SFCMP to Continue 54th Season in About a Month

Eric Dudley conducting the SFCMP ensemble (from its City Box Office Web page)

Yesterday the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players finalized (as of now) plans for the second program in its 54th concert season. The title of the program, as announced this past summer, will be Tracing Paths. Selections for the first half were made in honor of Black History Month, while the second half will see the return of former Artistic Director Steven Schick in his capacity as percussionist.

The evening will begin with a work by Jonathan Bingham composed in 2015 and deliberately given the title “Untitled.” He composed this piece in tribute to a tradition of untitled works by visual artists from Pablo Picasso to Jean-Michel Basquiat, who eschewed titles to allow viewers to form their own interpretations. This will be coupled with “No More,” an anti-apartheid vocal work by Olly Wilson, with tenor Frederick A. Peterbark joining the SFCMP instrumentalists. The second half will begin with the return of percussionist Steven Schick performing the West Coast premiere of “Touch/Trace” by Zosha Di Castri. The program will then conclude with Thomas Adès’ Opus 2 chamber symphony, which will be given a side-by-side performance of SFCMP members performing with students of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM).

This performance will take place in the 50 Oak Street SFCM Building. It will begin at 8 p.m. on Saturday, February 1. As usual, there will be a pre-performance panel discussion moderated by Artistic Director Eric Dudley. The participants will be Bingham, Di Castri, and Schick. Tickets will be $45 for general admission with an $18 rate for students. They may be purchased online through a City Box Office Web page, which also includes hyperlinks for the remaining concerts on April 12 and May 10.

Pianist Conrad Tao Returns to Davies

Last night conductor Nicholas Collon made his debut conducting the San Francisco Symphony, but San Francisco also saw the return of one of the more interesting pianists I have encountered over the course of my writing. That pianist is Conrad Tao, who made his SFS debut in February of 2008. I first came to know him through San Francisco Performances, both with the JACK Quartet and as part of the Junction Trio, performing with violinist Stefan Jackiw and cellist Jay Campbell. I also began following his recordings in February of 2012, although the most recent album I covered was American Rage, which dates back about five years.  Those past encounters all involved “bleeding edge” repertoire; so last night I was more than a little surprised that Tao’s concerto selection was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 23 (first) piano concerto in B-flat minor (one of those warhorses that consistently “leads the pack”).

Personally, I was delighted to see that Tao was as comfortable playing Tchaikovsky as he has been with composers such as Frederic Rzewski. His chemistry with Collon could not have been better, and Associate Principal Anne Richardson’s cello solo in the Andantino semplice movement added to the freshness of the overall listening experience. Most important was that all of the performing musicians knew exactly how to capture the full richness of Tchaikovsky’s rhetoric without ever going over the top into bombast. This made for a refreshing listening experience, rather than a here-we-go-agin reaction.

As expected, Tao followed up on his concerto performance with an encore. This one was just as familiar as the concerto (if not more so). He played Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow.” Familiar as this was, his approach could not have been more virtuosic. He took his interpretation from a 1958 recording made by Art Tatum. I often wonder whether or not, during his time in Los Angeles, Tatum had any encounters with Rachmaninoff; but I suspect that the latter tended to keep his distance from the jazz world! Nevertheless, Tatum’s capacity for embellishment was just as rich, and Tao delivered a solid account of that richness in every phrase of the Arlen tune.

Photograph of Edward Elgar, probably taken not long after the completion of “Enigma Variations” (unknown photographer, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The second half of the program, usually allotted to a symphony, was devoted entirely to Edward Elgar’’s Opus 36, best known under the title “Enigma Variations.” Elgar dedicated this composition “to my friends pictured within.” Each of the variations is a character sketch with a cryptic title. As is usually the case, the program book “decoded” all of those titles. (Frederic Ashton did one better by bringing them to life as characters in his ballet “Enigma Variations (My Friends Pictured Within).”) The performance involved another engaging solo turn, this time by Principal Viola Jonathan Vinocour in the “Dorabella” variation. Collon’s command of the overall journey through the fourteen variations could not have been more engaging.

The only disappointment of the evening came at the beginning. Three-piece Suite consists of three excerpts from Thomas Adès opera Powder Her Face rearranged for large ensemble. I have been writing about Adès on this site since 2009. He has an intellectual side that challenges the mind, but that does not necessary result in an engaging listening experience. Since the opera is based on a sex scandal, one would have expected some degree of shock value in its realization through music; but last night’s excerpts never rose about the level of trivially ludicrous. Over the past decades, Adès may have been viewed by many as the “composer of the future;” but, as the old joke goes, that time has passed.

Simon Rattle in Berlin: 20th Century Britain

Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic (photograph by Monika Rittershaus, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, from Wikimedia Commons)

Given that Simon Rattle was born in Liverpool, one might have expected that, even during his tenure with the Berlin Philharmonic, he would have given more attention to “England's green and pleasant land” than is evident in the anthology of his recordings with that ensemble. The only British composer to be allocated an entire CD is Benjamin Britten. Nevertheless, where my own interests are concerned, that CD is definitely a good one. It accounts for the three major song cycles with instrumental accompaniment, the Opus 18 Les Illuminations, the Opus 31 Serenade, and the Opus 60 Nocturne. All of these are sung by tenor Ian Bostridge, and only horn player Radek Baborák is given credit on the CD sleeve for his contribution to Opus 31. At least some readers probably know that I am already familiar with the recordings that Britten himself made of all three of these composition; but I could still appreciate the “contemporary take” on this music while listening to Bostridge performing with Rattle.

