Influential 20th-century Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu’s wonderfully eerie and evocative Rain Spell opens this wide-ranging program, which includes one of Brahms’s last works—his masterful Clarinet Trio, featuring legendary clarinetist David Shifrin—as well as the New Mexico premiere of Festival Artistic Director Marc Neikrug’s Fantasy for Clarinet, Viola, Cello, and Percussion.

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Brahms & Neikrug

New Mexico Museum of Art

David Shifrin and the Verona Quartet perform Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet, one of the composer’s final works and one that’s often cited as his greatest piece of chamber music. The program also includes a gorgeous harp showpiece by Ravel—his Introduction and Allegro—and an intriguing piano quartet by Festival Artistic Director Marc Neikrug called Green Torso, which was inspired by a bronze sculpture by the Santa Fe–based Hopi artist Dan Namingha.

Brahms & Ravel

Neikrug's Through Roses

Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival

Concert 6: “Harmonies of the Masters”

Angel Fire Community Center

With ear-bending polyphonics, brain-twisting chords, and utterly unpredictable progressions, Beethoven completely redefined what music could sound like. For our second summer concert, beloved clarinetist David Shifrin, violinist Bella Hristova, pianist Alessio Bax, and oboist Frank Rosenwein join forces on three masterpieces that are powered by Beethoven’s unprecedented sonic palette. The program also features a new, groundbreaking Oboe Quartet by composer Marc Neikrug, and Felix Mendelssohn’s soaring Piano Trio in C Minor.

SONIC EVOLUTION: Mendelssohn, Bernstein & Neikrug

Reed College

Portland State University

A love song by Gustav Mahler is at the center of this probing new work by eminent pianist and composer Marc Neikrug. Liebst du um Schönheit (“If You Love for the Sake of Beauty”), from Mahler’s Rückert Lieder, is “a key element to the drama,” Neikrug says, and, as it “embodies the message of love as an aspiration, a self-embodied posture, and a state of being,” it speaks to the emotional core of the work as well. A Song by Mahler centers on the changing realities of two characters: a concertizing singer who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s and her husband, who is also her accompanist. This work of music theater is “an attempt to address the specific emotional evolution of this couple, touching on their love and their particular relationship to music” Neikrug says. “It is not an attempt at documenting the myriad aspects of the disease.”

A Song by Mahler

Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

This thrilling program features music by Mozart; two world premieres, including a Festival-commissioned piano-and-winds quintet by Magnus Lindberg and an oboe quartet by Festival Artistic Director Marc Neikrug; and performances by Alan Gilbert, Berlin Philharmonic Principal Horn Stefan Dohr, members of the Escher String Quartet, and more.

Mozart, Lindberg & Neikrug

Neikrug’s Symphony No. 4 explores contrasting musical ideas which break apart and then reform into fractured memories and everchanging emotional states. The music navigates a shifting landscape of sounds and textures, focusing on the inner psychological world.

Marc Neikrug

Events

Upcoming events

Mar 3, 2027

Neikrug: Symphony No. 4 · BBC Philharmonic

Past events

Aug 11, 2026

Brahms & Neikrug · Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival

Aug 10, 2026

Brahms & Ravel · Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival

About

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