Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival

• This 13-week radio series brings your listeners such gems such as the Beethoven String Quartet No. 12 in E-flat Major, Op. 127, and the Haydn String Quartet No. 59 in G Minor, Op. 74, No. 3; the delicious Trout Quintet in A Major by Franz Schubert; and Tchaikovsky’s fond evocation, Souvenir de Florence, Op. 70.

• In his Festival debut, pianist and 2016 Artist-in-Residence, Peter Serkin, plays William Byrd’s arrangement of Pavana lachrymae by John Dowland.  Later in the season, he collaborates with the brilliant young musicians of the Dover String Quartet in a performance of Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81.

• Each year, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival helps to ensure the longevity of the art form by commissioning new works from living composers.  Festival Artistic Director Marc Neikrug said, “We are delighted to present Elizabeth Ogonek’s commissioned work, Lightenings, 12 variations for four players, in its world premiere. This is especially significant because she is a ‘graduate’ of our inaugural Young Composers String Quartet Project in 2013.” Elizabeth Ogonek is presently a Chicago Symphony Orchestra Mead Composer-in-Residence.

• And the music continues. Guillermo Figueroa, recently named the principal conductor of the Santa Fe Symphony for the 2016-17 season, leads baritone David Kravitz and an ensemble of Festival musicians in Poulenc’s lively Le bal masque. Pianist Alessio Bax and violinist Jennifer Frautschi perform Béla Bartók’s Sonata No. 2 in C Major.  Other notable works include Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes with a quartet of singers and piano accompaniment by Pei-Yao Wang and Haochen Zhang. The Johannes String and Pacifica quartets come together to play Mendelssohn’s masterful Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20.

• Additional artists making their Festival debuts in this series are pianist Juho Pohjonen; violinists Alexandra Preucil and Kyoko Takezawa; clarinetist Romie de Guise-Langlois; vocalists Sarah Shafer, Kelley O’Connor, and Ben Bliss; and the Pacifica Quartet, named “Ensemble of the Year” by Musical America in 2009.

• Some of the returning Festival “regulars” include Inon Barnatan (Artist-in-Association of the New York Philharmonic), and Shai Wosner; flutist Tara Helen O’Connor; violinist/violist Ida Kavafian; the astonishing trumpeter Caleb Hudson (a member of the renowned Canadian Brass); violinists Harvey de Souza, Jennifer Gilbert, and William Preucil; clarinetist Todd Levy; bassoon player Ted Soluri; cellists Clive Greensmith, Keith Robinson, Eric Kim, and Joseph Johnson; and the Orion String Quartet.  Festival Artistic director, pianist and composer Marc Neikrug, also returns as a performer in a work by Toro Takemitsu.

Music production for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival radio series is by Grammy award-winning recording engineer, Matthew Snyder.  The series producer is Louise Frank, whose Studs Terkel: Montage of a Life garnered the Gold World Award as well as the top honor, the Grand Award, at the 2009 New York Festivals.