Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival

Niccolò Paganini, Helen Grime, Amy Beach, and George Gershwin

Louise Frank — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 01:00:26 +0000

Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840)

Selection of Caprices for Solo Violin, Op. 1 – #1 & #7 (c. 1801-07)

Soovin Kim, violin

Violinist Soovin Kim won first prize at the 1996 Paganini International Competition and Classic FM Magazine named his recording of the 24 Caprices ‘disc of the month’ back in 2006. He’s a recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, and performs regularly as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and as a founding member of the Johannes String Quartet. He is also the artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival. Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Artistic Director, Marc Neikrug once asked him which Paganini Caprices he could play best if woken up at 3 o’clock in the morning with such a request.

Like Chopin’s Etudes, each of Paganini’s 24 Caprices highlights a particular technical or expressive challenge. Here is Soovin Kim playing Caprice #1.

Helen Grime (b. 1981)

Snow and Snow for Clarinet, Viola & Piano (2012)

2012 commission by Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, World Premiere
Todd Levy, clarinet; Teng Li, viola; Haochen Zhang, piano

Snow and Snow takes its title and starting point from the poem by Ted Hughes. Although the piece is not programmatic, the striking images of fragility and beauty together with the enigmatic nature of snowfall in the poem, struck a resonance with me.

The piece falls into 3 movements, the 2nd and 3rd continuing without a break. The 2nd movement forms a sort of centrepiece to the work with the outer movements almost functioning as an introduction and postlude to the central section. The musical material is developed and refracted in a myriad of ways throughout the three movements with the result that the piece could almost be heard as one larger movement.

The piece begins with a tentative duet for clarinet and viola. The two instruments are constantly overlapping and imitating each other, at times breaking into canon-like figures. This is a feature which characterizes the work as a whole: the clarinet and viola forming a unit set against the contrasting nature of the piano. The music is delicate and very quiet and silence forms an important part in establishing the fragile mood struck in the poem. After a scurrying exchange of faster figures, the piano enters with in a more soloistic manner. At first the duo and piano are quite separate, eventually overlapping and coming together towards the end of the movement.

The 2nd movement opens with an extended solo for piano. Here the piano acts as a constant throughout with much more rhythmic regularity. The clarinet and viola form melodies, which hang from the piano texture, marking different tempos and creating intricate, cumulating patterns against it. The music shifts and moves through various moods, a virtuosic piano cadenza paving the way into a faster moving, agitated section before the three instruments come together in their closest form in an extended melodic section.

Coming out of the closing piano figures of the 2nd movement, the last movement acts as a sort of distant postlude, revisiting and drawing on the themes and ideas of the piece.

- © Helen Grime, 2012

Marc Neikrug reveals how he first learned about composer Helen Grime.

Helen Grime described her sound world when we spoke with her by phone at her home in London.

Helen Grime recites the Ted Hughes’ poem that inspired her Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival 40th Anniversary commission, Snow and Snow.

SNOW AND SNOW

Snow is sometimes a she, a soft one.
Her kiss on your cheek, her finger on your sleeve
In early December, on a warm evening,
And you turn to meet her, saying "It's snowing!"
But it is not. And nobody's there.
Empty and calm is the air.

Sometimes the snow is a he, a sly one.
Weakly he signs the dry stone with a damp spot.
Waifish he floats and touches the pond and is not.
Treacherous-beggarly he falters, and taps at the window.
A little longer he clings to the grass-blade tip
Getting his grip.

Then how she leans, how furry foxwrap she nestles
The sky with her warm, and the earth with her softness.
How her lit crowding fairylands sink through the space-silence
To build her palace, till it twinkles in starlight—
Too frail for a foot
Or a crumb of soot.

Then how his muffled armies move in all night
And we wake and every road is blockaded
Every hill taken and every farm occupied
And the white glare of his tents is on the ceiling.
And all that dull blue day and on into the gloaming
We have to watch more coming.

Then everything in the rubbish-heaped world
Is a bridesmaid at her miracle.
Dunghills and crumbly dark old barns are bowed in the chapel of her sparkle.
The gruesome boggy cellars of the wood
Are a wedding of lace
Now taking place.

