Sunday, March 3, 2024

Tenor Ilker Arcayürek will Finally Return to SFP

Tenor Ilker Arcayürek (photograph by Janina Laszlo, courtesy of SFP)

Turkish-born Austrian tenor Ilker Arcayürek’s plan to visit San Francisco Performances (SFP) in April of 2022 had to be cancelled due to visa issues. Those issues have now been resolved, and he will return later this month as the recitalist for the final program in the Art of Song series. As previously planned, his accompanist will be pianist Simon Lepper.

Another change of plans involves the repertoire he will present. When the Art of Song series was first announced on this site in July of last year, the plan was for a diverse program that would include Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Reynaldo Hahn, Felix Mendelssohn, Richard Strauss, Johannes Brahms, and Gabriel Fauré. Instead, the program has been altered to consist entirely of songs by Franz Schubert, eighteen of them!

None of these songs will be excerpted from any of the three cycles that were written late in the composer’s life: D. 795 (Die schöne Müllerin), D. 911 (Winterreise), and D. 957 (Schwanengesang). All of them were composed between October of 1816 (D. 489, “Der Wanderer”) and January of 1828 (D. 939, “Die Sterne”). (Schubert would die in November of 1828.) For those more familiar with his instrumental repertoire, 1816 was the year in which he composed his fifth symphony (D. 485 in B-flat major).

As usual, the venue will be Herbst Theatre, on the first two floors of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Tickets are being sold for $65 for premium seating in the Orchestra, the Side Boxes, and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $55 for the center rear of the Dress Circle and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $45 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. They may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page or by calling 415-392-2545.

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