louis, The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, and London’s Wigmore Hall. Recent engagements include the BBC, German Radio, Helsinki, Los Angeles, and Taiwan philharmonic orchestras; Cleveland, Minnesota, National Arts Centre, and Scottish Chamber orchestras; and Atlanta, Danish National, Finnish Radio, and San Francisco symphony orchestras. His festival appearances have included Lucerne, Marlboro, Mostly Mozart, and ChamberFest Cleveland, among others. In 2024, Pohjonen released his latest album, Visionaries of the Keyboard, which features works by Rameau and Scriabin, and in 2016, as a member of the Sibelius Trio, he released an acclaimed album in honor of the centennial of Finland’s independence.
Liv Redpath* (soprano) is quickly establishing herself in diverse operatic and symphonic repertoire. Highlights of her 2024–25 season include debuts with Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, where she sings Agnès in a production of George Benjamin’s Written on Skin conducted by the composer, and Opera Omaha, where she sings Anne Trulove in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. She returns to the Santa Fe Opera as Susanna in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, the Bayerische Staatsoper as Sophie (her signature role) in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, and Brussels’s La Monnaie/De Munt for a recital and for a performance as the Woodbird in Wagner’s Siegfried. Redpath also sings in the US premiere of Rufus Wainwright’s Dream Requiem with the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Her numerous orchestral engagements include the Danish National, Seattle, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest at the Lucerne Festival; and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall.
Keith Robinson (cello) is a founding member of the Miami String Quartet. He’s made solo appearances with ensembles such as the American Sinfonietta, New World Symphony, and Miami Chamber Symphony, and he regularly appears at festivals such as the Santa Fe
Chamber Music Festival, Music from Angel Fire, the Virginia Arts Festival, and the Kent Blossom, Bravo! Vail, and Savannah music festivals. Recent highlights include performances in New York City at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall and in Boston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Philadelphia, St. Paul, San Francisco, and Seattle. International highlights include appearances in Bern, Cologne, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Lausanne, Mexico City, Montreal, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Taipei, and Vancouver. Robinson is a regular performer at Music@Menlo, and he regularly appears with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He’s also on the chamber music faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Frank Rosenwein* (oboe) is principal oboe of The Cleveland Orchestra, and he’s performed with the orchestra as a soloist many times. An avid chamber musician, he’s spent many summers at the Marlboro Music Festival, and he often performs with the Mainly Mozart festival in San Diego, the Philadelphia and Seattle chamber music societies, and Chamber Music Northwest. Rosenwein earned his bachelor’s degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) and his master’s degree at The Juilliard School. Since 2006, Rosenwein has served as the head of the Oboe Department at CIM, where, in 2015, he received the Alumni Achievement Award. Rosenwein also teaches at the Kent Blossom Music Festival, and he’s in demand as a guest artist and master class clinician in schools around the world. Prior to joining The Cleveland Orchestra, Rosenwein was principal oboe of the San Diego Symphony and San Diego Opera Orchestra.
*Festival debut
John Rubinstein (actor/director) has won Tony, Drama Desk, and Theatre World awards for his work on Broadway, which includes creating the title role in Pippin and starring in the original production of Children of a Lesser God. Additional credits include Ragtime, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, M. Butterfly, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, and the 2014 revival of Pippin, among others; off-Broadway, he won the Lucille Lortel Award for his role in Counsellor-at-Law. Rubinstein received an Emmy nomination for his role on the TV show Family, and he directed the Emmy-winning CBS Schoolbreak Special A Matter of Conscience He starred in the TV show Crazy Like a Fox; has appeared in numerous films, including Someone to Watch Over Me and Being the Ricardos ; and has written scores for the films Jeremiah Johnson, The Candidate, and more. Rubinstein’s many concert appearances include Stravinsky's L’Histoire du soldat and Richard Strauss’s Elektra at Carnegie Hall.
Camden Shaw (cello) is the cellist of the Dover Quartet, the Penelope P. Watkins Ensemble in Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music, and he’s appeared with the ensemble around the world to great acclaim. He’s collaborated in chamber music performances with such renowned artists as violinists Daniel Hope and
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and pianist Leon Fleisher, and he maintains an active career as a soloist. Highlights from recent seasons include performing Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Artosphere Festival Orchestra, where he held the principal chair until May 2024; appearances at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; and the release by Unipheye Music of his solo album, which received critical praise. In 2010, Shaw graduated from Curtis, where he studied with Peter Wiley. His other major teachers have included Norman Fischer, David Finckel, and Steven Isserlis. Shaw joined the Curtis faculty in 2020, and he also teaches at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University.
David Shifrin (clarinet) is one of the most highly respected American clarinetists. His honors include an Avery Fisher Prize and the 2016 Concert Artist Guild Virtuoso Award, among others. He’s appeared with leading orchestras around the world, and he served as principal clarinet of the Cleveland Orchestra; American, Dallas, and Honolulu symphony orchestras; Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; and New York Chamber Symphony. As a recitalist, Shifrin has performed at such venues as the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and Alice Tully Hall, the 92nd Street Y, and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall in New York City. He was the longtime artistic director of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Chamber Music Northwest, and he’s currently the artistic director of the Phoenix Chamber Music Festival, the Oneppo Chamber Music Series at Yale (where he’s a faculty member), and the Yale in New York concert series.
Hunter Sholar (horn) joined the Nashville Symphony in 2007, and in 2005 he joined the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, where he plays second horn. Sholar has been a member of the Oregon Mozart Players and the Grand Teton and Colorado music festival orchestras, and he’s played extra horn with the Cincinnati, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee, North Carolina, and Oregon symphony orchestras; the Sarasota Orchestra (formerly the Florida West Coast Symphony); the Chicago Chamber Musicians; and Kansas City’s Summerfest. Sholar earned a bachelor’s in music from Northwestern University. During his junior year, he joined the Fort Wayne Philharmonic as fourth horn, a position he held for two years. He then held several temporary positions with various orchestras, including the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, The Florida Orchestra, and the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra (now the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra). Sholar teaches horn privately, and he’s also a seasoned studio session player.
Katia Skanavi (piano) is an active soloist and chamber musician. She’s based in Moscow and Berlin and has collaborated with the major orchestras in Russia and with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Camerata Salzburg, Kremerata Baltica, the Orchestre National de France, and the Cincinnati, Dallas, Indianapolis,
San Francisco, and Tokyo symphony orchestras. She’s also given recitals in Amsterdam, London, Madrid, Vienna, and New York. Skanavi has been involved in creating theater works that combine poetry, music, video projections, and dance. She’s also collaborated with several of the world’s leading composers. Her discography includes an all-Chopin recital on the Pro Piano label that Gramophone magazine selected as their record of the month. She was a multiple prizewinner in the finals of the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris, and she won further prizes at the Van Cliburn competition in Fort Worth and the Grand Prix Maria Callas in Athens. Skanavi teaches at the Moscow Conservatory.
Steven Tenenbom (viola) has a distinguished career as a chamber musician, soloist, recitalist, and teacher. A recipient of the Coleman Chamber Music Award and a former member of the Galimir Quartet and recently retired Orion String Quartet, Tenenbom is currently a member of TASHI and the piano quartet OPUS ONE. He’s performed as a guest artist with the Guarneri and Emerson string quartets, the Beaux Arts and Kalichstein-LaredoRobinson trios, and The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He’s also appeared as a soloist with the Utah Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and toured with the Brandenburg Ensemble throughout the United States and Japan. His festival appearances include the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, Chamber Music Northwest, Music from Angel Fire, and the Aspen, Marlboro, June, and Bravo! Vail music festivals. Tenenbom serves on the faculties of the Curtis Institute of Music and Juilliard School.
Ashley Vandiver (violin) is the fourth-chair viola in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and a violinist in the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra during the summer. Previously, she was a violinist in the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. Vandiver was a founding member of and rotating concertmaster for the Grammynominated chamber orchestra A Far Cry. She’s also performed regularly with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra, and the New York City–based orchestra The Knights. She’s performed at chamber music and orchestral festivals across North America and Europe, including Ravinia, Schleswig-Holstein, Yellow Barn, and Verbier, where she held the position of principal second violin in the festival’s orchestra. Vandiver is a faculty member at the University of Toronto, and she previously served on the faculties of the University of Ottawa, Wellesley College, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Project STEP.
Kevin Vigneau (oboe) is principal oboe of the New Mexico Philharmonic and Santa Fe Pro Musica and a professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico. He’s served as principal oboe of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, Cape Town Symphony Orchestra, and Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa, and he’s
performed with the Opera Company of Boston Orchestra, the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias, and the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, among others. Vigneau has appeared at the Music from Angel Fire and Banff festivals and with the South African Broadcasting Society, Mistral Wind Quintet, New Mexico Winds, and Kandinsky Trio. As a recitalist and soloist, he’s performed in Mexico, Spain, Ecuador, Germany, Brazil, Portugal, Canada, South Africa, and Holland and at colleges and conservatories around the world. His discography includes a solo album called Oboe on the Edge: Modern Masterworks for Oboe.
Gilles Vonsattel (piano) is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award and the winner of the Naumburg and Geneva competitions. In 2025, he begins a three-year cycle of performing the complete Beethoven piano sonatas for Camerata Pacifica, where he serves as principal pianist. He’ll also perform the cycle during the 2026–27 season for both Music@Menlo and The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Recent highlights include performing at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium with The Orchestra Now, making his Mainly Mozart debut, and releasing a critically acclaimed recording with The Bern Symphony Orchestra. His engagements have also included the Munich Philharmonic; the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; the Ravinia, Lucerne, Bravo! Vail Music, and Santa Fe Chamber Music festivals; Chamber Music Northwest; Tokyo’s Musashino Hall; and London’s Wigmore Hall. Vonsattel is a professor of piano at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Paul Watkins (cello) is a distinguished concerto soloist, chamber musician, and conductor. He’s the artistic director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit, professor of cello at the Yale School of Music, a former member of the Nash Ensemble, and cellist of the recently retired Emerson String Quartet. He won first prize in the 2002 Leeds Conductors Competition, served as music director of the English Chamber Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Ulster Orchestra, and has an extensive, Grammy-nominated discography. Watkins makes frequent appearances with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and additional recent highlights include his conducting debuts with the Minnesota Orchestra and Detroit Symphony Orchestra; concerto appearances with the Hallé orchestra and the BBC and City of Birmingham symphony orchestras; and a recording of the complete Beethoven cello sonatas with pianist Alessio Bax for Signum Records.
