Pair will perform ‘Platero y Yo’ on Sunday
Jonathan Richards, one of the performers in the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s opening concert on July 20, doesn’t know how to read music. As the speaker in Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s piece “Platero y Yo,” it won’t affect his ability to do the job.
“The text fits with the guitar music in a vaguely musical way,” the Santa Fe actor and writer said. “It doesn’t follow the music note by note, but keeps pace with the mood of the piece.”
Richards and guitarist Simon Wynbergwill present “Platero y Yo,” the story of a man and his donkey based on text by Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jiménez, on July 20 and 21 in St. Francis Auditorium as part of a concert that also includes Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major, BWV 1047” and Rachmaninov’s “Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19.” Richards says the piece has the sentimental mood of a hot Mexican afternoon. “It’s reflective, lowkeyed, sweet and charming,” he added.
The 36th season of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival is a celebration of the diversity found in chamber music repertoire. Highlights of the summer season include the presentation of a new quintet by the 2008 Grammy award-winning composer Joan Tower,the second part of the Beethoven Quartet cycle played by the Orion String Quartet and world premieres presented by the Real Quiettrio. Santa Fe Opera singers Laurent Naouri and Monica Groop are among a star-studded lineup of musicians that also features violinist Pinchas Zukerman, pianist Jon Nakamatsu) and flutist Tara Helen O’Connor.
Next week, the rarelyheard “Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 30” by Sergei Taneyev will be played during the KHFM-Performance Live Albuquerque concert at that city’s KiMo Theatre on July 23 and at St. Francis Auditorium on July 24. Taneyev was a pupil of Tchaikovsky who became a composer, pianist and teacher of composition. He was the soloist in the Moscow premiere of Tchaikovsky’s “First Piano Concerto” and the soloist in the Russian premiere of Tchaikovsky’s “Second Piano Concerto.”
“This piano quintet is the longest one in the piano quintet repertoire,” said violinist Cho-Liang Lin, who will perform the work with violinist Helen Nightengale, violist Choong-Jin Chang, cellist Lynn Harrell and pianist Yuja Wang. “It’s technically demanding for all players, which may be a reason that it’s not played that often. I see this work as mammoth, huge. It’s very rich and lush. If you like romantic music, you’ll like this work.”
Although Taneyev and Tchaikovsky had a close association for many years, Lin says the piano quintet sounds more like Wagner than Tchaikovsky. “Taneyev couldn’t escape the spell of Wagner,” he said. “Wagner was his hero.”
The coming week of concerts will also feature a noon piano recital by Wang on July 22 and a noon concert of chamber works by Mozart, Brahms, Britten and Castelnuovo-Tedesco on July 24. Both performances will take place in St. Francis Auditorium.
If You Go
WHAT: Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival
WHEN: Sunday-Aug. 15
WHERE: St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe; KiMo Theatre in Albuquerque
TICKETS: $33-$83; noon concerts $15
CONTACT: (505) 988-1234 or (505) 982-1890, Ext. 102
