SFS 2025–26: Great Performers Series

The reason for the above scare quotes is that, traditionally, performances in the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Great Performers Series are limited to a single evening, usually on a weekend so as not to conflict with SFS performances in the Orchestral Series. However, in the coming season there will be one “outlier” that will be given three performances on the weekend before Thanksgiving. As was reported a little over a month ago, the program will begin with the second nonet scored for string orchestra by Olli Mustonen, led by violinist Alexi Kenney. After that, the repertoire will take “a great leap backward.”

Kenney will continue to lead, but he will also be one of the three soloists in Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1050 “Brandenburg” concerto in D major, joined by flutist Yubeen Kim with Jonathan Dimmock at the harpsichord. This will be given three performances at 2 p.m. on Thursday, November 20, and 7:30 p.m. on Friday, November 21, and Saturday, November 22. This will be preceded by Kenney’s instrumental arrangement of one of Barbara Strozzi’s earliest madrigals and followed by the much more familiar Four Seasons cycle of concertos by Antonio Vivaldi.

George Balanchine’s choreography for “The Four Temperaments” performed by the Kansas City Ballet (photograph by Steve Wilson, courtesy of KCBalletMedia, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

There will be one other orchestral performance in the Series, taking place on Sunday, April 26. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra will present a program of music by Paul Hindemith flanked on either side by Sergei Prokofiev, beginning with his first (“Classical”) symphony and concluding with his second piano concerto. Yuja Wang will be both soloist and director, with Matthew Truscott leading from the concertmaster’s chair when necessary. The Hindemith selection will be “The Four Temperaments,” originally conceived for choreographer Léonide Massine but ultimately completed on a commission for George Balanchine, who created the dance for the Ballet Society, which premiered it in 1946.

February 8 will see a rather unique duo recital. Violinist Nicola Benedetti will be accompanied on guitar by Plínio Fernandes. There will also be a violin recital by Itzhak Perlman on November 4, followed on November 16 by cello recitalist Gautier Capuçon. The two solo piano recitalists will be Marc-André Hamelin on October 19 and Yefim Bronfman on February 8.

New Performance Traditions in SF: May, 2025

It appears that I have not had an opportunity to write about New Performance Traditions (NPT) since the preview piece I wrote for Ghost Quartet this past November. One reason may be that the organization is based in Oakland; and (primarily for the sake of daily sanity) I have made it a point to limit myself to events within the San Francisco city limits. The good news is that there will be two such new NPT events taking place within a week of each other at the beginning of next month, the first of which will be given four performances. Both of them will be staged events, rather than concerts or recitals. Specifics are as follows:

Poster design for Wheel (from the Web page for purchasing tickets)

Thursday, May 1,  and Friday, May 2, 7:30 p.m., Saturday, May 3, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., and Sunday May 4, 2 p.m., Z Space: The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company will present a full-length production entitled Wheel, described as a “visceral fusion of motion, sound, and story.” Motion will be accounted for by Jenkins’ choreography executed by the members of her company. Sound will be provided by the duo of Paul Dresher and Joel Davel, both of whom usually work with a diversity of invented instruments. The story will be presented by poet Michael Palmer, delivering his own texts. Z Space is located in NEMIZ (the North East Mission Industrial Zone) at 450 Florida Street. A single Web page has been created for purchasing tickets for all five performances.

Thursday, May 8, 6:45 p.m., Roar Shack: Once again, The Living Earth Show duo of guitarist Travis Andrews and drummer Andy Meyerson will return to its “home base,” sharing the space with the dancers of Robert Dekkers’ Post:ballet. The title of the program will be Post:Post:ballet. Performers will include Post:ballet Associate Artistic Director Moscelyne ParkeHarrison, pianist Riley Nicholson, cellist Doug Machiz, and dancer Mia J. Chong. Video will be provided by Benjamin Tarquin. The venue is located in SoMa at 34 Seventh Street. The entry is through a secret side door on Odd Fellows Way, which is called Stevenson Street on the other side of Seventh. Tickets are available for pay-what-you-can donation through an Eventbrite Web page; and, as of this writing, that Web page claims that only a few remain!

Scarfe to Accompany Pole Dancing at Monument

Pole dancers to be accompanied by pianist Ian Scarfe (right) and cellist Kendra Grittani

Next month pianist Ian Scarfe, Director of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival, will return to Monument SF to present a program that will definitely be “something completely different.” He will be joined by cellist Kendra Grittani, but their performance will be a far cry from the usual chamber music recital. That is because their music will serve as accompaniment for pole dancers. Monument is an ideal venue for such an event, since the space has been used by both dancers and circus artists for training and performance.

Both musicians will give solo performances in addition to their duo work. Grittani will play Jessie Montgomery’s solo cello rhapsody. Scarfe will open the program with a prelude-fugue coupling in F-sharp major by Johann Sebastian Bach. Presumably, this will be from The Well-Tempered Clavier; but the advance material for this show did not identify which book! He will also play a selection of the etudes that Philip Glass composed and published in two volumes, but the specifics have not yet been finalized. The duo performances will include Clara Schumann’s Opus 22, a set of three Romanze, as well as arrangements of works by Gabriel Fauré (his familiar Opus 50 “Pavane”) and Amy Beach (the less familiar Opus 15 “Dreaming”). As of this writing, the pole dancers have not yet been identified.

Many readers probably know by now that the Monument event space is located in SoMa at 140 9th Street. This performance will begin at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 15. As in the past, ticketing is being managed by Groupmuse, which has created a Web page for reservations.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco Video from Omni

Screen shot of Simone Solimene, Giovanni Masi, and Elena Branno in the performance being discussed

Yesterday morning the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts uploaded its latest video to YouTube. This was the latest offering to be presented as part of the Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Chamber Music Project. Guitarist Giovanni Masi was flanked by two wind players: flutist Simone Solimene on one side and Elena Branno on English horn on the other. As is so often the case with the videos, filming took place in a church, the Collegiata of San Michele Arcangelo in Solofra (Av), Italy; and, when the camera did not dwell on the performers, it explored both the interior and the exterior of the venue.

The music being performed was the composer’s Opus 206, his four-movement “Ecloghe.” Those viewing this video may enjoy observing that the trio performed the entire composition from memory. For those unfamiliar with ancient literature, an eclogue is a poem based on a pastoral subject; and, for many, the genre is best associated with Virgil. While I would not classify Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s music as “classical” (in the historic sense of the word), one can easily appreciate the pastoral qualities of the composer’s rhetoric.

The overall duration of the video is less than a quarter of an hour. This allows just the right time for each movement to establish its own unique rhetorical stance along a path that eventually leads to a spirited (as the tempo marking indicates) conclusion. Because they were playing from memory, all three of the musicians were well-focused on how rhetoric was established and then progressed. The result was an engaging intertwining of three distinctive sonorities, which never overstayed its welcome.