Orion Weiss (piano) is one of today’s most sought-after soloists and chamber music collaborators. He’s performed with all the major North American orchestras, including the Boston and Chicago symphony orchestras and the Los Angeles and New York philharmonics. In
February, he released Arc III, the final album in his recital trilogy. Other highlights of his 2024–25 season include his debut at New York City’s David Geffen Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra; international performances with violinist James Ehnes, including at London’s Wigmore Hall; and appearances at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Newport Classical festival in Rhode Island, and the Teatro Marrucino Biglietteria in Italy as well as on the Great Artists Series at Washington University in St. Louis and on tour with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Weiss’s numerous honors include the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year Award, the Gilmore Young Artist Award, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Shai Wosner (piano) has attracted international recognition for his exceptional artistry. In the 2024–25 season, he tours Europe with violinist Joshua Bell, plays on the Music Mondays series with the JACK Quartet in New York City, appears with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performs with violinist Pinchas Zukerman and cellist Amanda Forsyth as the Zukerman Trio, and serves as artist-in-residence for the Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, which presents him in recital with baritone Benjamin Appl at The Town Hall in New York City. Wosner also tours the northeastern United States and Canada with clarinetist Martin Fröst and violist Antoine Tamestit playing his and Fröst’s trio arrangements of works rooted in folklore and dance. Wosner is a former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, and his additional honors include Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award, a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Gregory Zuber (percussion) is the principal percussionist for The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He’s toured the United States, Europe, and Japan with The Met, and he’s been featured with the orchestra as a concerto soloist at Carnegie Hall. As a solo recitalist and chamber musician, Zuber has appeared at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall and Weill Recital Hall, the Verbier Festival, the Leigh Howard Stevens Summer Marimba Seminar, the New York Chamber Music Festival, The Juilliard School’s Summer Percussion Seminar, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Music from Angel Fire. He’s also performed regularly with The Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble. Zuber plays chamber music with his wife, flutist Patricia Zuber, as Duo Zuber. They can be heard on their duo album, Blackbird Redux (Belarca Records), and Zuber can also be heard on his solo album, Life Behind Bars: Masterworks for Marimba ◗
Tucson’s home for exceptional chamber music for over 75 years
Boston Early Music Festival
PAUL O’DETTE & STEPHEN STUBBS , Artistic Directors
Opera Prima
n FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7
Stile Antico
n NOVEMBER 29 & 30
BEMF Chamber Opera Series
n FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5
The Tallis Scholars
SATURDAY, JANUARY 31
Paul O’Dette, lute
n SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14
ACRONYM
n SUNDAY, MARCH 1
Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra & Juilliard415
n FRIDAY, MARCH 13
Le Consort
n SUNDAY, APRIL 12
Jordi Savall, Hespèrion XXI & La Capella Reial de Catalunya
Programs subject to change
SARASOTA MUSIC FESTIVAL
BY
SEASON
We can’t wait to celebrate our 42nd Season with you! In 2025–2026, The Santa Fe Symphony offers something for everyone. Each of our concerts, whether at the Lensic, Cathedral, or elsewhere in the community, has The Symphony’s trademark balance of repertoire: ranging from much-beloved masterworks to rarely-performed gems.
ANNUAL FUND AND ARTISTS’ CIRCLE
ARTISTS’ CIRCLE
(if attending last concert of the season)
*All gifts of $100 or more that are given before May 1 are listed in this Program Book.
For more information, contact: Joseph Hohlfeld, Director of Development 505-983-2075, ext. 108 jhohlfeld@sfcmf.org PO Box 2227, Santa Fe, NM 87504-2227 SantaFeChamberMusic.org
ANNUAL FUND
Your Donation Makes a Difference
Dear Festival Friends,
This summer marks the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s 52nd season, which means that for more than half a century, we’ve been bringing audiences the unique joy of experiencing world-class chamber music concerts in one of the most inspiring settings in the world. And over the past five decades, one of the constants that’s remained is that your support is the very heart of the Festival.
When you support the Festival by becoming a donor, you don’t just help us present great chamber music concerts—you invest in the future of the art form. You help us commission bold new works from today’s most important composers, and you help us share the Festival’s performances with listeners around the country through our national radio series. Through our year-round music education programs, you open the door to classical music and its long-term benefits for thousands of young people—many of whom are experiencing both this music and live performances for the very first time. In short: you bring this music to life.
As we look ahead to our 52nd season and beyond, we invite you to renew your commitment to the Festival with a tax-deductible donation, as your generosity helps us sustain this vital cultural institution and ensures its lasting impact on generations to come.
To make your gift, please contact our Director of Development, Joseph Hohlfeld, at 505-983-2075, ext. 108, or jhohlfeld@sfcmf.org. You can also mail your donation to PO Box 2227, Santa Fe, NM, 87504-2227, or you can pick up an Annual Fund brochure and donation envelope at the Box Office desk during the Festival season.
On behalf of all of us at the Festival, thank you for being a vital part of our community. We’re thrilled to be sharing another unforgettable season of chamber music with you.
YOUR SUPPORT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
This season, our friends at the Still Water Foundation have awarded the Festival— which The New York Times has called “one of the most prestigious chamber music festivals in the world”—another distinguished challenge grant in honor of our exceptional musicians and our commitment to artistic excellence.
We’re proud to have received this grant, which is a unique opportunity to ensure the future of the Festival. Not only does it allow us to maintain the high standards you expect from us, but it also lets your generosity go further than ever.
THE STILL WATER FOUNDATION AUDIENCE CHALLENGE GRANT
The Still Water Foundation has challenged us to raise $35,000 in support of the remarkable artists who bring the fullness of the chamber music repertoire to life— from beloved masterpieces to overlooked treasures and Festival-commissioned works.
Explore the donor benefits chart on the opposite page, and scan this code to make your tax-deductible donation today!
From now through October 31, 2025, first-time donors who contribute $500 or more—and returning donors who increase their previous year’s gift by at least $250—will see their gifts matched, dollar for dollar, by the Still Water Foundation. This means that your contribution will have twice the impact when it comes to sustaining the music and traditions that enrich our cultural lives.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today to help us meet this important challenge and to carry our mission into the future.
ARTISTS’ CIRCLE AND ANNUAL FUND CONTRIBUTORS
than half of our annual budget comes from you, our wonderful contributors. We want to especially recognize and thank the loyal members of our Sostenuto Society—indicated here with an asterisk (*)—who’ve made gifts to the Festival for the past five or more consecutive years.
We warmly thank everyone who’s contributed to the Festival for the critical role they’ve played and continue to play in helping us make the music happen.
THE ARTISTS’ CIRCLE
This special core group of annual supporters contributing $2,000 or more ensures the Festival’s continued artistic excellence by generously underwriting musicians’ residencies. Their outstanding commitment is deeply appreciated.
Diamond Patrons
($10,000 and above)
Anna-Marie Baca*
Barbara B. and Ronald Davis Balser*
Beth Beloff and Marc Geller*
Jean and John Berghoff*
Kelley O. and Neil H. Berman*
Christine and David Bernick
Brian Braa and Andy Eiseman*
Sarah and Douglas Brown*
David Bulfer and Kelly Pope*
Elisbeth Challener and Brett Bachman*
Kathleen and Robert L. Clarke*
Lynn Coneway*
Ralph P. Craviso*
Susan and Conrad De Jong*
Anna-Karin and David Dillard
Bonnie Ellinger and Paul Golding*
Mike and Marty Everett*
Sue and Chris Fan*
Paula† and Steven Fasken*
David Tausig Frank and Kazukuni Sugiyama*
David Goodrich and Brian Clarke*
Diane and Werner Grob*
Bessie Hanahan*
John Hart and Carol Prins*
Michael Hindus and Lynne Withey*
Dalit and Ron Holzman
Robert L. Hull and Myra Barker Hull*
Dan Jackson and Jeremy Guiberteau, MD*
Jo Kurth Jagoda*
†Deceased
Sue Kimm and Seymour Grufferman*
Paul L. King*
Mary Lattimore*
Ron Lushing and Dan Reid*
Margaret and Barry Lyerly*
Ellen Marder and Wolfgang Schmidt-Nowara*
Anthony and Kay Marks*
Kenneth R. Marvel and Robert R. Gardner*
David Muck and Cole Martelli*
Jay W. Oppenheimer and Todd King*
Glenn Ostergaard and David Kaplan*
Cherryl Peterman and Bill Strange
Mary and Leon Podles
Louisa Stude Sarofim*
Herman Siegelaar and Cornelia Bryer*
Richard and Willa Sisson*
Nat and Rebecca Sloane*
Ambassador Thomas Stewart Udall and Jill Cooper Udall
John and Jan Wilcynski*
Drs. Cheryl Willman and Ross Zumwalt*
Ellen Yarrell*
Platinum Patrons
($5,000–$9,999)
Newlyn and Ben Allison*
Suzanne and Enrico Bartolucci