(Ted Hughes)

Amy Beach (1867-1944)

Piano Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 67 (1907)

Anne-Marie McDermott, piano; Orion String Quartet: Daniel Phillips and Todd Phillips, violins; Steven Tenenbom, viola; Timothy Eddy, cello

Amy Beach sang on pitch at the age of one, formed original melodies by age 4, and at 18, performed as a piano soloist with the Boston Symphony. Critics of her day hailed her 1907 Piano Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 67 as an important addition to the repertoire, perhaps for the lush, distinctive qualities that Festival artistic director Marc Neikrug told Kerry Frumkin he still hears within it.

George Gershwin (1898-1937) / arr. Earl Wild (1915-2010)

“Somebody Loves Me” & “I Got Rhythm”

Kirill Gerstein, piano

Marc and Kerry discuss Earl Wild’s knack for capturing the very essence of what made George Gershwin’s songs unique is on full display in these transcriptions. And, Marc adds, Kirill’s dual citizenship as a jazz pianist and classical virtuoso gives him a particular ability to play these in a very exciting way.

Here’s a little Gershwin as arranged by the great pianist, Earl Wild. Kirill Gerstein has made a name for himself as a wonderful interpreter of Gershwin’s music, as well as for being the recipient in 2010 of both the Gilmore Artist Award and an Avery Fisher Career Grant!

Oliver Knussen and Ernst von Dohnányi

Louise Frank — Thu, 30 May 2013 01:00:35 +0000

Oliver Knussen (b. 1952)

Requiem: Songs for Sue, Op. 33 (2006)

Tony Arnold, soprano; Jeffrey Milarsky, conductor; Bart Feller, flute; Tara Helen O’Connor, alto flute; Chen Halevi & Todd Levy, clarinets; Stephen Ahearn, bass clarinet; Julie Landsman & Julia Pilant, horns; Andrew Russo, piano & celeste; Lynn Gorman DeVelder, harp; David Tolen, percussion; L. P. How & John Largess, violas; Anssi Karttunen & Felix Fan, cellos; Marji Danilow, bass

These songs grew from the inclusion of a fragment from Rilke’s “Requiem for a Friend” (chosen by Alexander Goehr) in a memorial booklet for Sue Knussen. These extraordinary lines gradually acquired both music and other texts in my mind over the next few years, and Requiem– Songs for Sue is the outcome (though perhaps there will be more one day). The other words are from Emily Dickinson (an assemblage of lines and verses from several poems), Antonio Machado, and W.H. Auden (a special favourite of Sue’s and mine). I hope the music allows them still to speak for themselves, although on occasion I have taken phrases quite far from their original sense. I wanted the sound to be predominantly autumnal in tone, and the instrumentation was chosen to that end: flute, alto flute, two clarinets with bass clarinet, and pairs of horns, violas and ‘cellos plus double bass, marimba with tam-tam, keyboards and harp. This Requiem, which plays continuously for a little less than a quarter of an hour, was written for Claire Booth to sing, and commissioned for MusicNOW, the new music chamber series of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with whom I conducted the first performance in April 2006.

- Oliver Knussen

Marc Neikrug’s compositions have been commissioned and performed by major festivals, orchestras and opera houses worldwide. He is also active as a pianist and conductor, and since 1998 has been artistic director of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Here is an excerpt from his conversation with Kerry Frumkin about Requiem: Songs for Sue for Soprano and Chamber Ensemble, Oliver Knussen’s 2005 musical tribute to Knussen’s late wife.

Flutist Tara Helen O’Connor has played Songs For Sue before, with Oliver Knussen conducting, and she told Kerry that the skillful way he matches fragments of poetry with orchestration really inspires her performance.

Clarinetist Todd Levy finds that the orchestration of the text, with pairings of flutes, clarinets and strings, creates a very intimate effect.

An amalgam from poems of Emily Dickenson opens the work, followed by lines from Antonio Machado’s ‘Los Ojos’, WH Auden’s ‘If I could tell you I would let you know’, and, finally, Rilke’s ‘Requiem for a Friend’.