The Bleeding Edge: 4/28/2025

All of this week’s events are new ones. Furthermore, two of them will take place at a venue not previously reported. Since there are only four events to take into account, the week will be relatively quiet; but the new venue may attract some attention. Details are as follows:

Tuesday, April 29, 7 p.m., Make-Out Room: Once again, this month’s Jazz at the Make-Out Room will be divided between two sets. The opening set will be the trio of saxophonist Jon Raskin, Darren Johnston on trumpet, and drummer Jon Bafus. This group will be visiting from Sacramento. The second set will be an album release performance presented by the Karl Evangelista Quintet. This combo has a front line of two saxophonists, Francis Wong and David Boyce. Evangelista will lead from his guitar, providing rhythm with his wife Rei Scampavia on both keyboards and electronics and drummer Jordan Glenn. As regular readers probably know by now, the Make-Out Room is located in the Mission at 3225 22nd Street. Doors will open at 6 p.m. There is no cover charge, so donations will be accepted and appreciated.

Friday, May 2, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: This week’s installment of Other Dimensions in Sound, curated by reed player David Boyce, will present a quartet that calls itself Low Grade Infection. This is a quartet led by two guitarists, Ron Kukan and Duane Andrews. Rhythm is provided by Matt Simon on bass and drummer Carl Goldberg. As most readers probably know by now, this venue is located in the Mission at 3036 24th Street, between Treat Avenue and Harrison Street. As always, there is no charge for admission, presumably to encourage visitors to consider buying a book.

Friday, May 2, 7:30 p.m., Monkeybrains: Monkeybrains is an Internet service provider, whose office building apparently has a space for live performances. The first of these performances will be by the Moe! Staiano Ensemble presenting a program entitled Music for Eight Guitars. The contributing guitarists will be Lorrenzo Arreguin, Alee Karim, Jay Korber, Josh Pollock, David James, Robin Walsh, Drew Wheeler, and Bill Wolter. Rhythm will be provided by two drummers, Jordan Glenn and Scott Siler, along with Elijah Pontecorvo on bass. This is another venue located in the Mission, this time at 933 Treat Avenue.

Francis Wong with his saxophone (from the BayImproviser Web page for Wong Wei’s Legacy)

Sunday, May 4, 3 p.m., Monkeybrains: Artistic Director Francis Wong will explore three generations of his family through a new interdisciplinary work he created entitled Wong Wei’s Legacy. The performance will include dance by Lynn Huang, who will also provide spoken word commentary. Further commentary will be delivered by William Roper along with his performance on tuba. Wong will lead with his saxophone, and percussion will be performed by Deszon X. Claiborne. The performance will last for about 90 minutes, taking place again 933 Treat Avenue.

SFS: More Imaginative Chamber Music

This morning, when I was reviewing past articles about performances in Davies Symphony Hall to prepare for this one, I noticed a preference for the adjective “imaginative.” That was certainly the case last month with the chamber music recital presented by members of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). This month’s offering, presented yesterday afternoon, was right up there were no shortage of imaginative takes on the genre.

The program began with a composition by one of the leading double bass players of the nineteenth century, Giovanni Bottesini. I was fortunate to learn much about this instrument through recitals given by Gary Karr, back when I was on the “other coast.” He would often introduce a performance with some verbal patter, saying things about his instrument like “You just want to hug it!” and “Think of it as chocolate!” Yesterday’s offering presented four bassists: Charles Chandler, Bowen Ha, Orion Miller, and Daniel G. Smith (SFS Associate Principal).

Their selection was “Passione amorosa,” composed by Bottesini for two basses and piano. The quartet arrangement was by Klaus Trumpf. The performance almost immediately took me back to the high spirits of Karr’s recitals, complete with the tongue-in-cheek qualities behind those spirits. Bottesini’s virtuoso demands were positively jaw-dropping; but all four of the players delivered a solid and confident command of every challenge that the composer raised. This could not have been a better way to prepare audience attention for the entire afternoon of chamber music.

Indeed, Paul Schoenfield’s “Café Music” was the perfect successor to “Passione amorosa.” If Bottesini was jaw-dropping, Schoenfield was just plain raucous. He wrote “Café Music” as a reflection on a night when he was the “house pianist” at Murray’s Restaurant in Minneapolis, determined to make sure that the “dinner music” for the guests was not just “background music!” He distilled those memories into a three-movement composition for piano trio, performed yesterday by violinist Melissa Kleinbart, Amos Yang on cello, and pianist John Wilson. They delivered a solid account of every one of Schoenfield’s twists and turns without ever short-changing the madcap spirit of the rhetoric.

Portrait photograph of Bohuslav Martinů taken in 1945 (source unknown, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Czech Republic license, from a Wikimedia Commons Web page)

The second half of the program took on a somewhat more sober tone. It began with a nonet composed in 1959 by Bohuslav Martinů. His instrumentation supplements a wind quintet with violin, viola, cello, and bass. This makes for a rich blend of sonorities, which figure significantly in the composer’s approach to overall rhetoric. The entire composition follows a “standard” three-movement framework: fast (Poco Allegro)-slow (Andante)-fast (Allegretto). This makes for a rich palette of sonorities complemented by the inventiveness of the composer’s thematic vocabulary. The wind players for this performance were Blair Francis Paponiu on flute, oboist Russ de Luna, Matthew Griffith on clarinet, bassoonist Justin Cummings, and Jessica Valieri on horn. They were joined by violinist Chen Zhao, Matthew Young on viola, cellist Davis You, and Bowen Ha on bass. This year has gotten off to a good start for Martinů with Steven Isserlis’ recital this past February but also because he was not overlooked in the recorded repertoire of David Oistrakh, recently reissued by Warner Classics.

The program concluded with Dmitri Shostakovich’s third string quartet, his Opus 73 in F major. This was composed not long after the end of World War II. His first major post-war undertaking was his Opus 70 (ninth) symphony in E-flat major, whose high spirits did not go down well with the Soviet authorities. To convince those authorities that the quartet would be a more “sobering” reflection on the past war, he provided them with “titles” for the quartet’s five movements:

1. Blithe ignorance of the future cataclysm
2. Rumblings of unrest and anticipation
3. Forces of war unleashed
4. In memory of the dead
5. The eternal question: why? and for what?

These titles were not included in yesterday afternoon’s program book, which is probably just as well! This was quartet music to be taken on its own terms; and my only annotation in my program book was for the final movement: “Fugue of sorts!”

Once again, the afternoon, taken as a whole, was a satisfying one, combining fond memories of the past with new adventures in discovery.

Duo Gazzana Release New (and Diverse) Album

Cover of the album being discussed

I am not sure how the latest ECM New Series album of performances by Duo Gazzana came to my attention, since I have not been able to associate it with any recent entries in my Inbox! This should not be a surprise, since that album has no title other than the listening of the five contributing composers: Francis Poulenc, William Walton, Luigi Dallapiccola, Alfred Schnittke, and Valentin Silvestrov. (This is not their “order of appearance” that I encountered when I downloaded the tracks!)