Richard C. Bentley*
Carole and David Brown*
Patricia Marcus Curtis and Robert Curtis*
Joan Dayton and Richard Curless
Olga Echevarria and Jim Hutson-Wiley*
Peter Frank and Leslie Shaw*
Tom Frost and Meaghan Solay
Deborah L. Hanna
Lucy and Tom Higgins
Charlene and Charles Hyle*
Hervey Juris and Leslie Nathanson Juris*
Elizabeth and Albert Kidd*
Bruce Shigeki Kikuyama and Mark Smigelski
Jani and Jeff Leuschel*
Harry and Betsey Linneman*
Dr. and Mrs. Robert Marcus*
Beth McGown and Russ Toal*
Leigh Osterman
Lisa and John Overbey*
Barry and Roberta Ramo*
Bruce and Ava Ross
Michael Schippling
David Sontag*
Jane Ann and Jasper Welch*
Gold Patrons
($3,000–$4,999)
Anonymous
Anonymous
Terry and Pamela Carter*
George Case and Nathan Salazar
Laurence Colton
Kay Crawford*
Mandy Dealey and Michael Kentor
Donna and Lee Dirks*
Paula Sass Donnelly*
Mrs. Ronald Dubin*
Douglas and Marcia Dworkin*
Annette and Knut Eriksen
Christine and Daniel Fallon*
Maria and Edward Gale*
Julanna Gilbert and Robert Coombe*
Edward and Patricia Hymson*
Phyllis Lehmberg*
Mary Jean Little*
Ginnie Maes*
Mary Meredith-Kirchner and Dr. Walter L. Kirchner*
Helen T. Murphy and Mary S. Riebold*
Penelope Penland*
Matilda Perkins, MD
Crennan M. Ray*
Preston Reed
Dr. Robert and Kathleen Reidy*
Dave Rossetti and Jan Avent*
Diane Rubin and Leonard Eber
Molly and Fred Seibel*
Marcia Torobin*
Nancy Meem Wirth*
Elizabeth Yasek*
Nancy Zeckendorf*
ANNUAL FUND CONTRIBUTORS
Festival Associates
($1,000–$1,999)
Lori and Edward Adcock
Chris Andersen and Eric A. Butler
Ryan and Melanie Bailey*
Irene Bettinger
Lori Brown
Roberto L. Ceriani and Pedro Surroca
Cynthia and Alan Coleman*
Jeremiah Collatz and James Cahn
Nelson Daher and Thomas King*
George de Garmo*
Celia Lipton Farris and Victor W. Farris
Anita and Joseph Ginocchio
Karen and Gary Goldstein
Dr. and Mrs. Cameron Haight
Henrietta and Terence Hall
Pat and Jim Hall
William Horwitz
Kwang-Wu Kim
Roger Kintzel
Amy Lam and Charles Breckling
Barbara Lenssen and Keith Anderson
Silver Patrons
($2,000–$2,999)
Cindy Aloi and Irwin Sugarman*
Michael and Ann Anastasio*
Donna and Tom Berg
Virginia and Morgan Boatwright*
Patricia Bowell
Keri and Michael Brinegar
Robert Brown and Dennis Karbach
Carol Burt
Mike and Diane Cannon*
Janet Desforges*
Ian Dickson and Reg Holloway
Nancy and Roland Feiner*
Natalie Foster*
Doris Francis-Erhard*
Pamela J. George
Jeri Berger Hertzman and Phillip Hertzman*
Lynne Hohlfeld and Michael Crockett*
Jeanne and Van Hoisington*
Sherry and Robert Johnson*
Alan and Elisabeth Lerner*
Karen J. Linder
Kathleen and Robert Moss
Sandra Osterman
Jim Ouchi
Gwendolyn and Thomas Paine*
Candace Partridge
Sandra and Arnold Peinado
Amelia and John Petrila
Sasha and Alexandra Pyle*
Susan and Stephen Robeck
Helen and William Rogers*
Wendy and Ed Sabins
Judy Sauer
Richard Schacht and Judith Rowan
Gay P. and Graham J. Sharman*
Harriet Silverman and Hon. Paul Smelkinson*
Andrew Skobinsky
Renee and Larry Stevens*
Margo Thoma
John Van Horn and Ray Owens
Joan Vernick*
Michael Wade and Lester Borenstein
Patti Wetzel and Sirous Partovi*
Katherine and William Landschulz
Laura Liswood
Marilyn Macbeth and Forrest Carlton*
Steve Moise*
Jill Reichman
Eileen and Ron Ricks
Roberta Robinson*
Grace and John Rosenquist*
Cynthia Ross and Martin Hauer-Jensen
Jacqueline and Richard Schmeal
Larri Short and Steve Reilly
Lea and David Soifer*
Marilynn and Carl Thoma*
Evelyne Thomas*
Suzanne M. Timble*
Michael Wade
Mary Wells and John McCabe*
Nancy West*
Linda Westerburg*
Dianne Chalmers Wiley and William Wiley
Gary Wright
Festival Supporters ($500–$999)
Robert C. Anderson*
Anonymous
Jane and John Bagwell
Russell Baker
Richard Beaubien
Susan and Lee Berk
Joseph M. Bryan, Jr.*
Tish Butler*
Tee Campion*
Eleanor Caponigro
Richard and Mary Covington
Daniel Crane
Julie Ann Dakin and Christopher Oechsli
Eudice and Les Daly*
Raul Delgado*
Rebecca Dempsey*
Eivind Djupedal
Bruce Donnell
Bill and Nancy Doolittle*
Susan Dubin
Yolanda and Abram Eisenstein
David and Ellen Evans*
Jolynn H. Free
Estela Freeman
Elizabeth French*
Richard Grimes
Fanchon and Howard Hallam
John Hardwick
Chris Haynes
Perry Heitman and Todd Canon
Joanna Hess*
Bernhard B. Holzapfel
Richard Hughes*
Marcia Kaplan and Michael Privitera
Jenifer and Grayson Kirtland
Malcolm Lazin
Kathleen and Alan Lebeck
Katherine and Andre Mesi
Carol Moder and Brewster Fitz
James Moffitt
Steve Moise
Susan More and Mary Menke
Fannie and Peter Morris
Ann M. Mumford
Dede and Paul Natale*
Yehuda and Nurit Patt
Wendy and George Powell
Dr. Robert Rosenberg and Jane B. Wishner
Joel and Beth Scott
Robert Shaklee
Pam and Tom Sheffield
Dr. Roger and Leslie K. Simon
Gary Smith
Francine Sommer
Eric Springsted
Carol Sturman
Melvin and Mary Ann Twiest
Barbara Wagner and Charles Palmer*
Wolfgang Wawersik
Nicholas Weingarten
Barry H. Weiss and William Tierney
Mary Witherow and Susan Schneider
Amy Wohlert and Joseph Cecchi
Nancy Worthington-Broyles
Linda and Owen Youngman*
Festival Contributors ($250–$499)
Nancy Ackerman
Joe Alcorn and Sylvia Wittels
Susan and Kelley Anderson
Eugene B. and Ellen Andes*
Bob and Pat Anker*
Anonymous
Yoko and Thomas Arthur*
Gail and Dana Atkins
Joan and Thomas Bak
Martha and William Baker
Christine Bassett and Carey Alexander
Susan H. Bell
Hilary Benton and David Williams*
Brenda F. Brand
Irene and John Bush
Jonathan and Jeanmarie Chenette
Dr. and Mrs. Michael B. Clayman
Pamela Culwell and Charles G. Case II*
Jim Davis
Joe and Katherine De Mott
Elisabet de Vallee and D. Reed Eckhardt
Nancy and Chris Deyo
Alan and Juliet Duncanson
Lucie Duranceau-Church*
Tom Farer
James Faris
Cynthia Feiden-Warsh and Richard Warsh
Jeffrey and Barbara Griffith
Beverly and Dudley Hafner
Kathryn Hansen
David Hawkanson*
Clark and Carolyn Hulse
Mark Jacobs*
Marianne Kah
Eslee Kessler*
Diana and Neil King*
Tina Ludutsky-Taylor and Allen Taylor
Evelyn McClure*
Susan and Charles Mize
Thomas and Barbara Moore
Matt O’Reilly
James Orth*
Robert and Mary Platt*
John and Sue Prange
Suzy Rhodes
Lisa Roberts and Rob Barnett
Annie Sale
Jeffrey Schamis and Eva Eves*
Marjorie and Robert Selden
Judith Stevenson Sellars
Roberta Shinaberry
Allison M. and Dale R. Smith
Marilyn Smith and Ellen Smith*
Lucille Steiner
Cynthia and John Stetson
Scott and Toni Temple
Christine and Paul Vogel
Adair Waldenberg and Jon Peck
Ron Whitaker
Kathryn White
William and Janislee Wiese
Marylou Witz
Festival Donors ($100–$249)
Jerome Andersen Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous
Susan Asplundh
Clarence W. Barker
Nancy Baron
Carol Beck
Barbara Boyd
Ann Caldwell
Kathleen Charla
Connie Church
Jerry W. Claiborne
Michael R. Collins
Anne D’Alessandro and Lawrence Lyons
Richard Dauphin*
Joanne DePhillips
Ariane Eberhardt and Brian Crone
Halley Faust*
F. Harlan Flint
Susan Foote and Stephen Feinberg*
Ety Friedman
Gus Friedman
Ralph and Gwen Fuller
William Gates
Robert Gaylor
James and Adele Glimm
Paula Greer
Gerald and Diane Gulseth*
Gregg Gustafson
David Harrison
Judy and Ed Hildebrand
Jessie Otto Hite and Frank Bash
Linda J. Hodge
Joseph Hohlfeld
Joy Isbell
Jerald Johnson
Michael Kalkstein and Susan English
Arthur Kerr
Jack Kitzmiller and Linda Dean
William H. Kleh
Thomas A. Koster
Joan and Harold Kuskin
Carol Lakin*
James Leak
Michael Liebman and Barbara Beames*
Ana and Albert Lilienfeld
Barbara Little
Ellen Lomonaco
Catherine A. Louisell
Ann Lovell
Thomas Maguire
GIFTS MADE IN TRIBUTE
In Honor of Ron and Barbara Balser
Mandy Dealey and Michael Kentor
In Honor of Elisbeth Challener
Wendy and Ed Sabins
In Honor of Cece Derringer
Paul King
In Honor of David Frank
Nancy Zeckendorf
In Honor of Jeremy Guiberteau and Dan Jackson
Perry Heitman
In Honor of Barbara Holzapfel
Bernhard Holzapfel
In Honor of Todd Levy
Allison M. and Dale R. Smith
In Honor of Elaine Wang
Meyerhoffer
Lucille Steiner
In Honor of David Muck
Gayle and Michael Collins
Beverly and George Martin
Gaye McElwain
Melinda V. McLain
Julia Keady Morris
Mary Ellen Mulcahy
Hal Myers
Jess Nicholas and Michael Grissom
Kelley Noble
Christina Ochs
Harrell Odom and Barry Cook
Rebecca Okun
David Osborne
Kathy Pallis
Neil Pering
Diana Petitti
Dr. John Petricciani
Jane and Jan Pollock
Phyllis and Elliott Ross
Pamela and Mike Ryan
In Honor of Jay Oppenheimer and Todd King
Ann Caldwell
In Honor of Jane Ann and Jasper Welch
Fannie and Peter Morris
In Honor of Nancy Zeckendorf
Bruce Donnell
In Memory of Doris Franson Dakin
Julie Ann Dakin and Christopher Oechsli
In Memory of Paula Fasken
Kelley Noble
In Memory of Dorothy Harroun
Dalit and Ron Holzman
In Memory of Jack and Tybie Satin
Jill Reichman
Paul St. John
Carol and Lawrence Schoenfeld
John Serkin and Catherine Kurland
Samuel Shorstein*
Dean Southern
Bryan Sperry
Stephen Straub
Corinne and Robert Sze
Ann and Fred Teitelbaum
Jay Ven Eman
Willard R. Wadt*
Karen Walter
Mayor Alan Webber and Frances Diemoz*
Steven and Alison Weinstein*
Brahna and Janusz Wilczynski
Fred and Donna Winters
Everett Zlatoff-Mirsky
In Memoriam
Joan Cohen
Patron, donor, and Board and Advisory Council member
Paula Fasken
Patron, donor, and Advisory Council member
Dorothy Harroun
Patron and donor
Lynn Pollock
Patron and donor
Shellie Scott
Patron and donor
2025 BUSINESS PARTNERS AND COMMUNITY HOSTS
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Act 1 Tours
Allegro Recordings
Israel Alpizar, Aye Eye Creative
Arizona Friends of Chamber Music
ASB Real Estate Investments
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet
Blue Rain Gallery
Boston Early Music Festival
Bowdoin International Music Festival, Maine
Bravo! Vail Music Festival
Candyman Strings and Things
Capital High School
Central City Opera, Colorado
César Chávez Elementary School
Chamber Music Albuquerque
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Chocolate + Cashmere
Classical Music Festivals of the West
The Compound
E. J. Martinez Elementary School
El Dorado Community School
Flower Spy
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Ghost Ranch
Grab Your Group & GO!
Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, Vermont
Heritage Hotels & Resorts, Inc.