Ernst von Dohnányi (1877-1960)

Piano Quintet No. 1 in C Minor, op. 1 (1895)

Jon Kimura Parker, piano; William Preucil, violin; Jennifer Frautschi, violin; Aloysia Friedmann, viola; Gary Hoffman, cello

Marc and Kerry discuss Dohnányi’s 1895 Piano Quintet No. 1 in C Minor, op. 1. The piece evokes comparisons to Brahms and yet it clearly, they say, it heralds the arrival of an emerging composer with a singular style and voice.

Johann Sebastian Bach and Béla Bartók

Louise Frank — Thu, 23 May 2013 01:00:30 +0000

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Piano Concerto No. 7 in G Minor, BWV 1058

Inon Barnatan, piano; Jennifer Gilbert & Harvey de Souza, violins; Hsin-Yun Huang, viola; Joseph Johnson, cello; Marji Danilow, bass

Pianist Inon Barnatan talks about Bach’s keyboard concerti.

Inon says that Bach helped to advance the overall concerto form by giving the main instrument more of a leading role.

The eight keyboard concerti that Bach composed in the 1730′s for the Leipzig Collegium Musicum don’t provide a lot of direction or annotation. As Marc Neikrug explains, to this day, Bach’s music remains wide open to interpretation.

Béla Bartók (1881 – 1945)

Violin Sonata No. 1 in C-sharp Minor, Sz. 75 (1921)

Jennifer Frautschi, violin; Jon Kimura Parker, piano

Bartók pushes both instruments to extremes in the Violin Sonata No. 1 in C-Sharp Minor. Kerry and Marc discuss this huge piece and how Marc brought violinist Jennifer Frautschi and pianist Jon Kimura Parker together for this Santa Fe performance.

Marc tells Kerry about Bartók’s seemingly contradictory use of precise annotation as a means to direct musicians to play his music more freely.

Although Béla Bartók scrupulously annotated his scores with performance instructions, Marc Neikrug says that if you observe Bartok playing, “it is the most liberal, free and personal exploitation of time and rhythm that you can imagine.”

Bela Bartok and Joseph Szigeti play Beethoven Kreutzer Sonata (2/3)

Joseph Szigeti & Bela Bartok play Bartok Vn Sonata No.2 1mov, Live

Bartok violin sonata n°1 mvt 2 Oistrakh Richter

Magnus Lindberg and Franz Schubert

Louise Frank — Thu, 16 May 2013 01:00:17 +0000

Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958)

Acequia Madre (2012)

2012 commission by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival – World Premiere
Chen Halevi, clarinet; Magnus Lindberg, piano

Part of the Festival’s 40th Anniversary season included a commission from Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg. He composed most of this music in Santa Fe, calling the piece “Acequia Madre” after the ancient Hispanic aqueducts that still channel water throughout much of New Mexico. As Marc tells Kerry, the name can also imply the source of artistic inspiration.

Fulfilling the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s commission seemed to come at the perfect time. Having just completed my Piano Concerto No. 2 for Yefim Bronfman and the New York Philharmonic, my mind was filled with the sounds of the piano. Moreover, since I’d be performing my Clarinet Trio with clarinetist Chen Halevi (and cellist Anssi Karttunen), it seemed like the perfect opportunity to carry out a dream I had had since I completed my Clarinet Concerto (a work he has performed many times): a duo for clarinet and piano for the two of us to perform.

My new demonstrates an approach that’s somewhat new to my recent style of musical expression: structuring a work with the focus on its melodic aspects. You might call it “growing up” in my development as a composer. I drew inspiration from other creative artists through one of my “rituals”: I surrounded myself with the scores of composers who, for one reason or another, were on my mind at the time, like Iannis Xenakis — whose visionary, graphical approach to music and textural freedom I admire and feel drawn to — Alban Berg’s Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, and Contrasts for violin, clarinet, and piano by Béla Bartók, a composer to whom I have felt close lately, plus Schubert’s haunting, final String Quartet No. 15, which is on the same program with my work.

