SUN VALLEY, Idaho — Sun Valley is world-famous as a winter ski resort. Within minutes of arriving, you learn the 2025 Ski World Cup Finals will be held here later in March. There is more to Sun Valley after hours than the après-ski crowd unwinding in hot tubs and at happy hours. An equally enticing option is first-class chamber music from the Sun Valley Music Festival.
The festival’s summer operation is one of the hidden gems of the warm weather circuit. Over the past 30 years, music director Alasdair Neale has guided it from a small chamber ensemble performing under a tent in a parking lot to an orchestra of 100 world-class musicians drawn from North America’s most distinguished orchestras. Remarkably, there is no admission fee for the concerts, either for those sitting in the pavilion or on the lawn.
The long-discussed aim of adding a winter season to the schedule took form in 2019. The obstacle was the lack of a proper venue, as outdoor performances in winter hardly work at an altitude of 5,750 feet in Idaho. When The Argyros in nearby Ketchum opened, with its state-of-the-art Meyer Constellation Sound system and flexible performance space conducive to chamber music concerts, the Sun Valley Festival’s winter season became a reality.
A guest artist curates the concerts at the heart of the festival’s winter season, and this year it was pianist Joyce Yang, whose international career took flight after she won the silver medal at the 2005 Van Cliburn Competition and awards for chamber and contemporary music performance. She has performed three times as a Sun Valley soloist, but this was her first involvement with its winter concert series.
Yang was given free rein to choose the repertoire for the concerts March 6-8: Poulenc’s Sextet, Dohnányi’s Serenade in C, and Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E-flat major. Yang opened the program with four Rachmaninoff Preludes.
There was also the luxury of having no limit on the number of musicians needed for the concerts. Each of the 11 players drawn from the Festival Orchestra performed in a single work. This created a different dynamic from Yang’s usual chamber-music experiences, in which she performs with an established quartet or ensemble.
But Yang had never played chamber music with anyone performing in the concerts. She and the other players had to establish that chemistry in just days. Rehearsals involved as much talking as playing, which Yang stressed was essential not only to bond as an ensemble but also to gain a sense of what risks they might take individually and collectively in a concert.
The Rachmaninoff Preludes, Yang said, exposes her emotional vulnerability as a performer, as she must concentrate on maintaining the balance between head and heart. Yang relishes playing with woodwinds where balance is not an issue, unlike with strings. Even when performing on a nine-foot Steinway concert grand, Yang said, she can just let go in the Poulenc Sextet, as if playing a concerto.
There was a full house for the first of the three concerts, all with the same program. Conviviality is a hallmark of the Sun Valley Music Festival, where the audience’s embrace of the artists adds to the celebratory air of each concert. They are also family affairs, as musicians generally stay with local hosts, sometimes repeatedly. The bonds between hosts and musicians turn each concert into equal parts celebration of community and musical experience.
Yang perfectly fused technique and emotion in the four Rachmaninoff Preludes — No. 4, Op. 23, and Nos. 10, 12, and 13, Op. 32. The two extreme examples of this were the powerful exploration of the throbbing dark passions of No. 10 contrasted with the lightness and transparency she instilled in the melodies and cascades of chords in No. 4.
The Poulenc Sextet was a madcap musical adventure in which Yang was joined by flutist Andrea Kaplan, oboist Erik Behr, clarinetist Jason Shafer, bassoonist Andrew Cuneo, and hornist Catherine Turner. Their performance captured the sophistication, wit, and danger inherent in Poulenc’s mishmash of styles ranging from jazz to Mozart. Turner played with particular panache in the whirlwind of a Finale, Poulenc’s satiric spin on the neoclassical style.
Violinist Shawn Weil, violist Adam Smyla, and cellist Emileigh Vandiver delighted in the Hungarian-flavored spice and fun in Dohnányi’s high-spirited Serenade. At its core is a set of variations that found the trio at its most expressive. The lasting memories, however, are the three string players taking turns spinning Dohnányi’s alluring melodies over precise and stylish pizzicato accompaniments.
Yang was joined by violinist Jeremy Constant, violist Marylène Gingras-Roy, and cellist Amos Yang for Schumann’s Piano Quartet. Their energy contrasted with the grandeur of their playing in the hymn-like strains of the first movement. The fast-paced Scherzo was notable for their pinpoint accuracy, while in the Andante cantabile melodies unfolded laden with beauty and emotion. In the Finale, the musicians found humor in the musical conversation of Schumann’s counterpoint, but it then took flight with the four musicians playing as one.
