The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival

In Week 6 of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival radio series we have one baroque piece, Vivaldi's Piccolo Concerto in C Major, and two contemporary works: Piece for Pro Piano Hamburg Steinway Model D and Marimba One by Marc Neikrug the Festival's artistic director, and the String Quartet No. 5 of Béla Bartók. Our web entries this week include some artists' remarks that didn't make it into this week's program, as well as some other things I found en route to the things I was looking for.

Thanks for stopping by...
Louise

ANTONIO VIVALDI
Piccolo Concerto in C Major

Tara Helen O'Connor, piccolo; Marji Danilow, bass; Kathleen McIntosh, harpsichord; Escher String Quartet: Adam Barnett-Hart and Wu Jie, violins; Pierre Lapointe, viola; Andrew Janss, cello

In the years around 1720, Vivaldi composed his concertos RV 443 through 445 for an instrument he called the flautino, a kind of baroque cross between a recorder and a piccolo. For this performance, soloist Tara Helen O'Connor played the piccolo.

In this out-take from their conversation, Marc Neikrug and Kerry Frumkin discuss the popularity of this piece, and Vivaldi's mastery of the concerto form.

Listen in on Marc and Kerry's conversation about why the Festival presented this Vivaldi concerto on a modern piccolo instrument instead of the flautino.

Tara Helen O'Connor is soloist in this excerpt of the final moments of Vivaldi's Concerto in C Major for Piccolo, Strings and Basso Continuo, RV 443

MARC NEIKRUG
Piece for Pro Piano Hamburg Steinway Model D and Marimba One (World Premiere)

Drew Lang, Marimba; Marc Neikrug, piano

Marc Neikrug's Piece for Pro Piano Hamburg Steinway Model D and Marimba One is an example of what can happen when two different sources come together to commission a new piece of music. In this raw excerpt from their conversation, Marc tells Kerry how a birthday celebration and a supplier of great instruments inspired this world premiere. The work was commissioned for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival by Margaret Cronin in honor of her husband, Dr. Richard Cronin, and Ricard de la Rosa, owner of Pro Piano, provider of great instruments to venues nationwide.

Our broadcast this week includes Marc Neikrug and Drew Lang performing the premiere of Marc's Piece for Pro Piano Hamburg Steinway Model D and Marimba One.

"Pro Piano, The Pianist's Friend - Since 1969"

With offices in major United States cities, Pro Piano was originally a piano tuning and service firm which gradually became North America's largest independent purveyor of concert grand pianos, providing Hamburg Steinway concert grands to nearly all the major pianists of the last quarter century. Since 1969, Pro Piano has been and remains a name recognizable to artists throughout the cultural world. Pro Piano Records and the Pro Piano New York Recital Series were formed in 1993. In each case, the prevailing purpose for the undertaking was to nourish and sustain the careers of deserving pianists. Find out more at http://www.propiano.com/

Each marimba from Marimba One is hand-crafted by master artisans and individually customized...frames resonators and especially sound...to meet its owner's needs and preferences.

BÉLA BARTÓK
String Quartet No. 5

Escher String Quartet: Adam Barnett-Hart and Wu Jie, violins; Pierre Lapointe, viola; Andrew Janss, cello

The String Quartet No. 5 by Bartók was commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and is dedicated to her. It was premiered by the Kolisch Quartet in Washington, D.C. on April 8, 1935 and first published in 1936 by Universal Edition. In the following clips Marc Neikrug and Kerry Frumkin discuss the work, and Escher String Quartet cellist Andrew Janss talks about his ensemble and their connection to this piece.

Kerry and Marc discuss the String Quartet No. 5 by Bartók, including the uniqueness of this composer's sound world, and some comparisons to Beethoven.

Marc tells Kerry what it takes for an ensemble to play this piece and why he asked the Escher String Quartet to perform it.

Andrew Janss describes the genesis and set-up of the Escher String Quartet.

The Escher String Quartet has learned Bartók's 5th String Quartet as while students at the Manhattan School of Music. Here cellist Andrew Janss describes how mastering this piece helped them grow as an ensemble.