The only other major work to be recorded was Gustav Holst’s Opus 32 suite, The Planets. I tend to blow hot and cold when I encounter this music in performance, but Rattle certainly gives the overall flow of the suite a creditable account. However, the recording is given a “++” treatment, which, as far as I am concerned, lives up to the old joke about filling a well-needed gap.

The first track to follow The Planets adds the “questionable one” beyond Neptune. “Pluto, the Renewer” was composed by Colin Mathews and dedicated to the memory of Imogen Holst. This is followed by Kaija Saariaho’s “Asteroid 4179: Toutatis,” Matthias Pintscher’s “towards Osiris,” and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Ceres.” (Yes, I know that Pintscher is German; but, since he seems to be big on astronomy, I can understand why he was included on the album! Also, since I have been interested in Saariaho’s music for pretty much as long as I have been at this writing gig, I cannot complain about her presence, even if she is not British!) “Ceres” is followed by the darker “Komarov’s Fall,” composed by Brett Dean and named after Vladimir Komarov, the Soviet cosmonaut, who was the first human to die in a space flight. All but the first of these “post-Planets” compositions were commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic.

That leaves only one remaining track, Thomas Adès’ “Tevot,” which is about twenty minutes in duration. Early in his tenure with the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas seemed to show an interest in Adès’ music. His performances never really persuaded me to share that interest, nor did the television broadcast of The Exterminating Angel from the Metropolitan Opera. So it did not surprise me that “Tevot” left me (in the immortal words of Dorothy Fields for Jerome Kern’s “A Fine Romance” song) “as cold as yesterday’s mashed potatoes!”

An Abundance of Guitarists at St. Mark’s

Last night St. Mark’s Lutheran Church hosted the fourth recital in the 2023/2024 Dynamite Guitars series of concerts, presented by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. The title of the program was Maestros of 50 Oak Street, an acknowledgement of the impressive Guitar Faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, whose primary address is 50 Oak Street. The four guitarists to perform last night were (in alphabetical order) Sergio Assad, David Tanenbaum, Richard Savino, and Marc Teicholz. All of them performed solo compositions, Assad played a duo with Teicholz, and all four concluded the program with two selections from the Filmaginaires collection of short works by Roland Dyens. In addition, Savino’s set included a duo with violinist Scott Moore. The program was also given an “overture” presented by the SFCM Guitar Youth Orchestra and members of the SFCM Guitar Community Ensemble. Scott Cmiel conducted a performance of “Bluezilian,” composed by Clarice Assad (Sergio’s daughter).

This made for an evening longer than most guitar recitals. Presumably, “Bluezilian” was intended to draw a generous audience of “friends and family;” and it succeeded in doing so. Sadly, after that selection was performed, there was a noticeable exodus after all the family members had filled their telephones with photographs and videos. Fortunately, there was still a good crowd that had showed up for the 50 Oak Street players.

Tanenbaum assembled an engaging set of works by composers with little (if any) knowledge of the guitar. They were Manuel de Falla, Francis Poulenc, and Thomas Adès. The Falla selection was taken from his Homenajes suite, originally composed for orchestra. The second movement was a memorial for Claude Debussy given the subtitle “Elegia de la guitarra;” and Falla prepared his own arrangement for guitar. He also acknowledged Debussy with a fragment from “Soirée dans Grenade” (evening in Granada), the second of the three compositions in Debussy’s Estampes collection. The Adès selection, on the other had, was originally composed for his opera The Exterminating Angel.

In that “geographical” context Assad focused his set on Brazil with two selections by Luiz Bonfá and a samba by Jacob Bittencourt. Teicholz took the Opus 55 piano suite by Joaquín Turina, entitled Danzas Gitanas (gypsy dances), and arranged the movements for solo guitar. This was a significant undertaking with highly satisfying results. I was also left wondering whether Stephen Sondheim had appropriated the “Dance of seduction” movement when he was working on Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The only disappointment was Savino, who trashed the selections in the printed program and mumbled his way through announcing the alternatives. Nevertheless, his duo performance with Moore based on the “Folia” theme was engaging to the extent that some of the variations on the repeated bass line may have been improvised. Taken as a whole, the full set of guitar selections left much to occupy the attentive listener, who probably would have sustained the guitar performances more attentively had the “Bluezilian” overture been eliminated from the program.

Two Guitar Quintets from Two Centuries

Quatuor Van Kuijk members Nicolas Van Kuijk, Sylvain Favre-Bulle, Anthony Kondo, and Emmanuel François (photograph by Svend Andersen, courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

Last night in Herbst Theatre, San Francisco Performances presented, in conjunction with the Dynamite Guitar season created by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts, the second of the five programs in its 2022–2023 Guitar Series. Guitarist Sean Shibe, born in Edinburgh in 1992, is currently touring the United States along with Quatuor Van Kuijk, a string quartet founded in Paris in 2012 by violinists Nicolas Van Kuijk and Sylvain Favre-Bulle, violist Emmanuel François, and cellist Anthony Kondo. All five of them performed two guitar quintets, one at the end of each half of the program.

