Santa Fe Symphony serves up string quintet
Five Santa Fe Symphony principal string players will perform the music of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Arvo Pärt at St. Francis Auditorium next Sunday.
With no full symphony performances slated for this month, conductor Guillermo Figueroa decided to fill the musical gap with a group that includes concertmaster and violinist David Felberg, violinist Nicolle Maniaci, violist Kim Fredenburgh and cellist Dana Winograd with himself on a second viola.
The program will open with Mozart’s Quintet for Strings in C Major, K. 515, considered one of his greatest chamber music masterpieces. The composer added an extra voice to the traditional string quartet with two violas.
“He loved the viola,” Figueroa said. “He played the viola a lot. It gives a more rich, sonorous sound for counterpoint.”
Mozart wrote four major works for viola quintet during this period, establishing the genre for posterity.
Estonian composer Arvo Pärt wrote the initial version of his Summa for String Quintet for four vocalists in 1978. Twelve years later he arranged the piece for string orchestra, imparting a lively Baroque-like spirit.
“He’s a very popular composer at this moment,” Figueroa said, “and deservedly so. His music in general is characterized by a beautiful, contemplative slow sonority. I think people are drawn to that contemplative quality.”
The concert will close with Mendelssohn’s String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat Major, op. 87. The composer lifted the concept from Mozart, Figueroa said.
The quintet dates from the last years of Mendelssohn’s composing career. By this point he had written nearly all of his chamber music. He would be dead within two years. This final quintet remained unpublished because he believed it was somehow unfinished.