That said, I have now listened to the album several times; and I am delighted to be able to add it to my library. When I last wrote about performances by the Italian sisters Natascia Gazzana (violin) and Raffaella Gazzana (piano), I gave them “high marks for eclecticism!” Those familiar with all five of the above composers will probably agree with me that the duo’s commitment to eclecticism is as strong as ever. In this case, however, I would further argue that there is also a generous share of wit across all five of the contributing composers.

Mind you, while Schnittke is definitely capable of tongue-in-cheek rhetoric, his tongue tends to be a forked one! Silvestrov’s wit, on the other hand, is one of twists and turns (although it is impressive how many he can pack into a mere five minutes)! Poulenc’s sonata, on the other hand, is basically a Gallic romp, which I have known (and loved) for more than several years. My impressions of Walton’s toccata, lasting about a quarter of an hour, tended to remind me of when I learned that he once conducted the Hoffnung Festival Orchestra with a fly swatter! The final track is Dallapiccola’s “Tartiniana seconda,” which I probably would appreciate more were my knowledge of Tartini more thorough!

My overall impression is that I was entertained by this album, but it was an entertainment that activated a generous number of my “little grey cells” (with apologies to Agatha Christie)!

Choices for May 9 and 10, 2025

As of this writing, the second weekend of next month will not be as busy as the first. Nevertheless, choices will have to be made for both Friday and Saturday. In “order of appearance” the events are as follows:

Friday, May 9, 7 p.m. and Saturday, May 10, 4 p.m., War Memorial Opera House: The San Francisco Ballet School has announced a Spring Festival for this year. This will be a full program of works choreographed by past Artistic Directors Helgi Tomasson, Michael Smuin, and Lew Christensen, as well as current Artistic Director Tamara Rojo. There will also be excerpts from the two-act La Sylphide as choreographed by August Bournonville. (The ballet was created by Filippo Taglioni in 1832, but Bournonville’s 1836 version is the earliest to have survived.) A Web page has been created with a hyperlink to provide all options for purchasing tickets. They may also be purchased by calling Ticket Services at 415-865-2000 Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For those that do not already know, the venue is on the northwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and Grove Street (across Grove from Davies Symphony Hall).

Friday, May 9, 7:30 p.m., Community Music Center: The title of the next program to be presented by Ensemble for These Times is Mujeres Ahora (women now). It will be presented in collaboration with the San Francisco International Arts Festival; and, as might be expected, all the works on the program will be composed by women. In “order of appearance,” those composers are inti figgis-vizueta, Gabriela Lena Frank, Tania León, Carla Lucero, Claudia Montero, Angélica Negrón, and Gabriela Ortiz. General admission will be $25 with a livestream option for $20. Both options are available through a Humantix Web page. Further information is available by calling 415-399-9544. The Community Music Center is located in the Mission at 2781 544 Capp Street.

Eric Dudley conducting the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players

Saturday, May 10, 8 p.m., Brava Theater: The title of the final program in the 2024–2025 concert season of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players is entitled Shared Rituals. There will be five works on the program, all by Latinx composers. The program will feature four vocalists, Cara Gabrielson (soprano), Kindra Scharich (mezzo), Eric Dudley (tenor), and Ryan Bradford (baritone). There will also be a harpsichord performance by Sun Chang. The compositions themselves will include a United States premiere composed by Ana Lara, West Coast premieres by Miguel Chuaqui and Gabriella Ortiz (again), and a Bay Area premiere by Tania León (also again). Finally, there will be a 2008 solo guitar composition by Gabriela Lena Frank (yet again).

As usual, at 7 p.m. there will also be a Prelude Concert performance of “Comedía” by Paul Mortilla, which was commissioned by Friction Quartet with support from Chamber Music America. They will be joined by both the vocal quartet and the harpsichordist in the composer’s setting of texts from Inferno, the first of the three volumes in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. General admission will be $45 with a student rate of $18. Both options are available through a City Box Office Web page. The Brava Theater is located in the Mission at 2781 24th Street.

“What a Swell Party This is!”

Photograph of Michael Tilson Thomas made during the filming of Keeping Score on September 1, 2008 (photograph by Jbitman, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

Tickets for last night’s San Francisco Symphony (SFS) performance in Davies Symphony Hall were sold out before I could write my monthly preview article on the April schedule at the end of last month. Many readers probably know by now that the program was a celebration of the 80th birthday of Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT). Those familiar with him will probably not be surprised that he appeared on the program as conductor, composer, and arranger. Nevertheless, he spent most of the evening sitting in a chair set up at the front of the stage, just to the right of the podium with Joshua Robison at his side.

His appearances as conductor served as “bookends” for the entire program. Both involved the full forces of the SFS ensemble. The program began with Benjamin Britten’s Opus 34 “The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra,” given the more formal subtitle “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell.” I have had a long-standing love affair with this music ever since I took a semester in Orchestration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (The professor had known Britten before he moved to the United States.) The final selection was Ottorino Respighi’s “Feste Romane” (Roman festivals), the last of his three Roman symphonic poems, preceded by “Fontane de Roma” (fountains of Rome) and  “Pini di Roma” (pines of Rome).

Soloists included two mezzos with many past experiences with MTT. Sasha Cooke sang “Immer wieder” from his Meditations on Rilke, which she had previously performed for its world premiere. She was also joined at the piano by John Wilson for a performance of his song “Grace.” She sang his duet “Not Everyone Thinks That I’m Beautiful” with Frederica von Stade in an orchestration of MTT’s score provided by Bruce Coughlin. Wilson also accompanied von Stade in a performance of “La flûte de Pan” from Claude Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis. Tenor Ben Jones sang two MTT songs, “Drift Off to Sleep” and “Answered Prayers,” in orchestrations by MTT working with Bruce Coughlin. Finally, on the more “pops” side, there were two performances by vocalist Jessica Vosk. She sang MTT’s “Sentimental Again,” which he orchestrated in partnership with Larry Moore. This was preceded by one of the funnier songs Frank Loesser wrote for Guys and Dolls, “Take Back Your Mink,” for which she was joined by members of the SFS Chorus prepared by Director Jenny Wong. The Chorus also performed the Finale from Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms.

MTT shared the podium with Teddy Abrams and Edwin Outwater, who, in turn, divided the selections on the program roughly equally. Abrams led the one remaining work that did not involve vocal performance. This was the overture to Khantshe in Amerike, a Yiddish musical by Joseph Rumshinsky. MTT originally arranged that overture for The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, which he first performed in Carnegie Hall in 2005.

As might be expected, there was an encore. All four of the vocal soloists were joined by the chorus and orchestra in another Bernstein selection. This one was “Some other time” from the musical On the Town with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. After Respighi’s roaring thunder, this provided just the right calming influence for leaving Davies in a good mood.

