SFCMF News:It’s a summer of several exciting firsts for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, which presents its 47th season July 14–August 19, 2019.
From a brand-new series and highly anticipated artist debuts to premieres of Festival-commissioned works, this season’s 40-plus concerts are filled with can’t-miss musical moments that reflect the dynamic programming of the Festival’s Artistic Director, the composer and pianist Marc Neikrug.
Here are just a few highlights of the Festival’s 2019 season:
- Violinist Ida Kavafian and pianist Peter Serkin perform—for the first time in the Festival’s history—the complete cycle of Beethoven’s Sonatas for Violin & Piano. The set of 10 works, presented over the course of three evenings, includes some of the most unforgettable sonatas ever written, like the radiant “Spring” and groundbreaking “Kreutzer.”
- Conductor David Zinman leads the Festival’s inaugural presentation of Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn & Strings, featuring tenor Paul Appleby and Berlin Philharmonic Principal Horn Stefan Dohr in their Festival debuts.
- The popular Music at Noon Series (which offers five concerts on both Tuesdays and Thursdays) expands to include five Wednesday concerts—three of which celebrate iconic masterpieces of the piano-vocal repertoire such as Schubert’s hauntingly beautiful song cycle Die Winterreise.
- The Festival presents four newly commissioned works, including the world premieres of three string quartets by Grammy-nominated composer Michael Gandolfi and the two participants in the Festival’s Young Composers String Quartet Project, Matthew Ricketts and Alex Stephenson, and the New Mexico premiere of a monodrama for soprano and ensemble by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer John Harbison.
- Wei Luo gives the world premiere of the solo piano piece Poems, written for her by Marc Neikrug.
- Eighteen artists make their Festival debuts, including standouts from the opera and orchestra worlds—such as Appleby, Dohr, New York City Ballet Principal Oboe Randall Wolfgang, mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn, and bass-baritone Philippe Sly—plus acclaimed up-and-coming artists like pianist Zoltán Fejérvári and violinist Paul Huang.
The Festival’s thrilling 2019 lineup also features a wide range of works—from classic to cutting-edge—performed on the Bach Plus, Music at Noon, and Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday series, plus the return of dozens of audience-favorite musicians. Additional highlights include:
- Solo piano recitals by Luo, Fejérvári, Kirill Gerstein, Gilles Vonsattel, and Haochen Zhang
- A violin recital by Soovin Kim
- Appearances by longtime Festival collaborators such as mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, pianists Inon Barnatan and Jon Kimura Parker, violist Paul Neubauer, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, clarinetist David Shifrin, and the Dover, Escher, FLUX, Miami, and Orion string quartets
Subscriptions and FlexPasses for the Festival’s 2019 season are available for purchase now, and individual tickets are also on sale. To purchase subscriptions, passes, or tickets, contact the Festival Ticket Office at 505.982.1890 or visit the office in person 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, at 208 Griffin St. in Santa Fe. Concert details, further information, and individual tickets are available at SantaFeChamberMusic.com.
