Each year, La Jolla Music Society produces SummerFest, a four-week festival that in 2024 will feature 21 dynamic performances and dozens of stellar international musicians. Beginning July 26 and running through Aug. 24, SummerFest, which was founded in 1986, will once again be led by acclaimed pianist Inon Barnatan, the festival’s music director since 2019.
Kicking off the summer schedule is “A Deal With the Devil,” a program of four works that unfortunately has sold out but will feature a new production of Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat (The soldier’s tale) conducted by Thomas Adès, this year’s returning composer-in-residence, with a visual element supplied by The Paper Cinema. Still, there are plenty of other concerts sure to wow audiences at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, including programs with violinists Alexi Kenney and Augustin Hadelich (July 27), pianist Conrad Tao and tap dancer Caleb Teicher (Aug. 16), and Barnatan, who will be performing numerous times.
As for opening night, Barnatan said that he has always wanted to present L’Histoire du soldat. “The original piece had dancers, but I had this idea I wanted to see something to do with puppetry, a visual element that can happen at the same time as the music and text without distracting from it. I found this company out of Britain [The Paper Cinema]. They do animation; they live-draw; they do all sorts of things onstage as it’s being projected in real time.”
Adès, who is conducting that night, will also be performing his evocative The Tempest Suite with Hadelich on July 28, which ties into a theme that Barnatan has referred to as stories of intrigue or “concerts about scandals and how they found themselves in music.” Indeed, the Aug. 14 program, which will have Ojai Music Festival Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian giving a prelude lecture, will include two madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo (in a string quintet arrangement) and Claude Debussy’s Six épigraphes antiques for piano four hands (with Barnatan and Tao on keyboard).
Gesualdo was a pre-Baroque composer who infamously killed his wife and her lover. “And we have Debussy,” Barnatan pointed out, “whose wife tried to kill herself in the middle of the street because of an affair he was having. He married that [second] woman [Emma Bardac] in the end.
The official theme of this year’s festival is “Inside Stories,” promising an exploration into the depth of storytelling through the universal language of music. Barnatan explained: “It’s how music tells stories, how narratives are expressed in music, in all different forms that could mean a lot of different things. Some will be stories of actual instruments that are being played. There are also some concerts that are about inspiring stories of resilience.”
One of those evenings of resilience (Aug. 3) will unite works by the Mendelssohn siblings — Fanny’s neglected Piano Trio in D Minor and Felix’s String Quartet No. 6, a reaction to his sister’s early passing — with compositions by artists silenced or oppressed during World War II, with a spotlight on Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff. Schulhoff was born Jewish and took on Soviet citizenship during the war but was ultimately deported to a concentration camp in Bavaria, where he succumbed to tuberculosis. His Divertissement for oboe, clarinet, and bassoon will be performed by Nicholas Daniel, Tommaso Lonquich, and Eleni Katz.
Of that concert, Barnatan said, “Fanny Mendelssohn was not allowed to publish many of her pieces because she was a woman. Every concert [this summer] has its own way of exploring the theme of how stories and narratives find their way into music.”
The Aug. 9 program, dubbed “Gratitude,” will feature the choral ensemble VOCES8 performing J.S. Bach’s Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich (For Thee, O Lord, I long), BWV 150, as well as works by Caroline Shaw, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Reena Esmail. Spanning several centuries, the concert will embody a journey of thankfulness. On that same program, Barnatan, violinist Stefan Jackiw, and cellist Alisa Weilerstein will perform Beethoven’s Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97 (“Archduke”), with an open rehearsal on Aug. 8.
“VOCES8 is an amazing vocal group,” gushed Barnatan, “and they’ll sing half of [the program’s] music that is about gratitude. We also have the beautiful Beethoven trio, written almost as a thank-you to his sponsor, Archduke [Rudolph of Austria, the youngest son of Emperor Leopold II, whom Beethoven] was indebted to.”
SummerFest’s offerings also include free Artist Lounge talks, in-depth conversations that will draw on the theme “Inside Stories” with musicians such as cellist Sterling Elliott (Aug. 5) and cellist and composer Paul Wiancko (Aug. 12).
Also on tap is “Encounter: Better Listening With Music,” a lecture by former New York Times contributing critic Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim (July 30), as well as a screening of the Academy Award-winning documentary short “The Last Repair Shop” (Aug. 6).
While the music, of course, is key, the audiences, said Barnatan, are very loyal. “For some people, the festival is the highlight of the year. They not only get the best of the best coming to La Jolla, but they get a really intimate look at both music-making and the musicians.”