Chen is a stunning virtuoso with an immense passion for music… full of vitality and energy. These qualities will stand him in good stead in this work, which, by reason of its brevity, is also more intense and focused. As for me, while I think of myself as a composer first, for reasons of balance I enjoy having a handful of opportunities to perform as a pianist every year. It feeds my creativity and reminds me how music works, not just on paper, but in practice. And so, of course, I wanted to include a few “circus tricks” that would be challenging for us to play and enjoyable for the audience to hear. Conquering technical difficulties is something I find particularly beautiful about playing acoustic instruments. Fully aware that today’s electronics can triumph over a composer’s most demanding technical challenges, I love the idea of performers encountering their instruments with virtuosity… doing something that seems to defy physical boundaries. It’s what keeps us going.

- Magnus Lindberg

Acequia Madre was commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

Acequias – a source of water, a source of life.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Piano Quintet in A Major, D. 667,“Trout” (1819)

Jon Kimura Parker, piano; William Preucil, violin; Aloysia Friedmann, viola; Gary Hoffman, cello; Marji Danilow, bass

The key to good programming, says Marc Neikrug, is helping an audience grow and expand their expectations to where they can accommodate a great variety of music, including commissions, and also the “Trout Quintet.”

Marc Neikrug’s compositions have been commissioned and performed by major festivals, orchestras and opera houses worldwide. He is also active as a pianist and conductor, and since 1998 has been artistic director of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Here’s what he had to say about being a composer and programming a festival. In short, commissioning new works is vitally important.

Marc Neikrug’s latest CD release is HEALING CEREMONY, a vocal work for mezzo-soprano, baritone and symphony orchestra he wrote in 2010 on a commission for the grand opening of the University of New Mexico Cancer Center. “There are a lot of people around the world who are now coming to the conclusion that music has a great effect on the psyche and the body,” Neikrug said. HEALING CEREMONY combines indigenous rituals and the beauty of music to induce a state of tranquility and equilibrium, creating receptiveness to healing.

Franz Joseph Haydn and Arnold Schoenberg

Louise Frank — Thu, 09 May 2013 01:00:54 +0000

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

String Quartet No. 27 in D Major, Op. 20, No. 4, Hob. III:34 (1772)

Tokyo String Quartet: Martin Beaver & Kikuei Ikeda, violins; Kazuhide Isomura, viola; Clive Greensmith, cello

Marc Neikrug and Kerry Frumkin say these early, opus 20 quartets already exhibit the virtuosity, elegance, and more that earned Haydn lasting praise as the “father of the string quartet.” And, they agree, the Tokyo String Quartet plays this music beautifully.

Tokyo Quartet
When 2nd violinist Kikuei Ikeda and violist Kazuhide Isomura recently announced their decision to retire, 1st violinist Martin Beaver and cellist Clive Greensmith had no shortage of fine applicants auditioning for those positions. After a great deal of thought, however, the members decided that the Tokyo String Quartet’s extraordinary 44-year history will officially come to an end in June of 2013.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

Chamber Symphony No. 2 in E-flat Minor, Op. 38 (1908; 1939)

Alan Gilbert, conductor; Bart Feller, flute; Tara Helen O’Connor, flute/piccolo; Liang Wang, oboe; Kyle Mustain, oboe/English horn; Anthony McGill & Michael Rusinek, clarinets; Nancy Goeres & Theodore Soluri, bassoons; Philip Myers & Julie Landsman, horns; Charley Lea & David Dash, trumpets; Jennifer Gilbert, Daniel Phillips, Todd Phillips & Harvey de Souza, 1st violins; Kathleen Brauer, L. P. How, Ida Kavafian & Benny Kim, 2nd violins; Lily Francis, Hsin-Yun Huang & Steven Tenenbom, violas; Timothy Eddy, Eric Kim & Peter Wiley, cellos; Marji Danilow, bass

Alan Gilbert conducts a stellar ensemble of Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival musicians in the Chamber Symphony No. 2 in E-flat Minor, Op. 38 by Arnold Schoenberg.

