SummerFest’s Barnatan seeks musical ‘defining moments’ in 2025 program

Pianist Inon Barnatan director of SummerFest File photo courtesy La Jolla Music Society Among America s great summer classical music festivals think Tanglewood Ravinia Aspen La Jolla Music Society s -year-old SummerFest is still a comparative upstart That an aura of momentum and promise still surrounds it has a lot to do with fresh leadership CEO Todd Schulz joining in LJMS Artistic Director Leah Rosenthal promoted in and critically SummerFest Music Director Inon Barnatan appointed in Born in Tel Aviv schooled in Israel and London and now a naturalized New Yorker Barnatan s instinct for creative programs seems to be bone deep from his career s earliest recitals and his thoughtfully curated recordings Time Traveler s Suite and Darknesse Visible to his October Wigmore Hall recital Brahms meets J rg Widmann s born Brahms-inspired Intermezzi This year s SummerFest from July to Aug though neither the longest or busiest continues to push the envelope in the methods that define Barnatan s reign activities depth innovative spirit and virtuosic luminosity It not only features cross- and anti-genre initiatives like the Synergy Series Barnatan s initiative and July s New York Takeover but also sustains SummerFest s tradition of giving neglected composers Carl Nielsen Anton Arensky Charles Koechlin etc a day in the sun And building on last year s residency by iconic composer Thomas Ad s SummerFest features star soprano Ren e Fleming and ex-New York Phil conductor Alan Gilbert Speaking of late from Aspen where he performed Leonard Bernstein s Age of Anxiety concerto-symphony Barnatan took buck-stops-here responsibility for the festival s twenty concerts sixty-plus pieces and eighty or more musicians I m not only the final I m the only arbiter The only pushback I get is if I have an idea that s unfeasible if it s something that s so expensive that they can t afford it Given SummerFest s complexity and plenty of moving parts surely Barnatan relies on selected system or process to minimize his activities work There s not one way that this happens he demurs I try to allow it to happen organically Bulk of the time there ll be a list of pieces that I really want to do particular kind of a short list and then I ll start to think about what threads combine several of those and then the whole thing starts to flesh out As for themes this year s is Milestones defining moments in a creative life Formulas are out Usually at particular point I change and adapt the theme My idea of it kind of changes over the months It s an organizing principle But I don t want any music to be there just because of the theme he stated The theme is more of a way to encourage creativity rather than stifle it I try to come up with a theme that s engaging and engaging enough but also broad enough that I don t have to plan thematic music If there s a piece of music that I really want to do and it doesn t fit it shouldn t be excluded Barnatan also denies that SummerFest s long history of resurrecting non-canonical works is a guiding principle I don t think about it as a formula of okay I need to have something old something new something blue you know Trying to do a balanced venture trying to balance different elements of it the newness of it or when it was written is less key to me Still Barnatan s interest in the neglected shows The Great Unknown was the theme of his SummerFest one of my favorite which featured underperformed composers like Boulanger Crumb Szymanowski Beach Dohnanyi and Schulhoff It s engaging for me to discover things that are new to the audience new to me he revealed And for me new music is not necessarily new music doesn t necessarily have to be by a living composer It could be something that s not often heard not often played But I do try to look out for pieces that have somehow been neglected but are still great he explained adding I won t do something just because it s adventurous I will do something that I think the audience would love because it s adventurous Barnatan follows the same intuitive anti-formulaic approach when recruiting each festival s musicians One of the fun things about a festival is going back year after year and seeing people that you love come back It s kind of like a family reunion But I think it s also so central to have constantly fresh ideas fresh faces fresh force he commented Variety is major to keep it fresh both throughout the festival and from one to another and also to give other players either younger players or from Europe that don t get to often play in the States The people that I choose are very much related to what I want them to play and with whom Not everybody who s great works with everybody else who s great The alchemy of that is key Usually people come for about a week and they do three out of the four concerts So every week has a fully different vibe to it both musically and personally That constant musician turnover across the festival creates it own challenge when should Barnatan himself perform Every year I tell myself I m going to play less Running the festival and being there for the full four and a half weeks is challenging and joyful but my mission is to create programs that I would want to attend if I didn t plan it But that creates an context in which I tell myself Oh I gotta be a part of this In its first year SummerFest presented eight concerts over ten days In it s nudging against the month mark yet already latest sales records Barnatan discloses Is its rise feasible unlimited Not necessarily We ve done the expansion partly because I felt when I joined it was three weeks but there were five concerts a week I felt that that was too crowded People needed particular time to recover but also to rehearse Every year has been growing which of syllabus I m thrilled to see but one of the things I ve been trying to do is to not overstuff the concerts There s so a multitude of great musicians and so countless great pieces you want to just take advantage of all these people when they re there But then you realize that sometimes less is more When you get to a certain level it s more about what not to do rather than what to do Barnatan s gnomic phrasing here hints at the ineffable quality of his SummerFest programs It s about balance push and pull an stimulating journey how things when put together illuminate one another Or it s like a restaurant or dinner party if you were creating a menu you d want to have something that you know people will love and you want to push them to contrast a balance of ingredients But underlying everything is trust I m very aware that initiatives and the festival is there for the people that are coming to listen to it not for me The thing that I m the greater part keen on is to build a trust with the audience That trust is something I really work for Every triumphant relationship between a festival and audience has that Paul Bodine has been writing about music from classical to pop rock for over years for publications such as Classical Voice North America Times of San Diego Classical Music Daily Orange County Register and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Among the artists he s interviewed are Joshua Bell Herbert Blomstedt Sarah Chang Ivan Fischer Bruno Canino Christopher O Reilly Lindsay String Quartet David Benoit Laura Claycomb Jon Nakamatsu Paul Chihara the Ahn Trio Lucas Debargue and John Thiessen