SANTA FE, NM—Now in its 46th season, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival remains a monumental achievement, assembling elite players from all over in repertoire both neglected and beloved. Take the recent Mozart-Chausson program, for starters.

Much as in the Brandenburg concertos by Bach, Ernest Chausson revived a concerto-grosso practice and  created a rare late-19th-century work with a duo doubling as  both soloists and ensemble members. Modern artists like Emanuel Ax rave about playing it, even though the piano part is supremely difficult.

        Chausson’s resultant Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet  is the perfect fit for a piano-violin (married)  couple like pianist Gloria Chien and Soovin Kim of the New England Conservatory faculty. They are just two of some 80 musicians coming, going and playing here in the Chamber Music Festival. Given the heavy representation of East Coast figures here, we Westerners are given a great chance to see and hear how the other half fares.

        A night picked at random (Aug. 8) served up first-class festival fare indeed. The 38-minute concerto is among the most passionate ever written, as if intended as scoring for a movie about  tempestuous, volatile lovers. The big romantic gestures carry over to the string quartet dedicated more to accompaniment than harmonizing or providing contrasting voices.

        Chausson, a tragic French figure who died in a cycling accident at age 44, gives us a finale that rounds up themes of earlier movements while vacillating delectably between major and minor keys. By then the piano part has revved up to virtuoso level in fast, complex runs in syncopation while the violin, dominant earlier, has to take a step back. The work was a whirlwind climax to the program, with the Chien-Kim duo securely at the helm. Rounding it out with vigor were the four thirtyish men of the Danish String Quartet.

      Not yet mid-career, Anthony McGill ranks among the leading stars of the clarinet world, principal both with the Met Orchestra and, now, with the N.Y. Phiharmonic. He led a grand performance of that jewel, the Mozart Clarinet Quintet—articulate, consistently in pitch, with the low-vibrato tone favored by most (not all) clarinetists. This landmark piece is unique, particularly in the Minuet movement which has, astonishingly, not one but two trio sections, one of them an unsettled foray into the minor mode by the first violin. It’s as if to say not everything in our world is coming up roses.  If the varied string players were not up to McGill’s caliber, the dose of late, mature Mozart made up for some shortcomings.

       With McGill so exemplary in his versatile bailiwick, masterful in opera, symphony and chamber, one hopes that he would inspire other emerging black musicians to delve into classical music,  where their numbers are, so far, greatly underrepresented throughout the country.

        Santa Fe (NM) Chamber Music Festival, programs changing daily, July 15-Aug. 20. At the NM Museum of Art, mostly. For info: (505) 982-1890, or go online. www.santafechambermusic.com