Noe Music to Conclude Season with Catalyst

Catalyst Quartet members Karlos Rodriguez, Paul Laraia, Abi Fayette, and Karla Donehew Perez (from the quartet’s biography Web page)

Unless my archives deceive me, the last time I encountered the Catalyst Quartet of violinists Karla Donehew Perez and Abi Fayette (alternating in leading from first chair), violist Paul Laraia, and cellist Karlos Rodriguez was at the 2023 PIVOT Festival presented by San Francisco Performances. At the beginning of this month, they will return to San Francisco to perform the final concert in the current Noe Music season. The program they have prepared will revisit Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Opus 10 quintet in F-sharp minor for clarinet and strings and will introduce “Gumboots” by David Bruce, which they describe as “inventive and riotous.”

As usual, the performance will take place at 4 p.m. on a Sunday, May 4. The venue will be the Noe Valley Ministry, located at 1021 Sanchez Street, between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street. Open seating tickets may be purchased with prices of $45 for general admission and $15 for students. As in the past, there will be a limited number of reserved seats in the first few rows, which will be sold for $60. (Each price also has a modest handling fee.) All available tickets may be purchased through a single Web page.

Joe Lovano and his “Polish Conspirators”

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of DL Media Music)

When I first learned about the release of the ECM album Homage led by tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano and the Marcin Wasilewskl Trio, the leader’s name rang a bell, which I could not quite place. It turns out that he participated in the ECM Swept Away album led by bassist Marc Johnson and pianist Eliane Elias, which I had written about during my Examiner.com days in an article dated September 18, 2012. I described the music on that album as “an introspective quietude, rather than a more superficial retreat into ‘easy listening.’”

Introspection definitely prevails over the five of the six tracks of Lovano tunes on Homage. Possibly because his trio players are Polish, the album begins with “Love in The Garden” by Polish composer Zbigniew Seifert. This basically sets the mood for the Lovano tracks that follow. It would be fair to say that the spirit of Swept Away returns in this new release. Lovano is definitely right at home with introspection. On each track he says his piece with embellishments that never exaggerate the frills. This is just the sort of understatement that one often encounters on ECM releases and encourages focus on the part of the attentive listener.

Those encounters are due, for the most part, to the production efforts of Manfred Eicher. Lovano composed the title track of the album to celebrate Eicher’s 80th birthday. In that respect, this is a landmark, not only of Eicher but also of that distinctively subdued approach to invention that one encounters so frequently not only in Lovano’s work but also on so many other ECM albums.

Choices for May 2–4, 2025

Once again, the first weekend of next month will be a busy one. However, because we are now approaching the end of the season, there will not be any “projections into the future” for any of the offerings, as there has been in the past (such as last month). As usual, both the events and their venues will be diverse. Also, as in the past, readers will benefit from having a scrolling facility for making their selections among what follows.

Friday, May 2, 1 p.m., Cadillac Hotel: Only yesterday I posted news of a Concerts at the Cadillac offering that will take place half an hour in the future of the time at which I am writing this (which happens to be 12:30 p.m.)! Fortunately, the next of these events will take place a bit further in the future, one week from today. Lady Bianca accompanies her vocal work at the piano and has earned the title “Queen of the Blues and Gospel.” (No, I do not know who bestowed that title on her!) The Handsome Man Trio will provide backup, but identifying the performers in this trio has been as fruitless as finding the names of the members of The Handsome Man Jazz Band!

As most readers probably know by now, the Cadillac Hotel is located at 380 Eddy Street, on the northeast corner of Leavenworth Street in the San Francisco Civic Center. The lobby features the Patricia Walkup Memorial Piano, which will be Blanca’s instrument. It is a meticulously restored 1884 Model D Steinway concert grand, whose original soundboard is still intact. All Concerts at the Cadillac events are presented without charge. The purpose of the series is to provide high-quality music to the residents of the hotel and the Tenderloin District; but all are invited to visit the venue that calls itself “The House of Welcome Since 1907.”

Saturday, May 3, 2 p.m., Presidio Theatre: The New Century Chamber Orchestra will conclude their season with a program entitled simply DANCE! The program will be based on tracks from the album with the same title. There will be selections from both ballet (the “White Swan” pas de deux from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s score for Swan Lake) and comic opera (the “Galop infernal,” better known as “can-can” from Orpheus in the Underworld by Jacques Offenbach). The program will begin with selections from the three Water Music suites composed by George Frideric Handel: HWV 348 in F major, HWV 349 in D major, and HWV 350 in G major. Raucous Offenbach will be followed by the “Five ‘Deutsche Tänze’ with Coda and seven Trios,” D. 89, originally composed for string quartet. The program will conclude with Camille Saint-Saëns Opus 40, the symphonic poem given the title “Danse macabre.” The Presidio Theatre is located in the Presidio (as might be expected) at 99 Moraga Avenue. Tickets may be purchased through a Groupmuse Web page for $20, with a discounted rate of $10 for Supermusers.

Saturday, May 3, 7 p.m., and Sunday, May 4, 4 p.m., Calvary Presbyterian Church: While other series are drawing to their respective conclusions, the San Francisco Choral Society will open its 2025 season with two performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 232 setting of the Mass text in the key of B minor. They will be joined by the Orchestra of Cantata Collective and five vocal soloists: soprano Michele Kennedy, mezzos Heidi Waterman and Shauna Fallihee, tenor Michael Jankosky, and bass-baritone Wilford Kelly. Ticket prices are $40, $49, and $60. City Box Office has created separate pages for Saturday and Sunday, each showing where seats are still available at what prices.

Saturday, May 3, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre: The Guitar Series presented jointly by San Francisco Performances and the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts will conclude with a solo performance by guitarist Manuel Barrueco. He has prepared his own transcriptions of music by Bach (the BWV 1007 solo cello suite) and Astor Piazzolla (two of his “Tango-Étude” compositions in the keys of C major and A minor, respectively). The Bach selection will be followed by Manuel Ponce’s “Sonata clásica,” composed in 1928 as an homage to the nineteenth-century guitarist Fernando Sor. Heitor Villa-Lobos will be the only composer represented by two works: his first “Chôros” composition, given the title “Chôro tipico,” and the first of the five 1940 set of preludes, entitled “Melodia lírica.”

Ticket prices are $75 (premium Orchestra and front and center Dress Circle), $65 (remainder of Orchestra, all Side Boxes, and center rear Dress Circle), and $55 (remaining Dress Circle and Balcony). As always, they may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. The venue will be Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is the main entrance to the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel.

Saturday, May 3, 8 p.m., Old First Presbyterian Church: The San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra will present a program of premiere works by Bay Area composers. The composers and their respective works are listed in alphabetical order as follows:

• Harry Bernstein – March of Destiny
• John G. Bilotta – Scattering Poems
• James W. Cook – Zamenhof Counterpoint
• Michael Orlinsky – The Highwayman
• Lisa Scola Prosek – Waterfall
• Yifan Shao – title not yet announced

Admission will be $25, but a sliding scale is available. All purchases will be made at the door, and cash is preferred. The church is located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. Those wishing further information are invited to call 650-667-0160.

