Performing this Week

The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival

Summer 2011 — Program 3

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."

This week's program begins with something new and ends with something familiar. The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival was proud to host the American premiere of Australian composer Brett Dean's Epitaphs for String Quintet. The Classical Review has since hailed the composition as a "superb and welcome modern addition to the string quintet repertoire." Dean says the work offered him the opportunity to pay homage to several friends and colleagues who passed away in 2008 and 2009.

The somber, contemplative nature of Dean's quintet is balanced by Mozart's whimsically wonderful Serenade in E-flat Major. The 26-year-old Mozart wrote his father Leopold a letter describing why he composed this lovely work for winds: "the chief reason why I composed it was in order to let Herr von Strack hear something of mine." Johann Kilian Strack was the valet and musical confidant to the Emperor, and therefore in the enviable and powerful position to help Mozart obtain a commission. Unfortunately, Herr von Strack never did make this important connection for Mozart. In a way, however, we still owe von Strack some kind of thanks for inspiring the creation of this timeless and much-loved piece of music.

Many thanks to Dan Goldberg and Joshua Sauvageau for their help with the blog this week!

And thanks to you for stopping by,

Louise Frank
Series Producer

PS - These nationally syndicated radio concerts of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival can be heard in the Chicago area Saturdays at 5pm, from April through June 2011, on 98.7 WFMT. You can also listen anywhere there's Internet. WFMT provides free, live streaming at wfmt.com and via a free, downloadable app for your iPhone.