THE BIG 5-0
This celebratory season of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival includes six world premieres and the biggest work in the event’s history
F “The season includes a special recital pairing mezzo-soprano Susan Graham with baritone Thomas Hampson, and the largest work in its history, the 44-player From the Canyon to the Stars composed by Olivier Messiaen.
ireworks, nostalgia, and celebration” were the operative words for Marc Neikrug, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s artistic director, in programming the group’s 50th season, which runs from Sunday, July 16, to August 21. One of Neikrug’s techniques in crafting the season was hoarding some repertory for the anniversary. “I held on to some spectacular things,” he says, “like Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet and a few othe≠r items knowing they would be part of our 50th.” The season also includes several commissioned premieres and some large-scale concerts.
Neikrug and festival Artistic Administrator Valerie Guy started planning 2023 two years ago, about six months earlier than usual, to ensure that they could get as much of the music and as many of the performers they hoped would be part of the celebration. And knowing it would be an anniversary year, they were able to increase the artistic budget by about 30% compared to a typical season.
Two high-profile new initiatives mark the festival’s quinquagenary season. A two-day gala launches on Friday, July 14, with an all-chopin recital by celebrated pianist Garrick Ohlsson at St. Francis Auditorium, followed the next evening by the Fête Française, a celebration of Gallic wine, food, and entertainment at Bishop’s Lodge. (No word on whether the festival has imported any mimes wearing striped shirts or rude taxi drivers to provide artistic verisimilitude.) At press time the fête was sold out, but a few tickets remained for the concert.
Two big names from the vocal world, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and baritone Thomas Hampson, team up for a 50th anniversary recital at the Lensic
Performing Arts Center on August 17. Graham has notched several appearances with the chamber music festival, starting in 2003 as an emergency replacement for an artist who had to cancel on a gala appearance; Hampson is making his festival debut with the recital.
Their program includes Maurice Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée (a Hampson specialty) and three songs from Hector Berlioz’ Les Nuits d’été (likewise for Graham), as well Mozart opera arias and duets, and show tunes from The Merry Widow, Lady Be Good, Carousel, and West Side Story.
Six commissioned works will receive their premieres here this summer. Two are by alums of the festival’s development program for young composers — Ryan Chase’s Piano Quintet, which is on a July 20 program with Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello, and a piano trio by Montana-born Christopher Stark, who describes his music as “deeply rooted in the American West,” paired with César Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano on August 3.
Angela Elizabeth Slater and Ryan Lindveit are the participants in this year’s Young Composers String Quartet Project. Their new works will be
played by the Flux Quartet on an August 4 program that also includes the U.S. premiere of Ungrievable Lives by Charlotte Bray. “She’s an English composer living in Berlin who has been sending me stuff for 10 years,” Neikrug says. “I’ve thought about commissioning her several times and decided this was the year for something from her.”
The festival’s 50th season also marks Neikrug’s 25th year as artistic director; the world premiere of his Oboe Quartet in 10 Parts is on an August 9 program alongside another world premiere — Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg’s Quintet for Piano and Winds — and Mozart’s sublime String Quintet in G Minor.
Not to take anything away from the other worthy programs, but the knock-out event of the season is almost sure to be Olivier Messiaen’s rarely performed From the Canyons to the Stars on August 13.
It was commissioned in 1971 by Alice Tully for the American bicentennial, but instead of looking to some of the more obvious historical choices from the 13 colonies, Messiaen looked to the Southwest. He had become entranced by photos of Bryce Canyon and visited Utah and Arizona in 1972 for onsite inspiration.
A deeply religious Roman Catholic as well as a sound-color synesthete (someone who perceives with multiple senses simultaneously), Messiaen responded to the commission with a 100-minute tone poem that celebrated the desert’s landscape and life forms simultaneously with his faith.
“It is above all a religious work, a work of praise and contemplation,” he wrote. “It is also a geological and astronomical work. The soundcolors include all the hues of the rainbow and revolve around the blue of the Stellar’s Jay and the red of Bryce Canyon.”
Messiaen’s extraordinary composition, conducted here by Alan Gilbert, is scored for an orchestra of 40 and four soloists, an allstar lineup of Berlin Philharmonic Principal Horn Stefan Dohr, pianist Kirill Gerstein, New York Philharmonic Associate Principal Percussionist Daniel Druckman, and Metropolitan Opera Principal Percussionist Gregory Zuber. (Hint from the writer: Buy tickets now.)
“I wanted certain people to be part of the season,” Neikrug says in discussing the nostalgia component, “like violinist Danny Phillips. This will be his 50th season or very close to it.” Festival history is also represented in the return of Heiichiro Ohyama, violist and former festival artistic director, for two concerts and of bassist Edgar Meyer, “The most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively un-chronicled history of his instrument,” according to The New Yorker.
Meyer is a composer as well, and his bluegrass-influenced Quintet for String Quartet and Double Bass is on the August 20 program, with works by Haydn and Brahms. He’s also part of the festival’s final concert, on August 21, joining pianist Haochen Zhang and members of the Dover Quartet for Schubert’s Piano Quintet in A Major, a.k.a. “The Trout.”
Highlights of the festival’s Saturday afternoon all-baroque concerts include Rachel Barton Pine’s solo violin recital featuring two of J.S. Bach’s violin partitas ( July 22), an all-handel program (August 5), and a trio of Bach concertos, one for violin and orchestra, one for keyboard and orchestra, and the Brandenburg No. 3 (August 12).
Franz Schubert’s first song cycle, Die Schöne Müllerin, surveyed an enormous emotional range; it will be performed here on the Wednesdays at noon vocal series by tenor Paul Appleby and pianist Laura Poe (July 19). Soprano Ana María Martínez and pianist Craig Terry offer an all-spanish program with music by Manuel de Falla, Joaquín Rodrigo, and Joaquín Turina (July 26).