July 29
Bach & Golijov

Pianist Gilles Vonsattel opens this Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival program with J. S. Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in E Major, a sextet for keyboard and strings that’s both lighthearted and full of challenging complexity. The concerto, which dates from approximately 1738, premiered at a Leipzig coffeehouse as part of a music series the composer ran there for more than a decade. We then come to 1994 and Osvaldo Golijov’s celebrated quintet for clarinet and strings, The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. Clarinetist Todd Palmer has worked with Golijov many times. Here, he joins the Verona Quartet in this epic musical journey that invokes both the divinity of prayer and the freewheeling world of klezmer. Sharing her discoveries at playing the piece for the first time, the Verona Quartet’s violist Abigail Rojansky observes, “The way that Golijov writes is so masterful, so interwoven, and so deeply, deeply characterful. Every little detail is so interesting and fun to play.”