Herrera Transportation
High Mountain Cuisine
Hutton Broadcasting
Inn of the Five Graces
JAME American Cleaning
Kearny Elementary School
La Jolla Music Society
La Mariposa Montessori School
Lake George Music Festival
Lensic Performing Arts Center
Lightningwood Pictures
Los Poblanos Historic Inn & Organic Farm
Manitou Galleries
Nacha Mendez
Metropolitan Opera
Michael’s Valet
Modrall Sperling Law Firm
Mountain Elementary School
Music from Angel Fire
Natalie Baca Design
New Mexico Kids! Family Magazine
New Mexico Museum of Art
New Mexico PBS-KNME
New Mexico Performing Arts Society
New York Historical Tours
Nina Otero Community School
Nye Early Childhood Center
Opus OP Arts and Education Projects
Apollo Garcia Orellana
Ortiz Middle School
Rob Osmond, AA Events and Tents
Pacific Office Automation
Palace Restaurant
Paper Tiger
Paul Thompson Auctions
Pecos Elementary School
Piñon Elementary School
Pro Piano
Ramirez Thomas Elementary School
Augustina Rojas-Garcia
Ruscavage Consulting
Santa Fe Audio Video
Santa Fe Desert Chorale
Santa Fe Drum Source
Santa Fe New Mexican
Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe Party Rentals
Santa Fe Piano Services
Santa Fe Pro Musica
Santa Fe Public Schools
Santa Fe Public Schools Fine Arts
Santa Fe Public Schools Transportation
Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra & Chorus
Santa Fe Valet
Santacafé
Sarasota Music Festival
Billy Schenck, Schenck Southwest
Scott Chamberlin Photography
Seattle Chamber Music Society
Second Wind Music Instrument
Repair and Restoration
Sommer Udall Law Firm
Steak Frites Bistro, New York
Strings Music Festival, Colorado
Summit Event Rentals
Sunriver Music Festival, Oregon
TAI Modern
Taos Integrated School of the Arts
Ten Thousand Waves
Tesuque Elementary School
Tumbleweeds Magazine
Vancouver USA Arts & Music Festival
Violin Shop of Santa Fe
VladFoto, Inc.
Walter Burke Catering
We Do Windows
WFMT, Chicago
Whole Foods Market, Santa Fe
ZEN Movers
Zia Insurance Agency
The Festival also gratefully acknowledges the following partners for generously accommodating our musicians’ rehearsal and housing needs and hosting Artists’ Circle and other donor events.
Community Hosts
Arroyo Vino Restaurant and Wine Shop
Bishop’s Lodge
Casas de Guadalupe Club at Las Campanas
David de Wetter and Michael Namingha
Drury Plaza Hotel in Santa Fe
Eldorado Hotel & Spa
First Presbyterian Church of Santa Fe
Four Seasons Resort Rancho Encantado
La Fonda on the Plaza
LewAllen Galleries
Museum Hill Café Museum of International
Folk Art
Rio Chama Prime Steakhouse
San Miguel Chapel
Sunset Terrace
CORPORATE, FOUNDATION, AND GOVERNMENT SUPPORT
gratitude to the following entities for so generously recognizing the importance of music to the Santa Fe community and the artistic significance of the Festival nationally and internationally.
Corporate Support
Century Bank
CHRISTUS St. Vincent
Enterprise Bank & Trust
Greater Horizons
Spectra Tech, Inc.
Thornburg Investment Management, Inc.
Corporate Matching Gifts
Eli Lilly and Company Foundation
ExxonMobil Foundation
Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies
Miller Stratvert, P.A., Law Offices
Pfizer Foundation Matching Gifts Company
Foundation Support
Beloff and Geller Family Fund, Santa Fe Community Foundation
Berkman Family Charitable Trust
Dr. and Mrs. Cameron Haight Fund
Carter Family Fund, Tulsa Community Foundation
Celia Lipton Farris and Victor W. Farris Foundation Fund, Santa Fe Community Foundation
Coneway Family Foundation
Dave Rossetti and Jan Avent Philanthropic Fund
Dragonfly Fund, Santa Fe Community Foundation
Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation
Fasken Foundation
Fay Shwayder Foundation
Greenberg Foundation
Hoffman-Bravy Charitable Foundation
Hutson-Wiley and Echevarria Foundation, Inc.
Jewish Federation of Greater Washington
Jo Kurth Jagoda Charitable Fund, Fidelity Charitable
John H. Hart Foundation
John M. and Patricia L. Bowell Foundation
Kanter Kallman Foundation
Lea and David Soifer Family Fund, Santa Fe Community Foundation
Liswood Giving Fund
Marcella Fund
Moise Family Fund, Santa Fe Community Foundation
Muzik 3 Foundation
Paul L. King Charitable Foundation
Santa Fe Community Foundation
Santa Fe Hestia Fund, Santa Fe Community Foundation
Siegelaar Byrer Foundation, Santa Fe Community Foundation
Special Relativity Education Foundation
Still Water Foundation
TIAA
Tulsa Community Foundation
United Way of Central New Mexico
Government Support
City of Santa Fe Arts and Culture Department
National Endowment for the Arts
New Mexico Arts
State Printing & Graphic Design Services
Tourism Santa Fe
THE ENDOWMENT Investing in the Festival’s Future
In 1998, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival created a permanent endowment to ensure that its rich tradition of presenting the world’s finest chamber music could continue for generations to come. Through bequests and outright gifts large and small from many donors over the years, the Endowment has grown to just over $14 million today, and the Festival is deeply grateful to the donors who have so generously participated in this important effort.
You, too, can make a lasting impact on the Festival and play a crucial role in its future by contributing to the general Endowment or establishing your own Named Fund. (Please see the Perpetual Sponsorships section of this program book for a list of current Named Funds.) Named Funds can support an exciting range of Festival activities, including artists’ and composers’ residencies, unique education and engagement programs, and special Festival projects, such as recordings and national radio broadcasts.
Gifts of any amount—whether made today or as part of your estate plans—are welcome and deeply appreciated. For more information, please contact the Festival’s Director of Development, Joseph Hohlfeld, at 505-983-2075, ext. 108, or jhohlfeld@sfcmf.org.
Endowment Board of Directors
Paul King, President
Michael Everett, Vice President
Robert L. Clarke, Treasurer
Herman Siegelaar, Secretary
Brett Bachman
Mike Cannon
Michael Hindus
Kenneth R. Marvel
Nat Sloane
Ben Allison, Ex officio
Donors of Distinction
Anonymous
Anonymous
Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston
Nancy C.† and Kenneth C. Cain
Susan and Conrad De Jong
David Tausig Frank and Kazukuni Sugiyama
Kay Duke Ingalls and David K. Ingalls†
Diane B. Jergins†
Mara† and Charles† Robinson
Guarantors
Quarrier† and Philip Cook
John Hart and Carol Prins
Nancy E. and P. Anthony Jacobs
David Muck and Cole Martelli
Mr.† and Mrs.† Gifford Phillips
Herman Siegelaar and Cornelia Bryer
†Deceased
Benefactors
Deborah L. Berkman†
Susan Black†
Carole and David Brown
Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Clarke
Ralph P. Craviso
Mike and Marty Everett
Susan Gardner and Devon Ross
Michael Hindus
Jacqueline Hoefer†
Susan† and David† Horowitz
Betty Gardner Meyers†
National Endowment for the Arts
Kathryn O’Keeffe†
Crennan M. Ray
Nat and Rebecca Sloane
The Tenenbaum Family
Thaw Charitable Trust
Jane Ann and Jasper Welch
Nancy and Bill† Zeckendorf
Sponsors
Wood Arnold II
Barbara B. and Ronald Davis Balser
Dr. Barry† and Natalie Beller
Sarah and Doug Brown
Elisbeth Challener and Brett Bachman
Lynn and Peter† Coneway, Coneway Family Foundation
Patricia Marcus Curtis and Robert Curtis
Judy† and Lee Dirks
Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation
William E. and Tina Santi Flaherty
Susan Foote
Peter and Eleanor† Frank
Susan and Steven J. Goldstein, MD
David Goodrich and Brian Clarke
Stanton Hirsch†
Robert L. Hull and Myra Barker Hull
Barry Lapidus
Ron Lushing and Dan Reid
Kenneth R. Marvel and Robert R. Gardner
Faith B. Meem†
Bob and Vicki Midyett
Mary Mill†, Mill Atelier Foundation
Beth† and Steve Moise
Judy Naumburg
Jay W. Oppenheimer
Mary Lawrence Porter
Bruce S. Ross and Eileen Gallo-Ross†
James Clois Smith, Jr.
Ambassador Thomas Stewart Udall and Jill Cooper Udall
Professors Emeriti Charles M.† and Shirley F.† Weiss
William Randolph Hearst Foundation
Nancy Meem Wirth and John Wirth†
Partners
Anonymous
Jean and John Berghoff
Donald† and Jocelyn Blair
Drs. Glenna and Curtis Boyd
Richard† and Eleanor P.† Brenner
Robert and Nancy Carney
Joan and David Clark
James† and Linda Cohen
Joan Z. Cohen†
Sally† and Ben Crane†
Richard J. and Margaret A. Cronin
Florence Dapples†
Stan and Zu Davis
Douglas† and Joan Dayton
Anne Dean† and John W. Turk†
Marthanne Dorminy and Stewart Gardner
Mrs. Avery Fisher†
Adeline† and Richard† Fleischaker
Helen C. and Bertram† Gabriel, Jr.
Diane and Werner Grob
Hal and Donna Hankinson
Lynn and William Herbert
Susan Herter†
Phillip A. Hertzman and Jeri Berger Hertzman
Leda Hirsch†
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation
Irving Harris Foundation
Virginia and Ira† Jackson
Hervey Juris and Leslie Nathanson
Virginia L. Kahn
Edward B. Kaufmann
Sarah Lawless†
Alan and Elisabeth Lerner
Margot† and Robert† Linton Foundation, Inc.
Marthanne Dorminy Fund
Balene Cross McCormick†
The Honorable Patricia A. McFate†
Ann and James† McGarry
Charles and Beth Miller
Philip H. Naumburg†
New Mexico Community Foundation
Marianne and Michael† O’Shaughnessy
Jane and Thomas† O’Toole
Steven Ovitsky
Joseph and Anne Ponce
Jean S. Potter
Carolyn and Bill Rainer
Roberta and Barry Ramo, MD
Margaret Robson†
Betsy and Ted Rogers
Dave Rossetti and Jan Avent
Paul Ira Rubinfeld†
Alicia Schachter-Rich† and Sheldon Rich†
Lorraine Schechter†
Sidney and Sadie Cohen Foundation
Eve and Fred† Simon
Marvin Sloves†
Jane and Arthur† Stieren
Ling Tong and Robert Hilgendorf
Erich Vollmer
B. J. and Bob Weil
Joseph M. and Eileen Wells
Sol and Marsha Wiener
Dr. Cheryl Willman and Dr. Ross Zumwalt
Estelle B.† and S. P.† Yates
Toni† and Leshek Zavistovski
Friends
Richard D. Alby†
Joyce and Tom Allen
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Linda and Lance Armer
William and Julia Ashbey
Anna-Marie Baca
Jane and John Bagwell
Jeff Ballowe
Mikaela and Craig† Barnes
Marie Baum
Richard K. Beaubien
Stephen Benjamin
Jane and Charles Berger
Judith and Sam Berger
Gisela and Laurence Berns
Katherine† and Bruce Besser
Eleanor and M. H. Blakemore
Maxine and Sidney Bloom
Elizabeth and Duncan† Boeckman
Amy Bourret
Susan and Donald Bowey
Dr. and Mrs. Ralph Bransky
Joseph M. Bryan, Jr.
Natalie Smith Buck
Jean and Waldo Burnside
Marcella† and Clifford† Burton
Tish Butler
Helen and Julius Cahn
Ann and Lynn Carrozza
Vincent Carrozza
Ann Casady
Robbin and Donald H. Close
Corinne and Dan Collins
Gloria Cordova† and Dan Winske
Harry R. Courtright
Gloria R. and Philip R. Cowen
Mr.† and Mrs. William W. Crawford
John and Lois Crowe
Scott Cuming†
Hope Curtis†
Mollie and Robert Custer
Sherry† and Jim Davis
Anne Hunt Deal† and Family
Lisl and Landt Dennis
Cece Derringer
Ellen and Ralph Digneo
John and Cynthia Dobson
Susan Dupépé
Dr. Nader D. Ebrahimi and John K. Wheeler
Robert† and Brenda† Edelson
Edward and Ann C. Levy
Charitable Remainder Trust
Dr. Bernice Elkin
Bobbie Elliott
Eleanor and Frank Evans
Sandra and James Fitzpatrick
Nancy M. Folger and Sydney Werkman, MD
Barbara Forslund
A. Charles Forte
Loulie M. Fox
John V. Frank
Letitia E. Frank†
Laurel and Orrie Friedman
Marjorie Garber
William Gates and Helen Lamberton
Amy and Philip Geier
Sheila Gershen
Robert Glick and Jacquelyn Helin
Mary Goodman
Carmoline† and William† Grady
Kathleen and Alan Grainger
Brooke Suzanne Gray
Dolly H. Gray-Bussard†
Geneva Griffin
Clara Keyes Hardin
Marie F. Harper
Dorothy S. Harroun
Hascoe Family Foundation
Milton S. Heath, Jr.
Jackie and Jack Heise
Beth and C. Wolcott Henry
Joanna Hess
Thomas G. D. Hesslein
David Hillson and Eileen Grevey Hillson
Joseph Hohlfeld
Theodora Hooten
Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Hotchkiss
Robert L. Houget
Jane Hunt Houston
Jo Kurth Jagoda and Bill Jagoda†
Barbara and Perry Jeffe
Dr. Cone Johnson
Fred and Kim Johnson
Susan D. Jones
Hilde and Ernest Kahn
Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey H. Kahn
Audrey† Kaplan and Norman Kaplan, MD†
Julius and Robin Kaplan
Louise and Jerome Kaplan
Timothy D. Karsten
Lisa and Paul Kaufman
Brian Kern
Alice and Jerry Kessler
Carola Kieve, MD
Dr.† and Mrs. Morton M. Kligerman
Helen Kornblum
Andrea Kroh
Nancy and Martin Kuckly
Edwin F. LeGard, Jr.
Joan and Harold Leinbach
Michael and Nancy Levin
Audrey Lewis
Erika† and Fred† Little
Galen S. Lockwood
Melanie S. and Peter K. Maier
Mary Jean Manning
Tom Margittai†
Marlene Nathan Meyerson Foundation
Jerome Marshak
Michael G. McCafferty
Marilyn and John McConnell
Milo L. McGonagle†
Susan McGreevy†
Marguerite McGregor
Janet and James McKay
Martha B. McLanahan
William H. Mears, Jr.
Alicia† and Bill Miller
Ellen and Roger Miller
Susan and Charles Mize
Marjorie and David Morehead
Barbara-lyn† and Tom Morris
Deceased
Sana Morrow
Jackie M. and Michael Motley
Gardner M. Mundy
Rochelle and Edward Nanas
Lee J. Nash
Peg Nelson
Scott Nelson
New Mexico Concierge Association
Bridget and Bob Nurock
Michael Ogg and Barbara Doroba-Ogg
Ellen S. O’Gorman
Richard T. Okinaka
Dolores† and Frank† Ortiz
Estate of Katya Overhage†
Madeline C. Papile†
Stu Patterson and Ellie Schrader
Paul and Elissa Cahn Foundation
Katie and Gerald Peters
Ann and Felix Phillips
Mary Claire† and Charles Phipps
Joseph Pisacane
Mary Polhemus
Mary and James Polk
Lynn and Lewis† Pollock
Maya Pool
Lisa S. and John A. Pritzker
Gail and Owen† Quattlebaum
Joan Cuming Read
Arden Reed† and Drury Sherrod
Kathie and Tom Reed
Diane and Robert Reid
Ed Reid† and Ellen Bradbury-Reid
Reynolds Family Foundation
Dr. and Mrs. Pete Rhymes
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Brooks Robinson
Ann† and Alan† Rolley
Rolley Foundation
Carol Romero-Wirth and Peter F. Wirth
Janet and Tony Rousselot
Mr.† and Mrs. Ian Russell
Charles Ryskamp†
Santa Fe Art Foundation
Santa Fe Weaving Gallery
Sol Schreiber
Mary and Robert Schuyler
Ernest and Edith Schwartz
Michael† and Noreen† Scofield
David A. Shepard, Jr., and Tori Warner Shepard
Rev. F. G. Sherrill
David Silverman, EA
Jane Silverman
Dr. Roger M. and Leslie K. Simon
Helene and Herman Singer
Richard and Willa Sisson
Charlotte Ferguson Sloan†
Marianna Smith†
Drury Spurlock
Nadine Stafford
Drew Stewart
Sutin, Thayer, and Browne
Steffi and Don Tashjian
Kyla and Roger Thompson
Ellen Tipton
Deborah Ungar
Kristin and Mac Watson
Barbara and Paul Weiss
Charles “Charley” West†
Jane A. Wetzel
Charlotte† and Gould† Whaley
Dale and Ellen Wilde
Ernamarie T. Williams
Robert A. Willis
Cynthia and Tom Wilson
Thea Witt and Tom Maguire
Lena and James Wockenfuss
Barbara† and Clark Woolley
Linda Wright
B. Wyckliffe† and Libby S. Pattishall
Memorial and Honorarium Gifts
Gift in Honor of Barry Beller by:
Robert L. Hull and Myra Barker Hull
Gift in Memory of Anne and Lanham Deal by:
Gregg Gustafson
Gift in Memory of Eleanor Frank by:
Peter Frank
Gift in Honor of Carol Deal Schaefer in Memory of Her Parents, Anne and Lanham Deal, by:
Kathleen and Alan Grainger
THE MOZART SOCIETY
Play a part in the future of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival through your planned gift.
The group of passionate Festival supporters we call The Mozart Society is made up of chamber music lovers who want to leave a permanent legacy of support for the Festival in their wills or other estate plans. Like the enduring power of Mozart’s music, the generosity of our Mozart Society members lives on, ensuring that future generations can enjoy and be inspired by the Festival’s world-class chamber music performances.
Legacy gift options vary, so we can work with you to find a plan that best suits you and your family, as a gift of any size is meaningful.
If you’ve already made a provision for a bequest or another planned gift, please let us know so that we can welcome you into The Mozart Society and acknowledge and honor your commitment. And to our current Mozart Society members, we extend our heartfelt thanks.
The Mozart Society Members
Barbara B. and Ronald Davis Balser
Steve Beleu
Natalie and Barry† Beller
Beth Beloff and Marc Geller
Gayle S. Bishop
Susan Black†
Carole and David Brown
Doug and Sarah Brown
Marcella† and Cliff† Burton
Nancy C.† and Kenneth C. Cain
Elisbeth Challener and Brett Bachman
Susan A. Chittim†
Joan Z. Cohen
Quarrier† and Philip Cook
Harry R. Courtright
Ralph P. Craviso
Hope Curtis†
Edgar Foster Daniels†
Janet Desforges
Dr. Nader D. Ebrahimi and John K. Wheeler
Robert Eickmeyer†
Mike and Marty Everett
Halley Faust
David Tausig Frank and Kazukuni Sugiyama
Helen Gabriel
Susan Gardner and Devon Ross
Steven J. Goldstein, MD
Phyllis L. Goodman and John F. Simpson
Diane and Werner Grob
Donna and Hal Hankinson
Jane Hardeman†
John Hart and Carol Prins
Susan Herter†
Michael Hindus
Leda Hirsch†
Stanton Hirsch†
Jacqueline Hoefer†
Susan† and David† Horowitz
David K.† and Kay Duke Ingalls
Nancy E. and P. Anthony Jacobs
Diane B. Jergins†
Diane Kravif
Barry Lapidus
Sarah Lawless†
Edward Levy†
Ron Lushing and Dan Reid
Marilyn Macbeth and Forrest Carlton
Kenneth R. Marvel and Robert R. Gardner
Balene C. McCormick†
Henry Meisels†
Mary Meredith-Kirchner
Betty Gardner Meyers†
Vicki and Bob Midyett
David Muck and Cole Martelli
Jane and Thomas O’Toole
Katya Overhage†
Steven Ovitsky
Cinda and Spence Perry
Crennan M. Ray
Mara† and Charles† Robinson
Paul I. Rubinfeld†
Ted Ruskin†
Lorraine Schechter†
Herman Siegelaar and Cornelia Bryer
Fred† and Eve Simon
James Clois Smith, Jr.
Drew Stewart
Ling Tong and Robert Hilgendorf
Jill Cooper Udall
Shelley Waxman†
Barry H. Weiss and William Tierney
Shirley† and Charles† Weiss
Toni† and Leshek Zavistovski
Nancy and Bill† Zeckendorf
For more information on endowed and planned gifts and the many other ways you can contribute to the Festival, please contact the Festival’s Director of Development, Joseph Hohlfeld, at 505-983-2075, ext. 108, or jhohlfeld@sfcmf.org.
†Deceased
Photo Credit:
Andrew Eccles / Decca
Mark Kosower, cello
Stewart Goodyear, piano Yi Zhao, violin
2025 Cliburn Medalist
Artist Faculty Series
Eight concerts July 1 - 25, 2025 Elley-Long Music Center, Colchester, VT
featuring our internationally renowned faculty and the Balourdet & Pacifica Quartets
Violin
Elizabeth Chang
Lynn Chang
Francesca dePasquale
Ellen dePasquale
Julia Glenn
Carolyn Huebl
Bayla Keyes
Kevin Lawrence
Violaine Melançon
James Stern
Corinne Stillwell
Carolyn Stuart
Shannon
Thomas
Sandy Yamamoto
Viola
Jordan Bak
Ann Marie Brink
Sheila Browne
Timothy Deighton
Susan Dubois
Nardo Poy
Daniel Sweaney
Lembi Veskimets
Piano
Jung-A Bang
Hiromi Fukuda
Mariko Kaneda
Nelson Padgett
Brian Suits
Cello
Alex Croxton
Thomas Mesa
Rhonda Rider
Emily Taubl
Caleb van der Swaagh
Alison Wells
Brooks Whitehouse
Alice Yoo
Elizabeth Chang, Artistic Director 21st Season
EDUCATION AND ENGAGEMENT
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival is devoted to serving the creative and artistic needs of its local community by offering engaging and inspiring music education programs for young people in Santa Fe and northern New Mexico. Strategically structured for efficacy and reach, the programs—which are spotlighted below— provide powerful learning experiences over a period of many years, beginning in pre-K and carrying students through to high school graduation. Our sequential, spiral, and research-based curriculum, coupled with intentional teacher-student interaction, has a transformative impact on students’ school attendance, graduation rates, worldviews, career choices, and potential for success in life.