Max Ary with Alexa Anderson in the title role of La Flora (photograph by Valentina Sadiul, courtesy of Ars Minerva)

Sunday, May 4, 1 p.m., Roxie Theater: Most readers know that this is a movie house. It will host the screening of the 2024 production of the opera La Flora, presented by Ars Minerva. The performance was staged by Céline Ricci, and the orchestra was conducted by Matthew Dirst. Ricci has made it her mission to revive operas from the distant past, and this was composed in 1681 by Antonio Sartorio and Marc Antonio Ziani. The venue is located at 3117 16th Street, just west of the intersection with Mission Street. General admission will be $15. However, there are a variety of options; and a Web page has been created for all the different purchase options. [added 4/27, 10:05 a.m.:

Sunday, May 4, 7 p.m., The Red Poppy Art House: Once again, the Poppy will present a “bleeding edge” option. This time the performers will be the Karma Roulette Quartet. A rich diversity of percussion instruments are played by Michaelle Goerlitz and Brian Rice. Violinist Michele Walther also contributes vocals, and pianist Michael Smolens does the same. There will be two 50-minute sets. The music they play draws upon sources from West-Africa, Afro-Cuba, North-India, Turkey, and Brazil; and their genres include jazz, funk, and classical. The concert is one of the events in this year’s SF International Arts Festival. Tickets are being managed by Humanitix, which dedicates all of its profits from booking fees to charity. It has created a Web page for online purchases of $25.]

Sunday, May 4, 7:30 p.m., Musicians Union: The next SIMM (Static Illusion Methodical Madness) Series program hosted by Outsound Presents will be a two-set evening. One set will be taken by the duo B. ensemble, whose members are Lisa Mezzacappa on acoustic bass and drummer Jason Levis. Pianist Brett Carson will give a solo performance in the other set. As usual, the performance will take place at the Musicians Union, located in SoMa at 116 9th Street. Admission will be by donation with a sliding scale between $10 and $25.

Guarneri Quartet: the Schubert Recordings

Back in my student days, the First Viennese School usually referred to the trio of Joseph Haydn at one end, Ludwig van Beethoven at the other, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart between the two of them. I am not sure when I first encountered Franz Schubert being added to the list; but, where productivity is concerned, Haydn and Schubert definitely make for strong “bookends.” However, while Haydn left a decisive mark for both string quartets (many of which he performed as second violin with Mozart on viola) and symphonies, Schubert is probably best known for the songs he composed, which number over 600.

Where his string quartets are concerned, there are fifteen published works, one of which (the twelfth) is the unfinished D. 703 “Quartettsatz” in C minor. This is one of only five that can be found in the Sony Masterworks box set, Guarneri Quartet: The Complete Recordings 1965–2005. It is coupled with D. 804 in A minor, often called “Rosamunde” for the set of variations based on a theme from previously composed incidental music, D. 810. Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” quartet in D minor, which includes a passing reference to the D. 531 lied “Der Tod und das Mädchen,” is coupled with Hugo Wolf’s “Italian Serenade,” presumably intended to “quiet things down” following the intense performance of D. 810. The remaining quartet is the last, D. 887 in G major, long enough to fill an entire CD.

Cover of the Guarneri Quartet album of Schubert’s “Trout” quintet (from the Amazon.com Web page)

There are only two other Schubert CDs, both of which are quintets. D. 956 is his only string quintet, scored for two violins, viola, and two cellos. Leonard Rose is the “visiting cellist” on the recording. This was one of his last compositions and was only published after his death. The other is D. 667, scored for violin, viola, cello, bass, and piano. This is known as the “Trout” quintet for the movement that is a set of variations on the theme Schubert’s D. 550 lied “Die Forelle” (the trout). The pianist is Emanuel Ax, and the bass is played by Julius Levine.

I am definitely glad to have all of these selections in my collection, and I am more than satisfied with the sensitivity of interpretation that the Guarneri players bring to them. Nevertheless, I have to invoke, once again, Leonard Slatkin’s precept, “You can never conduct enough Haydn or Schubert.” In the box set that Sony has compiled, the total number of CDs allocated Haydn and Schubert together is significantly less than the number for Mozart, as well as for the complete quartets of Beethoven!

To be fair, all of the Guarneri recitals I attended took place during the final quarter of the last century, when I spent almost all of my spare time going to performances in Manhattan. This made for a healthy diet of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert over the course of my many visits. For that matter, my most recent encounter with Schubert in performance took place early last month, when the Calidore Quartet played D. 703 as their encore. The impact was as strong as ever, so I have every reason to look forward to further Schubert encounters in the future. Meanwhile, he occupies a generous amount of space in my collection, including performances of all of the quartets by the Melos Quartet!

SFS Conductor Debuts in 2025–26

The number of conductors that will be leading San Francisco Symphony (SFS) subscription performances during the 2025–26 season is relatively modest. To be more specific, there will be seven of them! (“For the record,” as the say, only two of the names are familiar to me through either recordings or past performances that I have attended.) All of them involve concerts accounted for in previous articles. As a result, I shall review these debut performances according to previous categories as follows:

Alexi Kenney (2019 photograph, © Grittani Creative)

Four of the conductors will lead programs that include works by living composers as follows:

1. November 20–22: Violinist Alexi Kenney will return, this time serving as leader in the Baroque program that will begin with the first SFS performances of Olli Mustonen’s second nonet for strings.
2. January 22–24: Finnish conductor John Storgårds will lead the program that includes “The Rapids of Life” by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen.
3. May 29–30: Peruvian conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya will lead the United States premiere performance of Jimmy Lopez’ trombone concerto “Shift” with SFS Principal Trombone Timothy Higgins as soloist.
4. June 12–14: Chinese-born Tianyi Lu, now living in New Zealand 3ill lead the first SFS performance of Imam Habibi’s “Zhiân.”

The month of October will see two conductor debuts, each presenting a returning violinist:

1. October 16–18: German conductor Jun Märkl will lead Leonidas Kavakos’ performance of Béla Bartók’s second  violin concerto.
2. October 24–26: David Afkham, also German, will lead a performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto with Sergey Khachatryuan as soloist.

That leaves only one remaining debut, which will be that of Italian conductor Daniele Rustioni; his soloists will be cellist Daniel Müller-Schott performing Antonín Dvořák’s cello concerto.

Kathy Holly to Lead Vocal Gig at Cadillac

Kathy Holly on the cover of her Roundtrip album (from the Amazon.com Web page for this recording)

This is definitely a “last minute” article; but it was only yesterday that I received word that the next Concerts at the Cadillac offering will be taking place tomorrow! This will be a program of cabaret songs, show tunes, standards, solo, and duets featuring vocalist Kathy Holly. Accompaniment will be provided by pianist John Steiner, Sandy Bailey alternating between bass and ukulele (not the usual diversity), and drummer Bob Blankenship. Holly will also feature a guest artist, singer and songwriter Tom Stafford.

