When Bridgehampton Chamber Music brings its fall series of three concerts, beginning on Saturday, each will have some anchoring elements of the beloved and staple repertoire, and yet each will have a good dose of something or someone new or different for the audience.
In the first program, Gilles Vonsattel, a BCM veteran and internationally acclaimed pianist, will perform two of Beethoven's most enduring sonatas, No. 14, nicknamed "Moonlight," and No. 8, known as the "Pathetique." Both of these are time-tested blockbusters, and both come from the composer's earlier period.
In between these two, Mr. Vonsattel has chosen to play a sonata from the master's later period, Op. 101, No. 28 in A major, perhaps a less well-known one but no less substantial, written at a time when he had mostly lost his hearing.
"Piano was Beethoven's instrument. As he got into this stage where he was increasingly isolated from his friends, he went to the instrument that gave him the most comfort, or that felt so natural to him, like a childhood friend, and that was the piano," Marya Martin, the founder and artistic director of the festival, said last week. So in the last period of his life he wrote a good number of piano sonatas.
"If you listen to the first movement of the A major, it's almost Mozart-like in sweetness, the opposite of the 'Pathetique,' which is pretty powerful. In this later period, his moods would change quite quickly, and what might be simple one minute would become incredibly complex the next."
For the next program, on Nov. 16, three instrumentalists who have been on the BCM stage separately a number of times will now appear together as a trio. While each has an individual career, Gloria Chien on piano, Soovin Kim on violin, and Paul Watkins on cello have also been appearing as the Chien-Kim-Watkins Trio over the past five or so years.
For this performance there will be two major works: Robert Schumann's Piano Trio in D minor, and Maurice Ravel's Piano Trio in A minor.
Ms. Martin explained that Schumann "had a difficult time in later life with emotional instability, and that started in the 1840s. This trio was composed in 1847. This was a brief respite in his emotional decline; he was happy and wrote this work in a record amount of time."
The Ravel trio, meanwhile, was written at a time when the French were trying to find a different voice and distinct identity. "The war had just broken out in 1914, and Ravel had signed up to fight," Ms. Martin said. He was of small stature, so he wasn't assigned to fighting, but he became a driver and then a nurse's aide. "Before he got his orders to go, he had this trio that he had to write, and he said, 'Normally I need five months to write one, but I wrote this in five weeks.' "
The fall season comes to a close on Dec. 7 with a program that highlights three stellar and well-established younger artists appearing with BCM for the first time, but each with something of a lineage to the festival or the East End.
Brandon Patrick George, a flutist, studied with Ms. Martin at the Manhattan School of Music, has won a Grammy award, and last year released his second solo album. Ms. Martin will also perform on this program, and it's not very often that we get to hear two flutes together.
The violinist will be Kevin Zhu. "When I was growing up as a teenager I went to the Perlman Music Program on Shelter Island," he said last week. "I have really amazing memories of growing up there." He has already played once on the alumni concert program, and has been invited back again. "It's like my spiritual home away from home."
Now, in the span of barely three weeks, Mr. Zhu will perform on Shelter Island, travel to Beijing for a performance, and then return again to this area for the Bridgehampton concert. Born in the U.S. of Chinese parents, as a mature artist he has played in Beijing twice before. He plays a special instrument, a Stradivari from about 1700, which is on loan from the Ryuji Ueno Foundation.
The cellist for the Dec. 7 concert, James Baik, will also be playing an exceptional instrument. "I am playing on a J.B. Vuillaume cello right now," he said. "It was made in 1860." Vuillaume is said to be the finest and most important luthier of the 19th century. "It is generously on loan from the Ravinia Foundation. I went to the Ravinia festival for two years, in 2022 and 2023."
In 2023, Mr. Baik was recommended for this particular instrument. "I tried it, I loved it, and it is an amazing cello that has helped me grow a lot in the past two years. It has changed me as a player, changed my outlook on music, and I am still growing with it."
Mr. Baik was a recent winner of the Young Concert Artists competition, for which Ms. Martin was one of the judges. He was also awarded the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Prize, which means playing in one of the BCM concerts. "I've admired the series from afar for quite some time now," he said. "My teacher, Clive Greensmith, has also played for Bridgehampton Chamber Music numerous times. And now I get to be a part of it, so I'm very excited."
He recently joined the Galvin Cello Quartet, an unusual and sonorous configuration. The quartet will be returning to Merkin Hall in Manhattan next month.
Rounding out the roster is Michael Stephen Brown, who is widely acclaimed as a pianist and composer. For this performance, he will share his more recent endeavor of playing the harpsichord for Baroque music.
The December program, called "Baroque Bounty," will feature a selection of trios, sonatas, and quintets by J.S. Bach, his son Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, Telemann, Vivaldi, and a somewhat less celebrated early Baroque composer, Carl Heinrich Biber, whose writing for strings and especially solo violin set the tone for Bach.
The three concerts will be held, as usual, at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church at 5 p.m., and will last about 80 minutes without intermission. Tickets are $50 or $75, with a subscription available, or $10 for students. More information is at bcmf.org or 212-741-9403.