Music in Our Schools
Music in Our Schools is the starting point of the Festival’s education programs, and it’s also the oldest, having launched in 1997. A series of in-school chamber music concerts, Music in Our Schools is offered in pre-K and grades K–6 in 14 schools in Santa Fe, Taos, Los Alamos, and Pecos. It reaches nearly 5,000 students every year, including ones who’ll be experiencing a live music performance for the first time.
Prior to each concert, music and classroom teachers
attend a Festival-run workshop, where they receive training, comprehensive lesson plans, and materials related to an upcoming performance. Teachers then return to their schools and introduce the music to their students through standards-based learning sequences. Additionally, one of the musicians from an upcoming concert visits classrooms to familiarize students with a particular instrument and to connect with the students. When concert day arrives, students are already familiar with the music—its sounds, melodies, characteristics, composers, and instruments— as well as with one of the musicians. Music in Our Schools’ pre-concert learning experiences help make each inschool concert engaging, safe, intellectually accessible, and deeply meaningful for the students.
Strings in Our Schools
Strings in Our Schools offers weekly small-group violin instruction in four elementary schools in Santa Fe and Pecos, serving students in grades 2–6. The free program provides students with violins and necessary materials, and instruction is individualized for unique learning needs.
Strings in Our Schools students perform in winter and spring concerts every school year, and they go on to enroll in public-school orchestra and mariachi programs
at the middle school level, taking their musical study to ever-higher levels. Without Strings in Our Schools, students would miss the opportunity to learn the violin during critical elementary school years and wouldn’t be fully prepared to play in their middle school orchestras. Because of their involvement with Strings in Our Schools, students are also prepared to perform in family- and community-based musical ensembles.
Guitar in Our Schools
Guitar in Our Schools provides instruction in classical guitar. The program is based at the Ramirez Thomas and Sweeney elementary schools in Santa Fe and serves students in grades 3–5. Students learn multiple aspects of guitar playing through weekly lessons, and, like students in Strings in Our Schools, they perform in annual winter and spring concerts, they graduate to study their instrument at the middle school level, and they often perform in family- and community-based musical ensembles. Guitar in Our Schools serves an important need in our local school communities.
Dream Big Private Lesson Program
The Dream Big Private Lesson Program offers free weekly
MUSIC MAKES A DIFFERENCE!
“Music is my escape from reality. When everything fails, music holds me.”
—Dream Big student, Capital High School
“Playing violin, I really feel like I can be myself.”
—Strings in Our Schools student, Pecos Elementary School
“My dream is to become a music teacher so I can help children from other low-income families, too.”
—Former Dream Big student and current music education major at the University of New Mexico
“Dream Big provides an opportunity for many students like me who cannot afford private lessons to grow and pursue music as a career.”
—Dream Big student, Capital High School
“No music, no life. Know music, know life.”
—Dream Big student, Capital High School
2025 SUMMER YOUNG PEOPLE’S CONCERTS
Both concerts are held at 10 a.m. at St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art.
Monday, July 21
MUSIC FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO BY MOZART AND PROKOFIEV
Oliver Prezant, host; Paul Huang, violin; Orion Weiss, piano
Monday, July 28
SCHUMANN Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44
Oliver Prezant, host; Orion Weiss, piano; Calidore String Quartet (Jeffrey Myers, Ryan Meehan, violin; Jeremy Berry, viola; Estelle Choi, cello)
private lessons that are taught at school by professional musicians on each student’s chosen instrument, including voice. The program serves students in Santa Fe’s public middle and high schools who otherwise wouldn’t have access to private lessons due to financial limitations. Dream Big serves 50 students and counting, and it provides between 700 and 1,200 private lessons every year.
Public-school performing groups—band, choir, guitar ensemble, and string orchestra—require students to accurately and independently carry sophisticated parts. Private lessons empower students to master their parts and to perform them with confidence and artistry. Students earn the respect of their peers while contributing to their ensembles as valued team members.
Now more than ever, Dream Big students are also making their way into exceptional performing groups beyond their school ensembles. Last year, 24 students auditioned for, and won entrance to, honors ensembles
in the north-central region of New Mexico. One student was a finalist at the Vocal Artistry Art Song Festival of New Mexico, two students performed with the New Mexico American Choral Directors Association Youth All-State Choir, and five students performed in New Mexico Music Educators Association All-State performing groups. Six students became members of Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association ensembles, and four students were recipients of the Nacha Mendez Music Scholarship for New Mexican Girls of Color.
Dream Big students rise to the top of their performing groups, and they often continue their music studies at the university level and pursue music as their life path. Also importantly, they gain, through their instructor, a relationship with a caring adult they can bond with and rely on during critical teenage years.
Dream Big students harbor the hope that musicianship might be their unique way to express themselves and contribute to society as adults. Through Dream Big, we empower our students to make their biggest dreams come true.
Summer Young People’s Concerts
The Festival’s Summer Young People’s Concerts are a great opportunity to get kids excited about music. The free, interactive events are held during the Festival’s summer season in St. Francis Auditorium at the New Mexico Museum of Art, and this year, conductor and arts educator Oliver Prezant presents fun and friendly explorations of music by Mozart, Prokofiev, and Schumann that feature engaging performances by Festival artists Paul Huang, Orion Weiss, and the Calidore String Quartet. Each concert is immediately followed by a meet and greet with the artists. ◗
For more information, contact Ivy Ross, Director of Education and Engagement, at ivy@sfcmf.org. The Festival’s music education programs are generously sponsored by:
Catalyst Quartet October 5, 2025
Danish String Quartet November 15, 2025
Joseph Lin
Beethoven Celebration December 7,2025
Curtis on Tour February 15, 2026
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Wind Ensemble April 12, 2026
Viano Quartet with Milos May 5, 2026
Caroline Shaw and So Percussion June 6, 2026
Violinist Danbi Um, pianist Gilles Vonsattel, and cellist Peter Stumpf play
Rachmaninoff’s Trio élégiaque in D Minor, Op. 9, in 2024.
SANTA FE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL 2025 RADIO BROADCASTS
If you missed a concert last season or want to hear one again, tune in to the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s long-running national Radio Series, produced and distributed by the WFMT Radio Network and available on more than 200 affiliate stations. The annual, 13-week series features hour-long broadcasts of performances from our most recent season recorded by Grammy Award–winning engineer Matthew Snyder and produced by Louise Frank. WFMT’s Kerry Frumkin hosts the series, and Festival Artistic Director Marc Neikrug and Festival musicians offer commentary and insights.
Check your local station’s schedule—if your station doesn’t carry the broadcasts, please ask them to—or visit SantaFeChamberMusic.org to stream performances from previous seasons. For more information on both our series and our broadcasts, visit RadioNetwork.WFMT.com/programs.
Here are some highlights from our 2025 broadcasts:
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81
Kirill Gerstein, piano
Dover Quartet
Joel Link, violin
Bryan Lee, violin
Julianne Lee, viola Camden Shaw, cello
LEOŠ JANÁČEK
Sonata for Violin and Piano
John Storgårds, violin
Kirill Gerstein, piano
JEAN-BAPTISTE LULLY
Trios pour le coucher du roi, LWV 35
Tara Helen O’Connor, flute
Yura Lee, violin
Peter Stumpf, cello
Paolo Bordignon, harpsichord
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
Trio élégiaque in D Minor for Piano Trio, Op. 9
Gilles Vonsattel, piano
Danbi Um, violin
Peter Stumpf, cello
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581
David Shifrin, clarinet
Escher String Quartet
Adam Barnett-Hart, violin
Brendan Speltz, violin
Pierre Lapointe, viola
Brook Speltz, cello
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18
George Li, piano
MAURO GIULIANI
Grand duo concertante in A Major for Violin and Guitar, Op. 85
Danbi Um, violin
Łukasz Kuropaczewski, guitar
OSVALDO GOLIJOV
The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind
Todd Palmer, clarinet
Verona Quartet
Jonathan Ong, violin
Dorothy Ro, violin
Abigail Rojansky, viola
Jonathan Dormand, cello
FELIX MENDELSSOHN
Piano Trio in D Minor, Op. 49
Jon Kimura Parker, piano
Yura Lee, violin
Narek Hakhnazaryan, cello
HUGO WOLF
“Verschwiegene Liebe” (“Silent Love”) from Eichendorff Lieder
Benjamin Appl, baritone
Simon Lepper, piano
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival
Radio Broadcasts are supported, in part, by generous underwriting from New Mexico Arts.
ARTWORK ON OUR STAGE
Tammy Garcia
Buffalo Maiden (2007)
Bronze with patinas, edition of 10
87.5" h x 28" w x 15" d (with base)
Reversible
Purchase information:
Blue Rain Gallery
505-954-9902
blueraingallery.com
2025 FESTIVAL VOLUNTEERS
Ann Alexander
Freda Anderson
Nina Binin
Cynthia Blackwell
Jerel Brazeau
John Burke
Chuck Case
Audrey Chumley
Kenneth Alan Collins
Judy Costlow
Rebecca Dempsey
Delphine Douglass
James Dyke
Ted Eastlund
Bill Epstein
William Fajman
Richard Feldman
Deborah Fulton
Eda Gordon
Anna Griswold
Barbara Grogin
Barbara Hadley
Mary Ann Hale
Jane Halpern
Christopher Hayes
Dani Hayes
Bev Hedin
Bryan Helbert
Chris Howson
Marie Howson
Rachel Jankowitz
Jamie Jarvis
Hanna Kaiser
Dale Kellogg
Keith Kintigh
Edwina Lieb
Amy Lueders
Ken Marsak
Inessa Maslova
Sharon McCawley
Mary Miello
Paula Miller
Ann Moon
Michael Nadler
Karen Nelson
Ann Parks
Janet Peacock
Randy Perazzini
David Ponder
Tom Pratt
Madeline Pryor
Eva Maria Raepple
Nilou Rahimi
Edna Reyes-Wilson
Eileen Rhine
Marrin Robinson
Joyce Ruderman
Gloria Ruiz
Sandra Smith
Ann Stanley
Erin Taylor
Mike Thompson
Susann Thompson
Deborah Tulchin
Mimi Tung
Frank Wechsler
James Werbel
Carole Whitney
Elizabeth Wilds
Kent Williamson
Harvey Wilson
Aimee Zagon
2026 SEASON PREVIEW
JOIN US IN 2026 FOR OUR 53RD SEASON!
