The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival

Welcome to the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival radio series production blog, home of program out takes, artist commentary, and other related tangents we like to call "web extras."

Week 12 of our radio concerts featured two pieces. First, Allan Vogel, Jennifer Frautschi, Ralph Kirshbaum, and Kathleen McIntosh performed the Trio Sonata in G Minor for Oboe, Violin, & Continuo by Georg Philipp Telemann. After that, Benny Kim, Helen Nightengale, Michael Tree, Lily Francis, Gary Hoffman and Lynn Harrell got together to play Tchaikovsky's travelogue for string sextet, Souvenir de Florence.

Thanks for stopping by,
Louise Frank
Series Producer

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767), hand-colored aquatint by Valentin Daniel Preisler, after a lost painting by Louis Michael Schneider, 1750. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN

Trio Sonata in G Minor for Oboe, Violin, & Continuo, TWV 42:g5 (1730)

• Allan Vogel, oboe
• Jennifer Frautschi, violin
• Ralph Kirshbaum, cello
• Kathleen McIntosh, harpsichord

Telemann came from a long line of Lutheran clergymen, but from an early age music was his passion. He learned to play violin, flute, keyboards and zither — and even wrote an opera — all before the precocious age of ten. His mother had other ideas about her son's career and sent him off to Leipzig University to study law. On the way there, however, Telemann met none other than Georg Friedrich Handel, a fateful encounter that engendered a lifelong friendship between the two men, and changed the course of young Georg Phillpp's life. While in school his musical talents won out, and after graduating third in his law school class, he went on to become one of Germany's most popular and prolific Baroque composers. Telemann composed a number of trio sonatas in varying keys, but the G Minor is the only one using the unusual combination of violin, oboe, and continuo.

In this clip, Marc and Kerry talk about Telemann’s Trio Sonata in G Minor for Oboe, Violin, & Continuo, and why this piece is such and excellent fit for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

Postage stamp issued by the Deutsche Bundespost in 1981 in honor of the 300th day of birth of Georg Philipp Telemann

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky by Nikolay Kuznetsov, 1893 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

Souvenir de Florence in D Major, Op. 70 (1892)

• Benny Kim, violin
• Helen Nightengale, violin
• Michael Tree, viola
• Lily Francis, viola
• Lynn Harrell, cello
• Gary Hoffman, cello

To regret the past, to hope in the future, and never to be satisfied with the present — this is my life.

— P. Tchaikovsky (extract from a letter)

Souvenir de Florence, Tchaikovsky's 1892 composition certainly reflects the place that inspired it. Like so many composers from intemperate climates, Tchaikovsky loved Italy and returned there often to work perhaps, as Kerry Frumkin and Marc Neikrug surmise, because he lived in a place that was nothing like it!

Kerry asked Marc about the challenges of writing for a string sextet. And the answer? It has to do with spacing.

Marc and Kerry agree that it's pretty much impossible to play this piece without having a rollicking good time.

Sketch of Tchaikovsky in 1893 (Source: Wikipedia)

Archive.org is a great Internet resource, and if you'd like to read The Life & Letters Of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky you can do so here: archive.org

Cellist Lynn Harrell learned how to play chamber music at a very early age. Here he is as a young wind player, collaborating with his family. (View larger image)

I am extremely proud to have just finished my own collaboration with Lynn Harrell. Songs My Father Taught Me is his musical memoir in which he looks back on his own career and on that of his father, bass-baritone Mack Harrell. This very special radio program is now available for broadcast. Contact us for more information.