As usual, this show will begin at 1 p.m. on Friday, April 25. The Cadillac Hotel is located at 380 Eddy Street, on the northeast corner of Leavenworth Street. The lobby features the Patricia Walkup Memorial Piano, which will be Steiner’s instrument. It is a meticulously restored 1884 Model D Steinway concert grand, whose original soundboard is still intact. All Concerts at the Cadillac events are presented without charge. The purpose of the series is to provide high-quality music to the residents of the hotel and the Tenderloin District; but all are invited to visit the venue that calls itself “The House of Welcome Since 1907.”

Pharoah Sanders after John Coltrane

Pharoah Sanders performing with pianist William Henderson (photograph taken at the Altes Pfandhaus in Cologne, Germany, on February 7, 2008, photographer Hans Peter Schaefer, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

I first became aware of tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders during my student days at the campus radio station for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My own broadcasts were almost entirely of classical music, but my personal interest in the twentieth century made me more than a bit of an outlier. As a result, when a copy of John Coltrane’s Ascension first arrived, I found myself as drawn to it as I had been to composers like Anton Webern.

One result is that the album introduced me to a more than generous number of jazz musicians whose names had previously been unfamiliar. One of them was Pharoah Sanders, one of the three tenor saxophonists on the recording (Coltrane being one and Archie Shepp the other). Since that time, I have always been aware of Sanders’ name when listening to jazz on the radio; but I never added any of the albums he led to my collection.

Things changed this past February when I received electronic mail from DL Media about a reissue of a Sanders album by the Mack Avenue Music Group on the Strata-East label. The title of the album is Izipho Zam (my gifts). This is also the title of the last of the three tracks on the album, which is about two minutes shy of half an hour. It is preceded by two tracks accounting for about twenty minutes: “Prince of Peace” and “Balance.”

Like Ascension, this is a large ensemble album with a total of thirteen performers. Sanders leads with his saxophone but also contributes to percussion performance. The advance material I received describes the “Izipho Zam” composition as “an exploration of dissonance and harmony with West African percussion and meditative chants.” To some extent that reflects the approach to jazz that Sanders had been taking in his performances with Coltrane; but Sanders’ approach to those meditative qualities is not quite as aggressive as Coltrane’s had been in his work.

For better or worse, “Ascension” assaults the listener with a gut-punch from the opening gesture that never lets up over the course of about 40 minutes. In “Izipho Zam” Sanders comes across as more interested in a ritualistic process that draws the listening into his own perspectives on meditation. Some may be put off by the vocal work by Leon Thomas, but my own reaction was that of yet another perspective on the underlying ritual.

Sanders died on September 24, 2022, meaning that I never had a chance to see him in performance; but I find that I can still appreciate his presence through his creation of “Izipho Zam.”

SFP’s Annual “Gift” to Subscribers and Donors

Violinist Geneva Lewis (courtesy of SFP)

Every year San Francisco Performances (SFP) offers a free concert to its subscribers and those that had donated at the level of Member or higher. Last year there were actually two of these “Gift” concerts, the first taking place in February with a performance of the piano trio with pianist Juho Pohjonen performing with cellist Jonathan Swensen and Stephen Waarts on violin and the second in April (almost exactly a year ago) with cellist Camille Thomas accompanied at the piano by Julien Brocal. This year’s event took place last night in Herbst Theatre, a performance by violinist Geneva Lewis, making her SFP recital debut and accompanied at the piano by Evren Ozel, making his SFP debut as well.

The program provided an impressively broad scope beginning with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the opening selection and spanning to the last decade of the last century with Valentin Silvestrov’s “Post scriptum.” The early nineteenth century was represented by Robert and Clara Schumann, both of whom composed sets of three “Romances” for violin and piano. The program concluded at the other end of the century with César Franck’s A major sonata, which he composed as a wedding gift for the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe and has been acknowledged (including by Wikipedia) as his most popular work.

I found this to be an engaging journey of both the familiar and discovery. I have become familiar with Silvestrov primarily through ECM recordings, so I was looking forward to this recital opportunity. I was not disappointed; and, in the last of the three movements, Lewis ripped into pizzicato passages that had me on the edge of my seat! I also found myself wondering whether the final movement of Clara’s sonata served as reflections on Robert.

Most important, however, was how the Franck sonata served as a “grand finale.” Franck himself was a keyboardist, and it quickly becomes evident that his intention was that the two “voices” should perform as equals. Lewis and Ozel seemed to be aware of this intention and could not have done a better job of satisfying it. Following up on this “joint debut” appearance, I hope that the wait for a return visit will not be too long!

California Bach Society: Concluding the Season

Detail for the 1529 (or later) portrait of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the Elder (public domain, from the Wikimedia Commons Web page)

The final concert of the 2024–2025 season of the California Bach Society will take place at the beginning of next month. The ensemble will be led by Interim Artistic Director Magen Solomon. The title of the program is Brilliant Bach: Borrowings and Transformations.

As many readers can probably guess, the “primary source” for borrowing is Martin Luther. Bach appropriated one of his hymns for the BWV 226 double-choir motet Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf (the Spirit gives aid to our weakness). Those with a rich appreciation of Bach will probably enjoy the BWV 236 Mass setting in G major, since each of its six movements is based on themes from earlier cantatas. The program will conclude with one of the best-known of the cantatas, BWV 4, Christ lag in Todes Banden (Christ lay in death’s bonds).

The San Francisco performance of this program will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 2. The venue will be the St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, which is located near Potrero Hill at 500 De Haro Street. Individual tickets are available for general admission at $40 with discounted rates for seniors and students. A Web page has been created for such tickets.  Doors will open at 7 p.m.

“Up” to be Released as a Recording this Friday

Cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)

Those with long memories may recall that pianist Sarah Cahill presented the world premiere performance of Riley Nicholson’s “Up” at the first Faculty Artist Series recital for the academic year at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) in September of 2022. He had composed the work for two pianos and Cahill performed it with her colleague Regina Myers, both of whom had commissioned the work. When I wrote about this event, I commended Nicholson for “the intense flow of differing phrase structures with occasional quiet interludes to keep the attentive listener from the fatigue of sorting out all those differences.”

This Friday, “Up” will be given its first release on recording. Cahill and Myers made that recording at SFCM in 2024. As is so often the case, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for pre-ordering the album, which will be available for MP3 download. I was fortunate enough to be able to listen to this in advance, and I was impressed by the quality of reproduction of the thick textures of this keyboard music.

When I downloaded the tracks for this album to prepare for writing this article, the download also included a brief program note. Sadly, that note was not included on the Amazon.com download page. My guess is that the note was prepared by Nicholson himself. As a result, I feel it is only fair to reproduce his own comments for the sake of those that might be interested in listening to the recording:

Up's one unifying theme is simply that, "up". The piece moves 'up' in so many directions: literally, opening with an upward motif that gets pinged between pianos in a groovy, dizzying counterpoint; gradually with increasing frequency moving up the circle of fifths; with upbeat syncopations and tempi; constantly one upping itself with a burgeoning energy that trips over itself with virtuosic fits; and many other upward motions and themes. Loosely akin to a theme and variations, each movement is a different interpretation of the theme "up", and given the frenetic energy of every moment, tranquil interludes provide a necessary buffer the movements, and give the performers a chance to catch their breath. Even with the addition of these palette cleansing interludes, the entirety of the work is a manic trip that both explores joyous energy and that darker underbelly of positivity when energy and motion become simply too much to be contained. 

