The Fauré Quartett from Germany makes its sixth Napa appearance, and Kelley O’Connor is with us for a fourth straight season. Wagner wrote the Wesendonck Lieder while Tristan was taking shape — two of the songs are outright studies for the opera — and O’Connor’s dark, glowing mezzo is exactly the voice for them. Then pianist Dirk Mommertz goes it alone: the other three get the night off while he scales Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (solo piano)
The Takács have been coming to Napa for forty years and remain at the unquestioned top of the heap. They open with Mendelssohn’s stormy F minor quartet, his last major work, written in grief after the death of his beloved sister Fanny, and close with Schubert’s Death and the Maiden — the most dramatic of all quartets. Between them, Gabriela Lena Frank’s Quijotadas, a vivid portrait of Don Quixote.
Mendelssohn: String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80
Gabriela Lena Frank: Quijotadas
Schubert: String Quartet in D minor, D. 810 (Death and the Maiden)
Daniel Hope, Yehudi Menuhin’s protégé, returns at last — he played here in 2011 — and is now nearly a neighbor as music director of San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra. His longtime duo partner Simon Crawford-Phillips has been here twice before with the violist Lawrence Power. Charming Dvořák — the Sonatina written in New York for his children — and Copland’s jazz-tinged Nocturne lead to the Franck Sonata, the most beloved sonata in the violin repertory.
Cellist Adrian Brendel and pianist Dénes Várjon make their Napa debuts. Yes, that Brendel — his father Alfred gave us an unforgettable recital in 2007. Two Beethoven sonatas frame the evening: the dark early G minor and the great A major, Op. 69, the cornerstone of the cello repertory. In between, a Hungarian interlude tailor-made for Várjon, one of Hungary’s finest chamber musicians: Dohnányi’s youthful sonata and two rare late Liszt pieces.
Garrick Ohlsson has played here more times than anyone — this is, by our count, his twenty-sixth Napa appearance. He brings the premiere of Ballade, which we commissioned for him from the Syrian-American composer Kareem Roustom, set among Shostakovich’s Bach-haunted Prelude and Fugue, Brahms’s mighty Handel Variations, and — of course — Chopin. Ohlsson remains the only American ever to win the Chopin Competition.
Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue in E minor, Op. 87, No. 4
Brahms: Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, Op. 24
The Cuarteto Casals from Barcelona returns for a third visit bringing the summit of all chamber music: Schubert’s C major Cello Quintet, finished weeks before his death. The brilliant young Colombian cellist Santiago Cañón-Valencia makes his Napa debut as the essential fifth voice. First, Haydn’s Op. 20, No. 5, from the set where the string quartet grew up, and Shostakovich’s Fourth — written in 1949 and kept in the drawer until Stalin was safely dead.
The Czech lands grow great string quartets like mushrooms, and the Pavel Haas is the one of their generation that exceeds all. This is their seventh visit. Founder and first violinist Veronika Jarůšková leads with grace and ferocity in an all-Slavic program: their countryman Schulhoff’s ironic, jazzy Five Pieces, the Martinů Second — music that deserves better ambassadors, and has them here — and the irresistible Tchaikovsky Third.
An American evening. The Calder Quartet, here for a third time, is joined by the magnificent baritone Dashon Burton, a founding member of the Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth, in his Napa debut. At the center is the premiere of a new work we co-commissioned from Christopher Cerrone, which travels straight from Napa to San Francisco Performances. Around it runs a spiritual through-line — Shaker hymns and gospel settings by Caroline Shaw and Thomas Oboe Lee, Jessie Montgomery, Barber’s Dover Beach, and Tavener’s Prayer of the Heart, written for Björk, no less — with Adès’s Arcadiana for the quartet alone.
Christopher Cerrone: new work CMNV Co-Commission · Premiere
Marc-André Hamelin is that rarest thing, a true composer-pianist in the grand line of Rachmaninov and Busoni. We commissioned from him a set of 24 Preludes, and he gives the world premiere here, surrounded by fellow pianist-composers: Enescu’s haunting Carillon nocturne, the second book of Debussy’s Images, and Earl Wild’s outrageous virtuoso études on Gershwin songs. Hamelin dazzled us in 2023; he returns with something no one else can give.
Hamelin: 24 PreludesCMNV Commission · World Premiere
Enescu: Carillon nocturne, Op. 18, No. 7
Debussy: Images, Book II
Earl Wild: Seven Virtuoso Études on Gershwin Songs
Kirill Gerstein closes the season with a program of summits: Beethoven’s farewell to the sonata, Op. 111, and the Liszt Sonata, the grandest single span in the Romantic piano literature, with Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses and Liszt’s transcription of the Liebestod lighting the way. Gerstein, who premiered the Francisco Coll piece we commissioned for him here in 2024, has become one of the defining pianists of his generation — he even conducts the Vienna Philharmonic from the keyboard. This is his fifth Napa visit.