“For a month I have been working on the 2nd chamber symphony. I spend most of the time trying to find out “What was the author getting at here?” Indeed, my style had greatly deepened, and I find it hard to reconcile what I then rightly wrote, trusting my sense of form and not thinking too much, with my current extensive demands in respect of ‘visible’ logic. Today that is one of the major difficulties, for it also affects the material.”
- Arnold Schoenberg

We asked some Festival musicians what they would say to audiences who feel a bit of trepidation when it comes to the music of Arnold Schoenberg. Here are some tips from clarinetist Michael Rusinek, violist Hsin Yun Huang, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, and violinist Ida Kavafian.

Schoenberg’s Second Chamber Symphony rarely gets performed, and many of the musicians in the Festival’s chamber orchestra had never played it before. In this clip, Michael Rusinek tells Kerry his impressions of the work.

Hsin Yun Huang tells Kerry that Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 2 in E-flat Minor sounds like Mahler. And she confesses, “I’m incredibly in love with it.”

Schoenberg started writing his second chamber symphony in 1908 but ended up putting it aside until 1939 when his friend, the conductor Fritz Stiedry, encouraged him to take another look. Kerry and Marc comment on Schoenberg’s experience of returning to an older work after his technique had so radically changed.

Ludwig van Beethoven and Fritz Kreisler

Louise Frank — Thu, 02 May 2013 01:00:48 +0000

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

String Trio in C Minor, Op. 9, No. 3 (1797-98)

Ida Kavafian, violin; Steven Tenenbom, viola; Peter Wiley, cello

Beethoven was deeply conscious of the great composers who came before him, and for a long time he felt reticent about walking in the footprints of Mozart and Haydn by writing a string quartet. Marc and Kerry ponder how this trio feels as if Beethoven is practicing for the real thing, as if he’s writing a quartet for just three instruments by using double stops to create that fourth voice.

Beethoven’s piano trios are “fiendishly difficult to play” says Marc. In this clip he tells Kerry that this ensemble is more than up to the challenge.

Hallo Beethoven!

Here’s a website where they really have fun with facts about Beethoven.

Ida and Steve are married and live in Connecticut where they breed, raise and show champion Vizsla purebred dogs.

Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962)

String Quartet in A Minor (1921)

Arnold Steinhardt & Ida Kavafian, violins; Steve Tenenbom, viola; Peter Wiley, cello

Violinists Arnold Steinhardt and Ida Kavafian, violist Steven Tenenbom, and cellist Peter Wiley performed Fritz Kreisler’s String Quartet in A Minor at the St. Francis Auditorium. (Photo: InSightFoto Inc.)

What do pineapples have to do with Fritz Kreisler’s A Minor String Quartet? Violinist Ida Kavafian shares a behind-the-scenes tale of rehearsing that piece with her husband, violist Steven Tenenbom; their friend and collaborator, cellist Peter Wiley; and Peter’s colleague from the Guarneri String Quartet, the great violinist, Arnold Steinhardt.

The story goes that Kreisler composed this quartet so he could play it privately with a group of friends that included Eugene Ysaye, Jacques Thibaud and Pablo Casals. In this interview excerpt, Ida tells Kerry about the joy and virtuosity she finds in Kreisler’s music.

Arnold Steinhardt loves this piece but in the 45 years he was a member of the Guarneri Quartet, he never got to play it with them. That story came out in High Fidelity, the 1988 documentary about the Guarneris, as Arnold describes here.

Arnold Steinhardt wrote about Kreisler’s quartet on his wonderful blog called “In the Key of Strawberry”.

Ferruccio Busoni, Leonard Bernstein, and Johannes Brahms

Louise Frank — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:00:37 +0000

Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924)

Elegy (1920)

David Shifrin, clarinet; Anne-Marie McDermott, piano

Although these days Ferruccio Busoni tends to be better known for his Bach transcriptions, he was one of the great pianist/composers of the late 19th and dawning 20th centuries. This piece is dedicated to the Swiss clarinetist Edmondo Allegra. As Kerry Frumkin and Marc Neikrug discuss, this simple, effective music is kind of an unusual piece for Busoni.

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

Clarinet Sonata (1942)

David Shifrin, clarinet; Anne-Marie McDermott, piano

As Marc tells Kerry, this first piece of Leonard Bernstein provides an insight of what’s to come for the young composer.

Marc Neikrug is a great admirer of Leonard Bernstein’s.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Horn Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 40 (1865)

Philip Myers, horn; Lily Francis, violin; Inon Barnatan, piano

Brahms composed the Horn Trio in E-Flat Major not long after his mother died. This piece has to do with mourning, but as Marc tells Kerry it is filled with sounds that bring comfort to the living. The horn trio is not so much elegiac as it is reflective, commemorative and gentle.

Kerry and Marc talk about the way Brahms used the horn in this trio. Brahms said that the opening theme came to him during a walk along “wooded heights among fir trees.”

Pianist Inon Barnatan loves the variety of performance opportunities he has here in Santa Fe, and says that performing in a concerto with orchestra, in a solo recital, or as a member of a chamber ensemble helps inform and improve his playing across the board. The key, he says, is listening to the other players.

Ludwig van Beethoven and Arnold Schoenberg

Louise Frank — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 01:00:10 +0000

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Piano Trio in C Minor, Op. 1, No. 3 (1795)

Benny Kim, violin; Lynn Harrell, cello; Jeremy Denk, piano

The key of C Minor provided Beethoven with a very specific sound world. Lynn Harrell muses on that key and what it meant to other composers as well.

When Beethoven composed his Piano Trio, Op. 1, No. 3 in the key of C Minor, his teacher, Haydn, tried to dissuade him from publishing it, perhaps because this new music was aggressive, emotional and dark… all of the things that Haydn’s wasn’t! Lynn Harrell says that maybe Haydn felt all that drama as being alien to his aesthetic, not realizing it was the very essence of what differentiated his music from that of the younger composer.

Festival artistic director Marc Neikrug explains to program host Kerry Frumkin that “In the case of Beethoven, virtually every key had a certain effect on his psyche … and C Minor elicited the most profound and dramatic dark music from him.”

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

Chamber Symphony No. 1 in E Major, Op. 9 (1906)

Alan Gilbert, conductor; Tara Helen O’Connor, flute; Liang Wang, oboe; Kyle Mustain, English horn; Todd Levy & Michael Rusinek, clarinets; Stephen Ahearn, bass clarinet; Nancy Goeres, bassoon; Lewis Kirk, contrabassoon; Philip Myers & Julie Landsman, horn s; Jennifer Gilbert & Harvey de Souza, violins; Hsin-Yun Huang, viola; Eric Kim, cello; Marji Danilow, bass

Here’s an excerpt from Kerry Frumkin and Marc Neikrug’s conversation about Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 and the lingering hesitation many audiences experience at the mention of his name. All 12-tone music is, Marc observes, “is a methodology that Schoenberg developed later in his life for rotating the notes that we have, which happen to be 12.” This piece may explore an expanded kind of tonality and yet it “derives from the tradition of German Romantic music, from Brahms and Beethoven, to Mahler and on to Schoenberg.”

When Marc Neikrug planned the Festival’s 40th anniversary season he invited New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert to be the artist in residence, and to conduct both Chamber Symphonies of Arnold Schoenberg. This turned out to be a big treat for all the musicians involved, not only for the chance to perform repertoire they would never play otherwise, but for the intimate rehearsal process with Alan Gilbert.

Johann Sebastian Bach and Sir Edward William Elgar

Louise Frank — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 01:00:16 +0000

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Concerto for Concerto for Violin & Oboe in C Minor, BWV 1060 (c. 1736)

William Preucil, violin & Robert Ingliss, oboe; Jennifer Frautschi & L. P. How, violins; Aloysia Friedmann, viola; Joseph Johnson, cello; Marji Danilow, bass; Kathleen McIntosh, harpsichord

If not for musical scholarship we might have no idea how Bach’s Concerto for Violin & Oboe in C Minor, BWV 1060 sounded originally. The idea is that Bach, interested in exploring the musical common ground between two very different sonorities, first wrote this concerto for solo violin and oboe, with string orchestra and continuo. The only surviving score, however, is of Bach’s own arrangement as a concerto for two harpsichords. Musicologists such as William Rust and Woldemar Voigt “gave it back” to the violin and oboe. It all makes Marc Neikrug, the Festival’s artistic director, wonder why a composer as prolific as Bach would mine his own earlier works for new ideas. Here’s an excerpt from his conversation with host Kerry Frumkin.

