Thomas Adès, Augustin Hadelich, Inon Barnatan, and more perform Ysaÿe, Saint-Saëns, Butler, Adès, Ravel, and Schubert

A macabre mélange with an exceptional cast of artists comes to you from La Jolla SummerFest 2024 centered around a feverish performance of Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre by violin virtuoso Augustin Hadelich and piano star Inon Barnatan! Hadelich also performs Ysaÿe's "Obsession" Violin Sonata No. 2, a clever pastiche whose reworking of Bach's E-major Partita is haunted by a persistent "Dies irae" motif; and Barnatan returns to perform the piano part in Martin Butler's Dirty Beasts, a mischievous triptych inspired by the works of Roald Dahl, as well as the two-piano arrangement of Ravel's La Valse with the great Thomas Adès — whose own Catch stages the musical pursuit of a clarinet by a violin, cello, and piano. The program closes with Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" Quartet, one of the pinnacles of chamber music that ends with a Danse Macabre of its own, a relentlessly driving tarantella that briefly seems to promise a major-key conclusion before the ineluctable return of D minor.

Photo © Marco Borggreve