Listening to Joe Henderson (Finally!)

Cover of the album being discussed in this article

Having written at the end of last week about the remastering of a solo guitar album of Joe Pass by Concord Music, I wish to turn my attention to another major product of the remastering effort. This is the album Multiple, with saxophonist Joe Henderson leading a quintet whose other members are Larry Willis on electric piano and additional electronic gear, drummer Jack DeJohnette joined by Arthur Jenkins on other percussion, and bassist Dave Holland, who alternates between the upright instrument and an electric bass. Two guitarists, James Ulmer and John Thomas, each contribute to two different tracks.

All of the tracks were initially recorded on January 30 and 31, 1973. However, in the interest of “jazz fusion” the entire content was subjected to a generous about of “post-processing.” The result consists of layers of overdubbing taking place during studio work the following February 3 and April 5 and 13. I must confess that I have never been a big fan of “studio synthesis.” I prefer to listen to music that is being performed rather than processed.

On the other hand, I was glad to see that Henderson shared the creative process with two of the members of his combo. Only three of the tracks are Henderson originals. They happen to be the odd-numbered tracks as follows:

1. “Tress-Cun-Deo-Ls

3. “Song for Sinners”

5. “Me, Among Others”

The second track was composed by DeJohnette, and Holland provided the fourth.

I sometimes fear that, here in San Francisco, Henderson is better known for the performance space in the SFJAZZ Center than he is for his reputation as a performer or for his presence on jazz albums. There is a generous amount of invention in those Henderson originals, not to mention the improvisation he brings to the other two tracks on the album, “Bwaata” and “Turned Around.” What is important is that an album like Multiple reinforces Henderson as a creator, rather than just the “object of legacy” he has become at the SFJAZZ Center. By all rights, I should have been aware of the creativity on Multiple long before this month; but I am glad that the remastering process brought him back to my attention.

The Bleeding Edge: 4/21/2025

This will be week in which the previously reported events significantly outnumber the new ones. Ironically, those events account for only three venues, one of which only seldom shows up on the Bleeding Edge. These are as follows:

1. The Center for New Music will present performances at 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 24, and Saturday, April 26, winding up the month with a 2 p.m. performance on Sunday, April 27.
2. Kronos Festival 2025 will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 25, and Saturday, April 26, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 27.
3. The final Old First Concerts performance of the month will begin at 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 27.

That leaves four events, one of which has a venue that is not a “usual suspect.” Details are as follows:

Friday, April 25, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: This week’s installment of Other Dimensions in Sound, curated by reed player David Boyce, will be a solo performance by guitarist Pete Schmitt. As most readers probably know by now, this venue is located in the Mission at 3036 24th Street, between Treat Avenue and Harrison Street. As always, there is no charge for admission, presumably to encourage visitors to consider buying a book.

Poster for the event at Adobe Books (from the BayImproviser Web page)

Saturday, April 26, 8 p.m., Adobe Books: Adobe Books seems to be getting more than a little coy in providing information about events on its Web site. Fortunately, BayImproviser has a Web page, which seems to suggest that this will be a four-set program. One of the sets will be taken by Kurumi Kadoya, visiting from Japan. The other three sets will present Mason Jones, Birdspanker, and Adult Math. Adobe Books is located in the Mission at 3130 24th Street. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m., and a $10 donation is usually requested to support the performers. In the absence of any further information at present, readers should be free to call 415-864-3936.

Saturday, April 26, 8:30 p.m., The Lab: This evening’s program is shared with Arab.AMP to “present a diasporic discotheque which imagines past, present and future soundscapes.” The opening set will be taken by queer Iranian-American DJ, dancer, and musician, DJ ariB. They will be followed by the “avant-garde sound art project” Checkpoint 303. For those unfamiliar with the venue, The Lab is located in the Mission at 2948 16th Street. This is particularly convenient for those using public transportation, since it is a short walk to the corner of 16th Street and Mission Street. Busses stop at that corner for both north-south and east-west travel, and downstairs there is a station for the BART line running under Mission Street.

Sunday, April 27, 1 p.m., Dolores Deluxe: According to my archives, I have not written about The Holly Martins since the beginning of the 2023–24 season! They are the trio of Kasey Knudsen on alto saxophone, Eric Vogler on guitar, and vocalist Lorin Benedict. This also appears to be my first encounter with the venue, which is located in the Mission at 3500 22nd Street.

Kissin Brings Satisfying Shostakovich to Davies

2021 photograph of Evgeny Kissin (by Gkobe, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, from Wikimedia Commons)

The second half of last night’s solo piano recital program by Evgeny Kissin for the Great Performers Series in Davies Symphony Hall was devoted entirely to Dmitry Shostakovich. He began with the composer’s second piano sonata, Opus 61 in B minor, composed in 1943 during World War II. This was followed by two of the prelude-fugue couplings from his Opus 87 collection accounting for all major and minor keys. Kissin’s selections were in D-flat major (Number 15) and D minor (Number 24).

His last visit to Davies was a little less than a year ago. On that occasion, his “Russian selection” was Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 14, the second piano sonata in D minor. Personally, I was glad to see Shostakovich get more attention, particularly as a reflection on the selections by Johann Sebastian Bach and Frédéric Chopin that began the program. Kissin displayed a firm and confident command of the many technical challenges in Opus 61, but he always also found the right dispositions of expressiveness behind those challenges. I must confess, however, that I have a particular fondness for the D-flat major prelude, which not only presents Shostakovich at his most prankish but even suggests influence from the English Christmas carol “We Wish You a Merry Christmas!”

Sadly, where expressiveness was concerned, neither Bach nor Chopin received much attention during the first half of the program. Bach’s BWV 826 partita in C minor includes three dance movements (Allemande, Courante, and Sarabande); and it was clear that Kissin cared little about any sense of choreographic rhetoric. Taken as a whole, it seems as if he just wanted to deliver a massive collection of notes with little attention to how those notes grouped into shapes or how those shapes conveyed any expressiveness.

Chopin was represented with three selections. The first two were nocturnes: the first from Opus 27 in C-sharp minor and the second from Opus 32 in A-flat major. There was as little sense of expression in either of Kissin’s accounts as there had been in his approach to Bach. He then wrapped up the set with Opus 54, the fourth scherzo, composed in the key of E major. This was all banging and no coherence. If there was any sense of expression at all, it was buried in the rubble.

Kissin took three encores, none of which were announced. The first was more Bach, which, unless I am mistaken, was an arrangement of a Sinfonia from one of the cantatas. (Which one, I cannot say!) This was followed by two more Chopin offerings. I cannot account for the first, but the second awakened fond memories of a ballet by James Waring in which the dancers played Pat-a-cake. This was the second of the Opus 64 waltzes in the key of C-sharp minor.

