Saturday, January 13, 2024

SFCM Highlights: February, 2024

Following up on this month’s side-by-side concert with the New Century Chamber Orchestra, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) will present four highlighted events during the month of February. This will make for a generous amount of diversity; but, as of this writing, details are far more limited than they had been for the previous term. Once again, each event will have its own Performance Calendar Web page attached to the date of the performance. Each Web page will include a hyperlink for making free-of-charge reservations and, as appropriate, a hyperlink for live-stream viewing. Further specifics are as follows:

Tuesday, February 6, 7:30 p.m., Barbro Osher Recital Hall, 200 Van Ness Avenue: Violinist Melissa White will be the guest artist. She will be featured in a performance of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 108 violin sonata in D minor. She will be accompanied at the piano by Julio Elizalde. The program will begin with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 478 piano quartet in G minor and conclude with Max Bruch’s string quintet in E-flat major, which was not published until after the composer’s death. There will also be a performance of selected movements from Wynton Marsalis’ first string quartet, given the title “At The Octoroon Balls.”

Saturday, February 10, 7:30 p.m., Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, 50 Oak Street: Conductor Edwin Outwater will share the podium of the SFCM Orchestra with his student, Chih Yao Chang, who will open the program with the string orchestra version of Edvard Grieg’s “The Last Spring,” originally composed for voice and piano. Outwater will then take the podium to lead Ellen Reid’s “Petrichor,” which requires the musicians to be physically distributed around the hall to evoke the spatial experience of a rain forest. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Anton Bruckner’s WAB 104, his fourth symphony in E-flat major.

Friday, February 16, and Saturday, February 17, 7:30 p.m., Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, 50 Oak Street: SFCM Musical Theatre will present two performances of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. This is based on Roy Horniman’s novel 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal, better known in the film version, Kind Hearts and Coronets, in which Alec Guinness played eight roles. These performances will not be live-streamed.

Saturday, February 24, 5 p.m., Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, 50 Oak Street: As will be the case later this month, this will be another side-by-side opportunity for students to perform with professionals. This time the ensemble will be the Chromatic Brass Collective, who will have a residency at SFCM. The ensemble was the result of an initiative founded by Black women with a mission of celebrating, performing, mentoring, and educating as a means to increase the visibility of racially and ethnically underrepresented women and gender non-conforming people throughout the brass world. Again, this performance will not be live-streamed; but it will invite brass students from all around the Bay Area and of various ages to jump up on stage and join the band. [added 2/5, 12:10 p.m.:

Wednesday, February 28, 7:30 p.m., Sol Joseph Recital Hall, 50 Oak Street: This will be the next performance by the Quartet-in-Residence Telegraph Quartet, whose members are violinists Eric Chin and Joseph Baile, Pei-Ling Lin on viola, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw. They have prepared a program that will showcase the dark side of expressionism. The more recent of these is the score that Stephen Prutsman composed to accompany a screening of the silent film The Cabinet of Caligari. This will be coupled with a much earlier composition, Alban Berg’s six-movement “Lyric Suite.” As of this writing, this performance will not be available for a live-stream.]

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