Two new chamber music festivals launch in Sonoma County

This summer, chamber music fans in Sonoma County will enjoy an embarrassment of riches as two new festivals roll out at newly constructed halls on opposite sides of the Sonoma Mountains.

Each festival will feature top-notch musicians performing beloved works in the chamber music literature, yet each will come with its own unique sound and flavor.

From June 24 to 28, Chamberfest 2015 will explore the “Three B’s” - Bach, Beethoven and Brahms - often in the course of the same concert. Eight of the concerts will be held in the 250-seat Schroeder Hall, which opened just last August at the Green Music Center at Sonoma State University. The final concert will be a performance of all six of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos in Weill Hall.

“I’ve designed these programs to show the way Bach, in particular, influenced both of these composers, and the influence of Beethoven on Brahms,” said pianist Jeffrey Kahane, artistic director of the festival. “There is such an enormously rich repertoire, but more important, there is a wonderful way that they reflect on one another.”

From July 19 to Aug. 2, the Valley of the Moon Music Festival will present six concerts of Classical and Romantic music, from Haydn and Mozart to Schubert and Schumann, entirely on original instruments. Set over three weekends, the concerts will be held in the new 300-seat auditorium at the Hanna Boys Center, not far from downtown Sonoma.

Co-founders Eric Zivian and Tanya Tomkins are bringing period pianos to the festival, including an original 1841 piano for the Schubert and Mendelssohn works and a copy of a circa 1795 piano for the Mozart. They’ve also rounded up a raft of top-notch early musicians from around the world, including violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in San Francisco and clarinetist Eric Hoeprich, who teaches at the Paris Conservatoire and Indiana University.

“Using period instruments makes it all come to life even more,” said Tomkins, who plays cello. “It just brings out wonderful things that you can’t hear on the modern instruments.”

Back in 2002, long before Weill Hall was completed, Kahane launched a small chamber music festival at Person Theatre on the Sonoma State campus for three or four summers, in anticipation that the festival would someday become part of the Green Music Center’s programming.

This time around, he planned the festival alongside his long-time friend, Zarin Mehta, cxecutive director of the Green Music Center. As performers, Kahane invited a few top soloists, including violinists Jennifer Koh and pianist Natasha Paremski, along with the Miro Quartet. Rounding out the roster will be principal players from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony and the Santa Rosa Symphony, among others.

One of the highlights of Chamberfest 2015 will be the performance of all three of Beethoven’s “Rasumovsky” String Quartets by the Miro Quartet over the course of two concerts.

“It’s a rare and wonderful opportunity,” Kahane said.

The pianist is also excited about the all-keyboard program on June 26, which provides a dialogue between Paremski on piano and Malcolm Matthews on organ.

“One of the things that will make this festival special is the presence of the organ,” Kahane said. “In three concerts out of the eight, the organist is featured prominently ... That’s something that’s very rare.”

Brahms lovers will have many choices. The June 24 program offers the Piano Quartet in G Minor, the June 25 program ends with the Horn Trio, and the June 26 and 27 programs both feature cello sonatas by Brahms.

“I think the great thing is you could close your eyes and point to any program, and it will be wonderful,” said Kahane, who will perform in five of the concerts.

Last summer, Zivian and Tomkins performed a few concerts at the Hanna Boys Center in Sonoma, to test out the idea of holding a festival in Wine Country.

“They had just built a gorgeous new auditorium,” Zivian said. “It sounded beautiful and very clear ... and it has a terrace on the outside where people can mingle and wineries can show their wines.”

Like the famous Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, the festival offers an “apprenticeship” to college-age musicians. The founders chose a young string quartet and a pianist from a wide array of applicants.

“We’re going to play alongside them in certain concerts, and they will have their own free concert on Friday, July 31,” Tomkins said.

Highlights of the festival include a performance of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet, featuring violinist Ian Swensen and piano apprentice Yuehan Wang, on July 25. And Schubert lovers won’t want to miss the exquisite Schubert Cello Quintet on July 26, featuring both professional and apprentice players sitting side by side on the cello and violin parts.

The festival ends on Aug. 2 with Mendelssohn’s C minor Fortepiano Trio, which Zivian and Tomkins recorded with Monica Huggett, a Baroque violinist based in Europe.

“There’s a huge chorale at the end that is so triumphant,” Zivian said. “Mendelssohn loved Bach, and it was an homage to Baroque music.”

Both Tomkins and Zivian enjoy the way period instruments allow them to create a wide range of dynamics and colors, but on a smaller, more human scale. It’s a sound that fits perfectly with Sonoma, they said, where there is a quiet community of winemakers more interested in authenticity than glitz.

“This music was written before there was even electricity,” Tomkins said. “I feel the world has become so fast and loud ... Sonoma seems like a refuge from that.”

Staff writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @dianepete56.