‘Behold and savour’: Kreutzer and Fratres in Santa Fe

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For fans of classical music, Saturday morning in Santa Fe means it’s Chatter time. This week’s Chatter event on 22 November at the Center for Contemporary Arts didn’t pretend to be anything special.

Unlike previous standing-room-only shows, there were no big name guests like composer and McArthur fellow Michael Aucoin or the Del Sol Quartet, nor a major production such as Mahler’s Sixth Symphony with 18 instrumentalists, nor a novelty performance of the Brandenburg Concerto for six marimbas and continuo.

No, this past weekend it was strictly fundamental, an appearance by Chatter ’house-band’ players David Felberg on violin and Judith Gordon on piano performing Beethoven’s Violin Sonata no.9 ‘Kreutzer’ and Arvo Pärt’s Fratres, and yet there was a long line out the door and a full house inside, about 200 people.

Felberg, best known for co-founding Chatter 20 years ago and managing the successful organisation since then, has matured into a virtuoso violinist, burnishing his skills and exploring a wide range of sounds by playing regularly with Chatter, which programmes twice a week for 50 weeks a year.

Playing on an 1829 Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume violin and a 2020 Christian Petersen violin, Felberg also performs with Santa Fe Pro Musica and the Santa Fe Symphony, where he is concertmaster. Felberg is an artist constantly in motion, constantly playing and consistently evolving.

Chatter conveniently provides him with a platform not just to perform but also to experiment, often radically, for example, plugging into a laptop digital delay for a performance of Joseph Kasinskas Flight of Birds, his echoing violin mimicking the sound of winging birds, and reminding this listener of the soaring improvisational style of rockstar violinist Jean Luc Ponty.

Felberg prides himself on the speed of his violin work, and the first movement of his ‘Kreutzer’ was performed spiccato with short bouncing strokes on the strings, a là Heifetz. In the Adagio towards the end of the movement, Felberg and Gordon exchanged the theme with brilliant symmetry, emerging as equals, flowing effortlessly toward the coda. The audience couldn’t help but break decorum and applaud.

Gordon’s resolute keyboard work and Felberg’s sensuous bowing sailed through the slower variations of the second movement. In the Presto finale in the third, ignited by Gordon’s opening crash of the Steinway, Felberg burst through jubilantly with a gorgeous restatement of the overall theme, Gordon blazing along with him toward the final ecstatic A major rush. 

Typically for Chatter, the second half of the programme was modern, the 1977 composition Fratres by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, who, as Felberg noted in his introduction, celebrated his 90th birthday this year.

Beautiful, haunting and melancholy are just a few words to describe this popular piece. Most often played by a string orchestra and percussion, the piano violin duet version played by Felberg and Gordon underscored the simplicity and polyphonic perfection of the work. Felberg absolutely shredded the solo chordal prelude, Gordon following with the harmonic backbone in a measured and lucid style.

Felberg then continued to crush the repeated chordal motif, with pizzicato transitions, while Gordon delivered minimalist patterning in support, as the melodic structure crescendo-ed and then ebbed into stillness.

There’s a lot to unpack in this short ten-minute piece, needless to say, Felberg’s masterful playing accompanied by Gordon’s soulful elegance made it the sort of experience one would prefer to simply behold and savour rather than deconstruct.