Founding Artistic Directors Wu Han and David Finckel have announced their 24th and final Music@Menlo season. Succeeding the pianist-cellist duo as Menlo’s artistic chiefs will be another musician couple they selected: pianist Hyeyeon Park and cellist Dmitri Atapine.
“Redux,” the upcoming summer season running July 17–Aug. 8, is a retrospective on Music@Menlo’s history, as each mainstage program revisits a past season. As a festival official put it: “it’s a valedictory season with forward-looking intent. A summation, yes, but also a bridge.”
A prime example of this connection between past and future is Gilles Vonsattel’s multi-season presentation of Beethoven’s complete cycle of 32 piano sonatas, planned to launch during the festival’s 25th anniversary next year.
The founders’ legacy of a quarter century is impressive in many ways. While chamber music, by definition, is for small groups in an intimate setting — something that also describes Music@Menlo — the festival also shows off some big numbers. With dozens of performances by hundreds of musicians across three major venues on Atherton’s Menlo School campus, the festival has an average season attendance of 8,000, and operates on an annual budget of $2.6 million. Supporting some 500 young Chamber Music Institute students each year, the festival’s alumni have established more than 40 chamber music festivals and organizations around the world.
Wu Han and Finckel are quoted in the 2026 season announcement: “The theme of Redux was conceived long before we made the decision to step aside. It was one of many ideas that had been taking shape over time, yet it suddenly felt especially fitting for this summer.
“At its heart, Redux celebrates the inexhaustible richness of classical chamber music and the capacity of the Music@Menlo model to continually renew itself well into the future. Of that enduring vitality, we are tremendously proud.”
Mainstage concerts will begin with a celebration of the violin — the theme of the 2017 festival — featuring works of two violinist-composers: Antonio Vivaldi and Fritz Kreisler. Among the featured violinists are Chad Hoopes, Bella Hristova, Jessica Lee, Kristin Lee, and Arnaud Sussmann.
The second program, an all-Felix Mendelssohn concert, recalls the 2009 season with the composer’s violin sonata, string quintet, and 1824 piano sextet. The latter will be performed by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, piano, Areta Zhulla, violin, Guillermo Figueroa and Paul Neubauer, violas, Sterling Elliott, cello, and Scott Pingel, bass.
From among several J.S. Bach-centered seasons, the third program is inspired by the 2011 festival. Some of the composer’s fugues will be performed, as well as fugal writing by composers who followed Bach: Haydn, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and John Corigliano.
“The Unfolding of Music,” the festival’s inaugural season in 2003, is this year’s fourth program. Defined as “a road map of chamber music in the past three centuries,” it will include works by Georg Friedrich Telemann, Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Bela Bartók, and Stephen Hough.
The fifth program brings “Resonance,” in honor of the 2012 program which reversed the usual music-centric model to focus on the listener. Exploring the enduring question of why organized sound can have such a powerful effect, performances include Josef Suk’s Meditation on an Old Czech Hymn, David Serkin Ludwig’s Three Yiddish Dances, and Tchaikovsky’s
Souvenir de Florence, in addition to works by Telemann and Franz Liszt.
The sixth program, “Returning to Mozart,” harkens back to 2006 and Mozart’s 250th birthday. His Violin Sonata in B-flat Major (Arnaud Sussmann, violin; Gil Kalish, piano) and Piano Concerto No. 13 (Evren Ozel, soloist) will be programmed alongside work by Gustav Mahler and Dmitri Shostakovich.
To close out the season on Aug. 8, a focus on Franz Schubert recalls the festival’s three-week celebration of the composer in 2015. Among the performers are Wu Han and David Finckel, Sebastian Manz, clarinet, Peter Kolkay, bassoon, Radovan Vlatkovic, horn, Paul Huang and Arnaud Sussmann, violins, James Thompson, viola, Sihao He, cello, and Nina Bernat, bass.
See the festival website for information about Carte Blanche concerts, lectures, the Encounter series, Chamber Music Institute concerts of Prelude Performances (International Program artists), and Koret Young Performers Concerts (institute students).