The music itself is so fundamentally well-constructed and beautiful and profound, that you can hear it in any number of ways and get all of that from whoever is playing. I think that’s why there are so many jazz Bach players, because it’s simply in and of itself, beautiful music.
- Marc Neikrug

“Django” Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, Eddie South – Concerto for 2 Violins, Strings and Continuo in D Minor, BWV 1043, 1st mvt., swing-style.

Sir Edward William Elgar (1857-1934)

Piano Quintet in A Minor, Op. 84 (1918-19)

Jeremy Denk, piano; Tokyo String Quartet: Martin Beaver & Kikuei Ikeda, violins; Kazuhide Isomura, viola; Clive Greensmith, cello

The first time Marc Neikrug heard the Elgar Quintet he was in his early twenties, and spending a day in New York with Daniel Barenboim. Here he tells Kerry Frumkin the story, and how he this music cast its spell over him. “Once you’ve heard it,” he says, “you really don’t even forget it because it has so many incredibly touching and memorable moments.”

The Elgar piano quintet is one of those gorgeous, memorable pieces one encounters at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, especially when the performance comes about because of players like pianist Jeremy Denk and the Tokyo String Quartet. In this interview excerpt, Marc Neikrug and Kerry Frumkin talk about the mood of the piece, and how Elgar conveys such a strong sense of time and place through his music.

Elgar – Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84 (1918) with score

An Excuse to Use the Word Flabbergasted

Jeremy Denk’s excellent blog, http://jeremydenk.net/blog is where, with his characteristic intelligence and humor, he chronicles many aspects of his life in music. He has a lot of fans, it turns out, including the Library of Congress.

The Tokyo String Quartet

Officially formed in 1969 at the Juilliard School of Music, the Tokyo Quartet traces its origins to the Toho School of Music in Tokyo, where the founding members were profoundly influenced by Professor Hideo Saito. Instilled with a deep commitment to chamber music, the original members of what would become the Tokyo String Quartet eventually came to America for further study with Robert Mann, Raphael Hillyer and Claus Adam. Soon after its formation, the quartet won First Prize at the Coleman Competition, the Munich Competition and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. An exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon firmly established it as one of the world’s leading quartets.

Antonio Vivaldi and Franz Schubert

Louise Frank — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 01:00:41 +0000

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

Concerto for Cello, Strings & Continuo in E minor (arr. By Paul Bazelaire) (orig. pub. 1740)

Lynn Harrell, solo cello; Benny Kim & Kathleen Brauer, violins; L. P. How, viola; Joseph Johnson, cello; Kristen Bruya, bass; Kathleen McIntosh, harpsichord

Cellist Lynn Harrell has long been an important member of the musical community in Santa Fe.

This Vivaldi E Minor Cello Concerto started life as a sonata, becoming one of this prolific composer’s most popular works for cello with accompaniment. As artistic director Marc Neikrug notes, it might have stayed that way were it not for the intervention of Paul Bazelaire, the French cellist and composer who was a Professor of Cello at the Paris Conservatory in the first half of the 20th Century.

As you can hear in this clip, Marc clearly has a great deal of respect for Lynn Harrell.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Piano Trio in B-flat Major, D. 898

Benny Kim, violin; Lynn Harrell, cello; Jeremy Denk, piano

Kerry Frumkin and Marc Neikrug discuss the challenges Schubert faced in composing his Piano Trio in B-flat Major, D. 989. “When Schubert’s at his best, which this is,” says Marc, “there isn’t a moment when there isn’t new invention.”

Some people, Kerry notes, think this Schubert piano trio foreshadows Brahms. Marc says the two composers shared a depth of rich, romantic, lyrical expression.

Kerry asks Marc about the kind of ensemble necessary to play this piece well.