SFP Announces New Series at Presidio Theatre

Following up on the annual PIVOT Festival, which will begin this coming Wednesday, San Francisco Performances (SFP) will launch a new series of performances on Sunday afternoons. This will be the Beischer Family Sunday Strings Series, which will take place at the Presidio Theatre Performing Arts Center at 3 p.m. The curator will be Owen Dalby, whom readers probably already known as one of the two Artistic and Executive Directors of Noe Music. The programs planned for the specific dates are as follows:

Musicians for the first Sunday Strings concert (clockwise from upper-left: Alexi Kenney, Owen Dalby, Amy Yang, and Christopher Costanza, from the Web page for that event)

February 16: The series will get off to an imaginative start with two selections likely to be unfamiliar to most listeners. The major work on the program will be a suite composed by Erich Korngold in 1930 with somewhat unconventional instrumentation: two violins, cello, and piano left hand. This was composed for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein (the older brother of philosopher Ludwig), whose right arm had to be amputated during World War I. This will be preceded by a piano quartet composed by Danny Elfman (best known for his film scores) on a joint commission by the Lied Center for Performing Arts University of Nebraska in Lincoln and the Berlin Philharmonic Piano Quartet and first performed in February of 2018. Dalby will play viola in the Elfman quartet and second violin in the Korngold suite. The other performers will be violinist Alexi Kenney, Christopher Costanza on cello, and pianist Amy Yang.

April 6: The second program will present two string quartets from opposite ends of the nineteenth century. It will begin with Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 12 quartet in E-flat major and conclude with Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Opus 4 (first) quartet in A major. Dalby will play first violin for this program. He will be joined by second violinist Geneva Lewis, Masumi Per Rostad on viola, and cellist Hannah Collins.

May 4: The series will conclude with a solo recital by cellist Costanza. The program will present two cello suites in reverse chronological order. It will begin with Benjamin Britten’s Opus 80, the second of the three suites he dedicated to cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. This will be followed by Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1012, the last of his six suites.

As some readers may recall by now, the venue is located at 99 Moraga Avenue, in the southwest corner of the Presidio. Ticket prices are $60 and $45. A Web page has also been created to purchase tickets for the entire series for $165 and $120. Single tickets may be purchased through the hyperlinks attached to the above individual dates.