July 19–August 24
Subscriptions are on sale now. Get discounted prices through September 19 at 505-982-1890 or SantaFeChamberMusic.org.
2026 highlights include:
◗ Bassist Edgar Meyer, violinist Daniel Phillips, and New York Philharmonic Principal Cellist Carter Brey reuniting to play Meyer’s String Trio No. 1—a work they premiered together at the Festival in 1986
◗ Baritone Benjamin Appl and pianist Simon Lepper returning to perform three Schubert song cycles: Die Winterreise, Die schöne Müllerin, and Schwanengesang
◗ Jennifer Gilbert, Alan Gilbert, and Paul Watkins playing Dmitry Sitkovetsky’s trio arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations
◗ Piano-vocal recitals by baritone Lucas Meachem and pianist Irina Meachem and baritone Will Liverman and pianist Myra Huang
◗ Cellist Peter Wiley and pianist Anna Polonsky giving a duo recital featuring Beethoven and Mendelssohn sonatas
◗ The Verona Quartet playing Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet with clarinetist David Shifrin
◗ Kirill Gerstein and Katia Skanavi performing piano duets by Schubert, Kurtág, and Rachmaninoff plus Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion with New York Philharmonic Associate Principal Percussionist Daniel Druckman and Mike Truesdell
◗ Solo piano recitals by Ran Dank, Jeremy Denk, Kirill Gerstein, George Li, Nicolas Namoradze, Juho Pohjonen, Orion Weiss, and Haochen Zhang
◗ Guitarist Meng Su giving an all-Bach recital
◗ Santa Fe Opera Music Director Harry Bicket conducting Opera musicians in Bach orchestral suites
Clockwise: Verona Quartet, Benjamin Appl, Edgar Meyer, Meng Su, Will Liverman
A BRIEF GLOSSARY OF MUSICAL TERMS
Over the following two pages is a brief glossary of musical terms that we hope you’ll find helpful as you peruse this season’s programs and read their accompanying program notes. We’re grateful to our longtime friend Joan Dayton, who last year requested that we present this glossary (which appeared in our program book in 2006), and we’re happy to include it again this year. All terms are in Italian (I) unless otherwise noted. Other languages referenced are English (E), French (F), German (G), and Latin (L).
adagietto slightly faster than adagio adagio slow and broad agitato agitated; restless and wild alla to, at the, in the manner of allegretto slower than allegro allegro lively, rather fast
allemande (F) a moderately slow dance movement in 4/4 time; often opens a Baroque suite andante at moderate or walking speed andantino slightly faster than andante
animato animated, lively appassionato impassioned
aria air or song for one or more voices; now used mostly to denote a solo song in opera and oratorio arietta a short and/or light aria arpeggio a chord performed with the notes separated
assai very; e.g., allegro assai, very quick attacca go on to the next section without pause ballade Chopin’s term for a long, dramatic piano piece suggesting narrative basso continuo the bass part, played on a keyboard or other chordal instrument, with figures written below the notes indicating the harmonies to be played above them, often with cello and/or double bass
bourrée (F) a popular dance of the 18th and 19th centuries, often found in dance suites; beginning with an upbeat, it’s fast-moving, with two main beats to the bar
brillante brilliant, usually a direction for solo performance
brio with vivacity, spirited
cadence a closing musical sentence, e.g., the ending of a composition, phrase, or section cadenza a solo vocal or instrumental passage, usually virtuosic, before the first cadence, generally occurring in the first movement of a Classical concerto
calmo quiet, peaceful, calm
canone (I), canon (E) a contrapuntal work in which a melody, stated by one part, is repeated by one or more voices in turn, each entering before the previous part has finished; the result is overlapping
cantabile in a singing style
cantata a vocal composition with instrumental accompaniment telling a story by means of arias and recitatives
capriccio (I), caprice (F) short, light, lively pieces, usually for keyboard
chaconne (F), ciaconna (I) a vocal or instrumental composition in slow, stately, threebeat time with a ground bass
coda (“tail”) the concluding section at the end of a movement
con with
concertante a work for orchestra or for two or more instruments with prominent solo parts
concertina 1) a little and light concerto; 2) the soloist group in the 17th- and 18th-century concerto grosso; 3) a less formally structured work than a concerto for one or more solo instruments with orchestra
concerto 1) a large-scale work, generally in three movements, involving at least one solo instrument contrasted with the orchestra; 2) the main body of orchestral instruments in a concerto concerto grosso (“great concerto”) an orchestral work involving interplay between the concerto or ripieno (main body of instruments) and the concertina (a small group of solo instruments), each with its own basso continuo counterpoint (E), contrapuntal (E) the sounding together of two or more separate parts of rhythmic and melodic independence, in harmony courante (F), corrente (I; “running”) a lively dance in triple time popular in the Baroque period and found in the suite
divertimento chiefly an 18th-century term for an entertaining suite of movements
dolce sweet and gentle dolente sorrowful
doloroso painful, distressing, sad double (E) 18th-century term for variation or ornamental repeat of the main theme, e.g., in a dance movement
e, ed and
energico energetic, vigorous espressivo, espressione with expression, expression
étude (F; “study”) an instrumental piece to improve or demonstrate certain technical points fantasia a style generally associated with the abandoning of set rules for free flights of the composer’s imagination finale the last movement of a work of several movements
forte loud; abbreviated f fortepiano 1) loud followed immediately by soft; abbreviated fp; 2) any of the various early forms of the piano
fortissimo very loud; abbreviated ff fugato describes a section of a composition in fugal style that is not actually a fugue fughetta a brief fugue
fugue (E), fuga (I) a contrapuntal composition for two or more voices or parts built around a theme that is successively imitated by entries of each voice at the beginning and developed throughout the piece; see stretto
fuoco fire
gavotte (F) a fairly quick dance in 4/4 time usually beginning on the third beat of the bar gigue (F), giga (I) jig; a lively dance in binary form, usually in 6/8 or 12/8 time
giocoso merry, playful
giusto 1) in strict time; 2) at a reasonable speed glissando the sliding up or down a scale
grave slow and solemn
grazioso graceful, delightful, charming
harmonic (E) 1) overtone, especially one whose vibration frequency is an integral multiple of that of the fundamental; 2) a flute-like tone produced on a stringed instrument by touching a vibrating string at a nodal point
intermezzo (“something in the middle”) 1) in opera, a short instrumental piece performed while the stage is empty; 2) a short concert piece lamento (“lament”) a song of mourning or great sadness
langsam (G) slow largamente broad and deliberate larghetto not quite as slow as largo legato smoothly leggiero light, lightly lento (I), lent (F) slow ma but maestoso majestic, dignified major (E), minor (E) the two main scales of the Western tonal system marcia march meno less mesto sad mezzo half, midway mezzo forte moderately loud, less loud than forte; abbreviated mf
mezzo piano moderately soft, louder than piano; abbreviated mp minore minor; sometimes used to label a section of a work that is in a minor mode minuetto, menuetto minuet; a moderately fast French dance of rustic origin in 3/4 time moderato at a moderate pace modo manner; e.g., in modo di, in the manner of molto much, very moto movement; e.g., con moto, with movement musette (F) a dance-like piece of pastoral character whose style suggests the sound of the musette or bagpipe
nocturne (F), notturno (I) 1) in the 18th century, a composition close to a serenade for several instruments and movements; 2) in the 19th century, a short lyrical piece in one movement for piano
non (F, I) not obbligato a part that has an important and unusual special role that can’t be dispensed with, as opposed to an optional part; in some 19thcentury music, however, obbligato was applied to an additional optional part
opus (L) work
partita, partia a suite (18th century) or variation (17th century)
passacaglia a piece with a theme continually repeated
passepied (F) a French court dance and instrumental form flourishing in the 17th and 18th centuries; a faster version of the minuet, usually written in 3/8 or 6/8 time
pavane (F) a slow, stately dance usually in duple time
pianissimo very soft; abbreviated pp piano soft; abbreviated p
pianoforte the instrument commonly called the piano
più more; e.g., più lento, slower
pizzicato indication to pluck notes on a bowed string instrument
poco slightly, little, rather prélude (F), prelude (E) an introductory piece or movement before a fugue; 2) a short, independent piano piece in one movement prestissimo very fast
presto fast
rapsodie (F), rhapsody (E) a title given by 19thand 20th-century composers to describe works (generally in one continuous movement) suggestive of heroic, national, or other Romantic inspiration
ritornello (“a little return”) in a concerto, a passage for full orchestra without the soloist
romanza (I), romanze (G) an intimate and lyrical piece for voice or instrument
rondo an instrumental composition in which one section recurs at certain times
rubato (“robbed”) an indication to play notes with a controlled flexibility of time by getting slightly quicker or slower; frequently used in 19th-century music
sarabande (F) a slow, stately dance in 3/2 or 3/4 time, usually in binary form; a standard element of a suite
scherzo (“joke”) a lively movement, usually in 3/4 time, in the form ABA; the B section is called the trio
scordatura (“mistuning”) to tune a string or strings to any pitch other than what is standard for that instrument
serenade (E) an evening entertainment (especially in the 18th century) comprising a set of instrumental movements for chamber orchestra or wind group, similar to the divertimento
serioso serious
sforzando, sforzato with a forced manner (of a note or chord); abbreviated sf
siciliano (I), sicilienne (F) 1) a late Baroque instrumental movement, often used in suites; 2) an aria that evokes a gentle pastoral mood sonata 1) before 1750: any composition for a solo instrument or for one or more instruments accompanied by a basso continuo and not in any strict form; 2) after 1750: a three- or fourmovement work for a solo instrument or for a solo instrument with piano accompaniment; a similar work for three performers is called a trio sonata
sonata form a musical structure comprising three main sections known as the exposition, development, and recapitulation; includes a conflict or clash between differing musical idea sordino mute sostenuto sustained, in a smooth manner sotto voce (“low voice”) whispered, barely audible
spiccato clearly articulated staccato (“detached”) the note is performed shorter than normal
stretto drawn together, close; 1) an indication to quicken the pace; 2) in a fugue, the term describes the overlapping of the entries when the subject begins in one voice before the preceding entry has finished suite (F) commonly describes an instrumental piece in several movements consisting of a sequence of dances; in the 17th and 18th centuries, these were usually the allemande, courante, sarabande, bourrée, and gigue, preceded by a prelude
tanto so much; e.g., allegro non tanto, not too fast tema con variazione theme with variations tempo time, pace terzetto trio
tessitura the range of a vocal or instrumental part in a composition
tranquillo tranquil, calm
trio 1) a vocal or instrumental piece for three performers; 2) the B (contrasting) section of a minuet or scherzo, which are typically in ABA form troppo too much; e.g., allegro non troppo, fast but not too fast
vivace Iively
vivacissimo very lively vivo lively ◗
PLANNING YOUR VISIT
Concert Venues
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival concerts take place in St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art (107 W. Palace Ave.) and The Lensic Performing Arts Center (211 W. San Francisco St.).