That account was engaging enough for me to leave Davies with a positive disposition!

SFS: Update to Next Month’s Guerrero Program

Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero (from the Web page providing details for the SFS concert he will conduct)

Last summer, when I wrote my article about the conductors that would visit the podium of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) during the current season, I was interested enough in Giancarlo Guerrero that I included his photograph! That program was given the title Talent & Phoenix, which was also the title of a work that Gabriel Kahane composed on an SFS commission that had been scheduled for performance under Guerrero’s baton. (This struck me as important enough that I included a photograph of Guerrero in my article!)

Sadly, the performance of this work has been postponed to a future date not yet announced. The good news, however, is that the program will still begin with the first SFS performance of Kaija Saariaho’s “Asteroid 4179: Toutatis.” The second half of the program will still present Ottorino Respighi’s “Fountains of Rome,” which will now be coupled with “Pines of Rome.” (Those familiar with the latter will know that it will bring the entire program to a roaring conclusion!) In the first half of the program, Saariaho’s composition will be followed by the 1947 version of the music that Igor Stravinsky composed for Michel Fokine’s one-act ballet in four “tableaux,” “Petrushka.”

As most readers probably already know, this performance will take place in Davies Symphony Hall. The address is 201 Van Ness Avenue; but it occupies the entire block with Van Ness to the west, Franklin Street to the east, Hayes Street to the south, and Grove Street to the north. The entrance is on the Grove Street side, which is also where tickets may be purchased at the Box Office. Tickets are currently available at prices from $49 in the Second Tier to $149 in the Orchestra and Boxes. (Tickets for the Terrace areas behind the stage are not currently available for this event.) A Web page has been created for online purchases. Tickets may also be purchased by calling the SFS Box Office at 415-864-6000.

One More Time, Ludwig!

It turns out that, after having recorded the complete string quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven (early, middle, and late), including the Opus 133 “Grosse Fuge,” the Guarneri Quartet released one other album of that composer’s music. The selection was his Opus 29 quintet in C major, with the second viola part being performed by the rather distinguished guest artist Pinchas Zukerman. Since the repertoire of these quintets is rather limited, RCA (which originally released the vinyl version) coupled this quintet, which was composed in 1801, with Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 87 quintet in B-flat major, composed in 1845, towards the end of his short life.

Opus 29 is not the only quintet that Beethoven composed; but, as the Wikipedia page for this composition puts it, it is his “only full-scale, original composition in the string quintet genre.” That same article also suggests that this composition subsequently inspired both Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms. As a mere listener, however, I can only fall back on the spirit of my favorite past slogan of the Sunday edition of The New York Times: “You don’t have to read it all, but it’s good to know it’s all there!” Because both San Francisco Performances and the San Francisco Symphony provide a generous share of engaging chamber music recitals, I am glad to know that I can be prepared should one of those recitals include the performance of Beethoven’s quintet!

The only index for Guarneri Quartet: The Complete Recordings 1965–2005, found on the bottom of the box set

Mind you, Sony will not make my preparatory efforts particularly easy. The only index to the contents can be found on the bottom of the box set. (Fortunately, the Amazon.com Web page recognized this as useful information and provided an “expanded view” option.) That provides the only information for finding further details about the track listening for each of the 49 CDs in the collection! The Guarneri Quartet disbanded in 2009, leaving behind a rich legacy of their performances; but I find myself more than a little miffed at how little respect Sony showed to that legacy.

Movie Music Arranged for Violin and Guitar

The latest OMNI on-Location video produced by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts was released this morning on YouTube. The performance was a duo presented by the Desiderio brothers, Gennaro on violin and Aniello on guitar. They presented an arrangement (presumably their own) of the theme music that John Williams composed for Stephen Spielberg’s movie Schindler’s List.

Gennaro and Aniello Desiderio performing in the video discussed in this article

The film was made this past January 10. The site was the Residenza d’epoca “Palazzo Cusani” in Solopacca in the Province of Benevento, which is in the Italian Campania region to the northeast of Naples. The above screen shot suggests that the performance took place in the library of this dwelling.

Those familiar with the film will probably recognize the poignant connotations of Williams’ music. However, it would be fair to say that the Desiderio brothers were more interested in the interplay between theme and accompaniment than they were in those connotations. Williams could, of course, be very good at poignancy; but I found that I could appreciate this performance as “pure music” without being overtaken by the ways in which it had been composed to serve Spielberg’s intense narrative. Since the video lasts less than five minutes, viewers are likely to be drawn more to the music itself than to its service to Spielberg’s narrative.

SFS Commissions and Premieres in 2025–26

Playbill for the Vienna Premiere of Don Giovanni in 1788 (from the Wikipedia Web page, public domain)

Like yesterday’s article about debut performances during the 2025–26 season of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), the category of “Commissions and Premieres” involves previously accounted for performance dates. Indeed, with the exception of John Adams’ “Short Ride on a Fast Machine,” all of the “Works by Living Composers” fall into this category. That leaves only three other premiere performances, all by works from past centuries. The composers and their respective selections are as follows:

1. Johann Sebastian Bach: Easter Oratorio (BWV 249)
2. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: aria from Don Giovanni (K. 527) sung by Golda Schultz
3. Ralph Vaughan Williams: the overture to the incidental music composed for Aristophanes’ play The Wasps

(On a personal note, I have a particular fondness for the “special effects” at the beginning of the Vaughan Williams overture!)

Guarneri Beethoven Journey Ends at Beginning

Original album cover for the Beethoven “early” quartets (from the Amazon.com Web page for that album)

This month’s “journey” of performances by the Guarneri Quartet of the string quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven began in the “middle” and then advanced to the “late” quartets. All that remains are the six Opus 18 (“early”) quartets, composed between 1798 and 1800 on a commission from Prince Joseph Franz Maximilian Lobkowitz. There are those that assume that these works reflect the influences of by Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. While this may be the case, I have always felt that Beethoven was still determined to find his own voice.

Personally, I find more than enough opportunities to appreciate these quartets for their own merits, rather than reflecting on the influences of the “older masters.” Certainly, the interpretations provided by the Guarneri players make a strong case that Beethoven had found that voice and knew how to exercise it. From the very first quartet, whose slow movement is described as “affettuoso ed appassionato,” it is clear that Beethoven not only had his own ideas but also knew how to cultivate them. Indeed, I tend to find all the attention lavished on the later quartets to verge on pretentiousness.

The “bottom line” is that attentive listening should always be approached as a journey of discovery, regardless of “historical context.” Mind you, that context often discloses where discovery may be found; but there should always be an element of freshness to foster attention. Granted, one cannot escape the repetitive nature of any recording. Nevertheless, all of the Beethoven quartets (including the earliest of them) are rich with inventive explorations. No matter how familiar these quartets become, there will always be opportunities for new discoveries.