7/4
This week, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival presents a pair of 19th century gems. Longtime Festival collaborator, pianist Kirill Gerstein, opens the program with Robert Schumann’s big romantic sonata, Carnival Scenes from Vienna, in which each of the five movements projects its own mood while conveying the whirling, dancing elements that Schumann witnessed on the streets of Vienna during Carnival. The magnificent Escher String Quartet closes the program with Dvořák’s masterful, late-career String Quartet in A-flat Major, music Dvorák began while living in America and completed, in 1895, after returning to his beloved Czech homeland.
ROBERT SCHUMANN: Faschingsschwank aus Wien (Carnival Scenes from Vienna), Op. 26 (1839-40)
Allegro
Romanze
Scherzino
Intermezzo
Finale
Kirill Gerstein, piano
ANTONÍN DVORÁK: String Quartet in A-flat Major, Op. 105 (1895)
Adagio ma non troppo; Allegro appassionato
Molto vivace
Lento e molto cantabile
Allegro non tanto
Escher String Quartet (Adam Barnett-Hart, James Thompson, violin; Pierre Lapointe, viola; Brook Speltz, cello)
7/11
This musical hour from Santa Fe includes virtuosic interpretations of three distinct and deeply innovative compositions. There came a time during the 19th century when the cello escaped its identity as an accompaniment instrument playing a base line and became more of a starring member of an ensemble. In his Serenade for Two Cellos and Piano, the Italian composer and cello virtuoso, Carlo Alfredo Piatti, shows off just what a skillful cellist can do. Here, Mark Kosower and Nicholas Canellakis shine, along with pianist Juho Pohjonen, as the trio performs Piatti’s dazzling gem. Under the longtime artistic direction of composer Marc Neikrug, the Festival continues to perpetuate the chamber music art form through the commissioning of new works. The renowned Escher String Quartet gives the U.S. premiere of the String No. 4 by Julian Anderson, one of today’s most compelling composers. Cellist Brook Speltz describes Anderson’s sound world as “very new yet very familiar. The sounds, the harmonies, the sort of jagged rhythms, the intensity at times, is very fresh and it sounds completely unique to his own language.” The powerhouse program comes to a close as violinist Yura Lee and pianist Gilles Vonsattel play the Sonata in A Minor for Violin and Piano, a fiery work brimming with the feeling of Romanian folk music as envisioned and specified by the remarkable musical imagination of George Enescu.
CARLO ALFREDO PIATTI: Serenade for Two Cellos and Piano (1890)
Mark Kosower, Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Juho Pohjonen, piano
JULIAN ANDERSON: String Quartet No. 4 (Festival Co-Commission, U.S. Premiere) (2024)
I. [quarter note] = 56
II. Presto [dotted half note] = 72
III. [quarter note] = 52
Escher String Quartet (Adam Barnett-Hart, James Thompson, violin; Pierre Lapointe, viola; Brook Speltz, cello)
GEORGE ENESCU: Sonata in A Minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 25, Dans le caractere populaire roumain (1926)
Moderato malinconico
Andante sostenuto e misterioso
Allegro con brio ma non troppo mosso
Yura Lee, violin; Gilles Vonsattel, piano
7/18
Stellar pianist Kirill Gerstein opens this Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival broadcast with a new work called Waltzes Toward Civilization, which the award-winning Spanish composer Francisco Coll wrote especially for him. After the Coll, we have a piece Schubert composed for what was, in 1824, a brand-new instrument. Today, the arpeggione – a kind of cross between a cello and guitar –is virtually unknown. Schubert’s Sonata for Arpeggione & Piano in A Minor, however, remains one of the most lyrical and tranquil pieces in the repertoire. Today, this piece is often played on the cello, and we will hear a gorgeous performance by cellist Paul Watkins and pianist Ran Dank.Closing the hour, we have the Dover Quartet and their riveting interpretation of Dvorák’s quintessential Czech take on Americana, the melodious String Quartet in F Major.
FRANCISCO COLL: Two Waltzes Toward Civilization after Lorca’s Poet in New York) (2024)
Waltz in the Branches
Little Viennese Waltz
Kirill Gerstein, piano
W.A. MOZART: Sonata in F Major for Violin and Piano, K. 376 (1781)
Allegro
Andante
Rondo: Allegretto grazioso
Paul Huang, violin and Orion Weiss, piano
ANTONÍN DVORÁK: String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96, American (1893)
Allegro ma non troppo
Lento
Scherzo
Finale: Vivace ma non troppo
Dover Quartet (Joel Link, Bryan Lee, violin; Hezekiah Leung, viola; Camden Shaw, cello)
7/25
This wide-ranging program brings together two very distinctive trios for horn, violin, and piano. Each expresses archetypal music from two very different yet important and idiosyncratic composers. In both pieces, we have exceptional performances from the Berlin Philharmonic’s principal horn, Stefan Dohr, the American violinist William Hagen, and the magnificent pianist Kirill Gerstein. Gerstein brings out the lyrical aspects in Ligeti’s singular trio, which the composer wrote in 1982 and intended as an Hommage à Brahms. Later, these dazzling collaborators perform Brahms’s wonderful 1865 horn trio, a pastoral, soothing work, which Brahms wrote after the death of his mother, and which provides grace for the living in a time of mourning.
György Ligeti: Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano, Hommage à Brahms (1982)
Andantino con tenerezza
Vivacissimo molto ritmico
Alla Marcia
Lamento. Adagio
Stefan Dohr, French horn; William Hagen, violin; Kirill Gerstein, piano
JOHANNES BRAHMS: Horn Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 40 (1865)
Andante
Scherzo: Allegro
Adagio mesto
Finale: Allegro con brio
Stefan Dohr, French horn; William Hagen, violin; Kirill Gerstein, piano