Beethoven & Grainger

Week four of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s 2026-27 broadcast season holds three virtuosic showpieces from the early years of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Violinist Chad Hoopes and pianist Katia Skanavi perform Beethoven’s monumental and groundbreaking Kreutzer Sonata, which the composer described as being “almost like a concerto.” Before that, percussion virtuoso Colin Currie—hailed as “the world’s finest and most daring percussionist” by The Spectator—performs Spiel by Andy Akiho. Akiho “is writing some of the most advanced and sensational percussion music of our time,” praises Colin Currie. Currie notes that “Spiel is written for a glockenspiel. It’s a remarkable, fast-paced piece and exquisitely beautiful.” The hour begins as pianist Kirill Gerstein interprets Percy Grainger’s Paraphrase on Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers.