6/6
The 2025-26 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival radio series launches with three tour de force performances of works from the early and mid-20th century. Kirill Gerstein interprets the considerable melodic gifts of Sergei Rachmaninoff as he performs the composer’s arrangement of one of his own popular songs, the gentle yet lamenting, “Lilacs.” Dohnányi’s Serenade in C Major is scored for string trio and dates from 1902, when the 25-year-old composer was touring the world as a virtuoso pianist. As violinist Martin Beaver tells us, “much like the Beethoven string trios, this trio feels like a quartet with a member missing, so you have to fill in the holes. It’s really kind of a subtle balancing act as you thread your way in and out.” “For me, it makes it super fun,” says violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt. “The sound world is very warm-hearted and open, rhapsodic.” The hour concludes as pianist Gilles Vonsattel, violinist Leila Josefowicz, and cellist Paul Watkins join forces in the somber yet sublime Piano Trio in E Minor that Shostakovich created while living in Stalinist Russia in 1944. “It's a war piece,” explains pianist Gilles Vonsattel. “The sounds of what was occurring around him are there in the music.”
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF: Lilacs, Op. 21, No. 5 (1900-1902)
Kirill Gerstein, piano
ERNST VON Dohnányi: Serenade in C Major, Op. 10 (1902)
Marcia: Allegro
Romanza: Adagio non troppo, quasi andante
Scherzo: Vivace
Tema con variazioni: Andante con moto
Rondo: Allegro vivace
Martin Beaver, violin; Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola; Eric Kim, cello
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH: Piano Trio in E Minor, Op. 67 (1944)
Andante - Moderato - Poco più mosso
Allegro con brio
Largo-
Allegretto - Adagio
Gilles Vonsattel, piano; Leila Josefowicz, violin; Paul Watkins, cello
6/13
In this program, pianist Juho Pohjonen contemplates Olivier Messiaen’s 1944 Le Baiser de l’enfant-Jésus (The Kiss of the Infant Jesus), a rapt, slow episode for solo piano that treats the “Theme of God” as a berceuse, or lullaby. The Dover Quartet’s cellist, Camden Shaw, enjoys the role of soloist as he inhabits the courtly, agreeable, and lush Cello Concerto in B-flat Major by the Italian, Classical-era composer, Luigi Boccherini. To conclude, violinist Jennifer Frautschi and pianist Shai Wosner play the intoxicating and wholly individual Sonata in C Major – music Bartók wrote in 1922 and which helped solidify his reputation as a composer of international stature.
OLIVIER MESSIAEN: Le baiser de l'enfant-Jésus from Vingt regards sur
l’enfant-Jésus (1944)
Juho Pohjonen, piano
LUIGI BOCCHERINI: Cello Concerto in B-flat Major, G. 482 (late 1760s/early 1770s)
Allegro moderato
Andantino grazioso
Rondo: Allegro
Cellist Camden Shaw, soloist; with an ensemble of Santa Fe Opera Orchestra musicians, led by Daniel Jordan as concertmaster.
Béla Bartók: Sonata in C Major for Violin and Piano, Sz. 76 (1922)
Molto moderato
Allegretto
Jennifer Frautschi, violin; Shai Wosner, piano
6/20
In this edition of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival radio series, Joel Link – first violinist of the Dover Quartet and concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra – brings J. S. Bach’s immaculate and vibrant Violin Concerto in A Minor to life. “One of the wonderful things about Bach as an artist and as a creator,” declares harpsichordist Paolo Bordignon, “is that each of us can see our own image in Bach’s music if we take the time to explore it. They’re timeless in that way.” To close out the program, violinist Chad Hoopes leads a stellar group of Festival musicians in Enescu’s sensational, grand and dramatic Octet. “What strikes me about this Octet by Enescu is the polarity of it. … It’s like a symphonic poem” says the Escher Quartet’s violist Pierre Lapointe. His colleague cellist Brook Speltz agrees, and calls Enescu’s teenage achievement “one of the most effective pieces we have in the repertoire.”
JOHANN SEBASTIAN Violin Concerto in A Minor, BWV 1041 (ca. 1730)
BACH: Allegro
Andante
Allegro assai
Violinist Joel Link, soloist; with an ensemble of Santa Fe Opera Orchestra musicians, led by Daniel Jordan as concertmaster.
GEORGE ENESCU: Octet in C Major, Op. 7 (1900)
Tres modere
Tres fougueux
Lentement
Movt de Valse bien rythmée
Chad Hoopes, Ida Kavafian, Adam Barnett-Hart, James Thompson, violin; Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, Pierre Lapointe, viola; Eric Kim, Brook Speltz, cello
6/27
Week four of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s 2026-27 broadcast season holds three virtuosic showpieces from the early years of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Violinist Chad Hoopes and pianist Katia Skanavi perform Beethoven’s monumental and groundbreaking Kreutzer Sonata, which the composer described as being “almost like a concerto.” Before that, percussion virtuoso Colin Currie—hailed as “the world’s finest and most daring percussionist” by The Spectator—performs Spiel by Andy Akiho. Akiho “is writing some of the most advanced and sensational percussion music of our time,” praises Colin Currie. Currie notes that “Spiel is written for a glockenspiel. It’s a remarkable, fast-paced piece and exquisitely beautiful.” The hour begins as pianist Kirill Gerstein interprets Percy Grainger’s Paraphrase on Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers.
PERCY GRAINGER: Paraphrase on Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers (1901; rev. 1904)
Kirill Gerstein, piano
ANDY AKIHO: Spiel (2013; rev. 2020)
Colin Currie, glockenspiel
LUDWIG VAN Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 47, Kreutzer (1802-03)
BEETHOVEN: Adagio sostenuto – Presto
Andante con variazioni
Finale: Presto
Chad Hoopes, violin; Katia Skanavi, piano