Ticket Purchases and Box Office Hours
Using any major credit card, you can purchase tickets by phone at 505-982-1890 or in person at the Festival’s Box Office. Tickets are available either in their traditional physical form or digitally; special-discount tickets require proper ID when purchasing.
From mid-June until the end of the Festival season, the Box Office is located in the lobby of the New Mexico Museum of Art (107 W. Palace Ave.; daily, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.). On days with evening concerts, the Box Office is open through intermission; on Saturdays, when concerts don’t have an intermission, the Box Office is open until the beginning of the performance.
After the Festival, until mid-June 2026, tickets can be purchased at 208 Griffin St. (Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.).
Lost or Misplaced Tickets
If you lose or misplace your tickets, contact the Box Office at 505-982-1890 to arrange for free replacements.
Ticket Refunds and Exchanges
The Festival doesn’t offer refunds or cancellations for ticket purchases, but exchanges are usually possible up to two days before the concert date. Exchanges, which are subject to availability, are free for subscribers; nonsubscribers are charged an $8 per-ticket exchange fee. For more information or to exchange your tickets, contact the Box Office at 505-982-1890.
Can’t Attend? Consider Donating Your Tickets!
If you can’t attend a performance, please consider donating the cash value of your tickets to the Festival, which is a 100 percent tax-deductible contribution. Prior to the performance, you can donate your tickets in person at the Festival’s Box Office (see address in previous column) or via email at tickets@sfcmf .org. When emailing, please include the name of the person who purchased the tickets, the date and time of the performance, the number of seats to be donated, the seat numbers, and (if possible) the order number. The Festival can’t accept ticket donations by phone.
We appreciate receiving your ticket donations as soon as possible so that we can increase our chances of reselling the tickets. You’ll receive a receipt for tax purposes, and you’ll give other music lovers the opportunity to hear a live Festival performance. Please note: Once you
donate a ticket, your donation is final, and the ticket is instantly made available for resale.
Patrons with Special Needs
The Festival provides wheelchair seating, accommodations for guide dogs and walkers, and other assistance. Please notify the Box Office of your needs when ordering tickets.
Emergencies
Medical or other emergencies should be brought to the attention of a museum guard, a Festival volunteer (look for their blue sash), or a Festival staff member.
Recording and Electronic Devices
The use of cameras and other recording and electronic devices is not permitted during performances. Out of consideration for the Festival’s musicians and your fellow concertgoers, please turn off your cell phone, alarm watch, pager, and other electronic devices before your concert begins.
Late Seating
Concerts begin promptly at their indicated times. Out of consideration for the Festival’s musicians and your fellow concertgoers, and to minimize distractions, latecomers or those leaving a performance in progress won’t be admitted or readmitted to the concert until an appropriate break, as determined by a Festival staff member.
Please remember that traffic, parking, and weather can affect your arrival time. We suggest arriving 30 minutes prior to the concert to allow time to find your seat and get ready for the performance. The Festival assumes no responsibility for portions of any concert missed due to lateness and can’t make any adjustments to the ticket price. Your understanding and cooperation are appreciated.
Inclement Weather
The Festival is committed to honoring its concert schedule; therefore, performances proceed at their scheduled times regardless of weather conditions or traffic delays. The Festival regrets that tickets not used due to inclement weather or traffic delays can’t be refunded, exchanged, or returned for a tax receipt.
Length of Concerts
Performance lengths vary, but most evening concerts last about two hours, including intermission. Noon and Saturday concerts last about one hour and don’t have an intermission.
The New Mexico Museum of Art is one of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival's two concert venues.
Children Attending Concerts
Children ages six and older can attend concerts with tickets that are purchased for them, but concerts are best suited for children ages ten and older.
The Festival offers free Summer Young People's Concerts that are designed especially for children and families. For information, visit SantaFeChamberMusic.org/education.
Applause
Please wait until the end of a piece to clap. This is considered respectful of a performer’s concentration and mindful of musical continuity. If you’re unsure when to clap, a good rule of thumb is to follow the lead of other audience members.
Coughing
If you’re prone to coughing, please have unwrapped throat lozenges ready when the concert begins, or try to cough during a loud passage of music. If you begin to cough a lot, it’s perfectly acceptable to leave the hall; a Festival staff member or volunteer will readmit you to the hall during an appropriate part of the performance.
Smoking, Food, and Beverages
Smoking, food, and beverages are not permitted inside the concert halls or in any part of the New Mexico Museum of Art building. Food and beverages are permitted in the museum’s courtyard during intermission. Refreshments are available for purchase in The Lensic Performing Arts Center’s lobby before a concert begins and during intermission. You can bring these refreshments into The Lensic with you.
Jewelry and Fragrances
Please avoid wearing jewelry and accessories that make noise and any scented personal products that may compromise the health and comfort of other concertgoers.
Lost and Found
Lost articles may be claimed at the New Mexico Museum of Art’s information desk and at The Lensic Performing Arts Center’s box office during regular business hours.
Parking
Parking can be a challenge in Santa Fe. Parking meters are enforced Monday–Saturday, 8 a.m.–6 p.m. Restricted zones (ADA, loading, caution,
fire) are enforced 24/7. You can pay for most parking meters with a credit card or by using the ParkMobile app, which you can download onto your smartphone.
ADA parking is free for patrons with a valid placard or accessible registration plate at any parking meter or city parking facility, including the Sandoval Municipal Garage across from The Lensic. For $7, The Lensic will validate parking at either Sandoval or the Santa Fe Community Convention Center Municipal Garage, and it will validate ADA tickets for free. For details, call The Lensic Box Office at 505-988-1234. ◗
Editor Amy Hegarty
Designer
Natalie Baca
Program Annotator
Eric Bromberger
Advertising Sales Manager
Marcella Scott
Director of Marketing and Communications
Brian Bixby
PHOTO CREDITS
Printer
Paper Tiger
Contributors
Israel Alpizar
Jane Bagwell
Jose Gonzalez
Jim Griffith
Valerie Guy
Joseph Hohlfeld
Marc Neikrug
Doug Patinka
Jennifer Rhodes
Ivy Ross
Lizette Rubio
p. 5: Allison: courtesy; Neikrug: courtesy; Griffith: Jerry Smith; p. 10: Griffith: Kara Griffith; p. 11: Griffiths: Nina Griffith; pp. 14 & 15: Rubinstein: Mara Baranova & courtesy; p. 18: Tomaino: John Abbott; p. 19: Margulis: Martin Miller; Habibi: courtesy; p. 22: Shepherd: Jennifer Taylor; Waley-Cohen: Patrick Allen; p. 23: Anderson: John Batten: p. 26: Davis: AJ Derwin II; Vu: Ryan Muir; p. 27: JACK Quartet: Cherylynn Tsushima; p. 32: Fans: Marc Neikrug; p. 33: A Song by Mahler: Steven Ovitsky; p. 44: Margulis: Martin Miller; p. 111: Tomaino: Ken Brown; p. 136: Habibi: courtesy; p. 167: Neikrug: courtesy; Appel: Da Ping Luo; Baikoff: Dario Acosta; Beaver: Shayne Gray; Alexander Bickard: Titilayo Ayangade; p. 168: Bordignon: Matt Dine; Brauer: Devon Cass; Calidore String Quartet: Marco Borggreve; Canellakis: Arabella Oz; p. 169: Capocchi: InSight Foto: Chatter: Beau Sniderman; Chow Morgan: Jordyn Dempsey Photography; Currie: James Glossop; Dank: Janette Beckman; p. 170: DeRosa: Matt Dine; Dohr: Simon Pauly; Dover Quartet: Roy Cox; Drake: Marco Borggreve: Druckman: courtesy; p. 171: Ecker: Angelica Owens; Escher String Quartet: Shervin Lainez; Fan: Richard Corman; Feller: Matt Dine; Flint: Brian Malloy; p. 172: Frautschi: Dario Acosta; Fu: Raphael Neal; Gerstein: Marco Borggreve; Hagen: Matt Clayton; p. 173: Harguindey: Austin Lord; Harris: Patrick Clark; Hix: Lauren Breden; Hoopes: Jiyang Chen; Huang: Marco Borggreve; p. 174: Huzjak: Shea Perry; Ingliss: Charles Brooks; JACK Quartet: Shervin Lainez; Johnson: Bo Huang; Jordan: courtesy; p. 175: Josefowicz: Tom Zimberoff; Kavafian: Nichole MCH Photography; Kim, B.: Tara McMullen; Kim, E.: courtesy; p. 176: Kirk: Devon Cass; Kosower: Kim Bonggyun; Lee, B.: Roy Cox; Lee, S.: courtesy; Lee, S. K.: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco; p. 177: Lee, Y.: Caroline Bittencourt; Leung: Stuart Lowe; Levy: courtesy; Link: Roy Cox; McGonnell: Kelly Alexandre; p. 178: Miami String Quartet: Tara McMullen; Montone: Sue Burrough; O’Connor: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco; Pajaro-van de Stadt: Eva Ravel Photography; p. 179: Payton: MikiMedia; Pérez: Soloman Howard; Perkins: Joe Mazza; Phillips: Matt Dine; Pilant: Leichtner Studio; p. 180: Pohjonen: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco; Redpath: Thomas Brunot; Robinson: Tara McMullen; Rosenwein: courtesy; p. 181: Rubinstein: Kim Kimbro Taylor; Shaw: Roy Cox; Shifrin: Yuki Tei; Sholar: Amy Wellnitz; Skanavi: Evgeny Evtyukhov; p. 182: Tenenbom: Nichole MCH Photography; Vandiver: Jaime Hogge; Vigneau: Amaury Martinez; Vonsattel: Marco Borggreve; p. 183: Watkins: Jürgen Frank; Weiss: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco; Wosner: Marco Borggreve; Zuber: Missy Wolf; p. 197: Vlad Chaloupka; p. 200: Sabra LaVaun; p. 201: Ivy Ross; Festival photo; p. 202: Sabra LaVaun; p. 204: Garret Vreeland; p. 205: courtesy of Blue Rain Gallery; p. 207: Verona Quartet: Grittani Creative; Appl: David Ruano; Meyer: Jim McGuire; Su: courtesy; Liverman: Daniel Welch; p. 210: courtesy
Osmo Vänskä
Renée Fleming
Alisa Weilerstein
Jessie Montgomery
Alan Gilbert TICKETS START
Cécile McLorin Salvant
CLASSICAL CONCERTS
6/28 Opening Night: Contrasts in Classical
7/2 An American Story featuring Chee-Yun
7/5 An American Tapestry in Brass
7/12 Palaver Strings with Nicholas Phan: ‘A Change is Gonna Come’
7/16 Anderson & Roe
7/19 Manhattan Chamber Players
7/23 Weiss Kaplan Carr Trio
7/26 Harmonic Dialogues
7/30 Trios of Passion
8/2 Czech Mates
8/6 Strings Unbound
8/9 Rhapsody in Blue
8/13 Cliburn Gold Medalist
& Roe
Anderson
Music & Investments That Strike the Right Chord
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Summer Exhibition
County Line / Eagle Eats Snake #4, 2025, oil on panel, 40" x 30"