The first of these was the so-called “Fandango” quintet composed by Luigi Boccherini. The program concluded with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Opus 143 quintet. The quartet members also began the evening with a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s final string quartet in F minor. Mendelssohn died two months after completing the work, and it was published posthumously as his Opus 80. In addition, Shibe performed three short solos composed, respectively, by Thomas Adés, Manuel de Falla, and Francis Poulenc, prior to the Castelnuovo-Tedesco quintet.

Taken as a whole, this was a low-key program; but Herbst provided a conducive setting for the intimacy of all of the offerings. This was particularly the case with the two guitar quintets. In both of the performances, Shibe fit comfortably into the intimate “conversations” one usually encounters in a string quartet performance. As a group they captured and affectionately presented the many Hispanic tropes; and, where the Castelnuovo-Tedesco quintet was concerned, those familiar with the score may have wondered if Shibe was channeling Andrés Segovia, for whom the quintet was originally composed. A similar sense of intimacy pervaded Shibe’s solo offerings.

In that context the decision to begin with the Mendelssohn quartet felt a bit out of place. Perhaps the quartet players felt that they should begin on the “dark side,” after which the sun would shine on the rest of the program. Certainly, the intensity they brought to Opus 80 made the attentive listener sit up and take notice. From that point of view, the sunny dispositions of the remainder of the program may have felt more welcome.

CBSO Launches SFS Great Performers Series

CBSO Music Director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (photograph by Frans Jansen, courtesy of SFS)

Last night Davies Symphony Hall saw the launch of the 2022–23 Great Performers Series presented by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). The first of the ten programs in this Series presented a visit by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), led by conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and featuring cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason as concerto soloist. Kanneh-Mason made his San Francisco debut this past April in another Great Performers concert at Davies, joined on that occasion by his sister Isata at the piano. For his debut in Davies as a concerto soloist, he selected Edward Elgar’s Opus 85 cello concerto in E minor.

For her instrumental selections Gražinytė-Tyla presented instrumental music taken from two operas from two consecutive centuries. The program began with Benjamin Britten’s Opus 33a, composed in 1945. This was a suite of four extended instrumental passages from his Peter Grimes opera (Opus 33), which Britten called “Sea Interludes.” The intermission was followed by a four-movement symphony that Thomas Adès created in 2020 based on thematic material from his The Exterminating Angel opera. The program concluded with Claude Debussy’s three-movement tone poem “La Mer.”

As a recitalist, Kanneh-Mason had provided a highly imaginative program for four interconnected sonatas, which made for some thoroughly engaging reading in the program book followed by an equally engaging listening experience. His approach to Elgar’s Opus 85 may not have been as intricately cerebral, but his interpretation provided a rich account of the full scope of the composer’s dispositions. Since I have a more-than-generous supply of recordings of this concerto, I never have any problems with following the composer’s thematic logic; but I was still impressed by the breath of expressive approaches that Kanneh-Mason mined over the course of the concerto’s four movements.

Following his well-deserved ovation, Kanneh-Mason decided that the audience deserved a broader cello experience. He thus recruited the four performers on the first two stands in the cello section to perform a five-voice account of a Bach chorale. Which Bach chorale? This enquiring mind wanted to know! During the intermission, I approached the leader of the cello section; and all he could show me was a single sheet of paper with the music he had just played … no title and not even a BWV number! Suffice it to say that the music provided meditative quietude after the passionate outpourings of the cello concerto. [added 10/17, 10:05 a.m.:

Cyberspace to the rescue! Multiple sources identified the encore selection as a song, rather than a chorale. The title of the song is “Komm, süßer Tod” (come sweet death, BWV 478), one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s 33 contributions to the Musicalisches Gesang-Buch compiled by Georg Christian Schemelli in 1736. (The total number of songs in the collection is 954.) These were published in figured bass notation as follows:

from Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Presumably, Kanneh-Mason prepared his own four-voice realization of the figured bass for the accompaniment to the vocal line. (This arrangement was recorded on his recently released Song album.)]

For that matter, where “passionate outpourings” are concerned, Gražinytė-Tyla’s approach to Britten’s interludes could not have been more engaging. By departing from the visual element of the opera experience, Britten could engage the full attention of the listener with a multitude of rich sonorities based on imaginative blends of his instrumental resources. The interludes themselves do not follow the ordering of the opera’s narrative. Rather, they are ordered by time-of-day, beginning with dawn and concluding with a midnight storm, whose calming coda adds one final excerpt from the opera score to the mix. Gražinytė-Tyla definitely knew the best way to introduce the full extent of her orchestra to the audience.

Sadly, the second half of the program she prepared was far less engaging. I have to confess that my familiarity with The Exterminating Angel is limited to having seen the PBS broadcast of its performance by the Metropolitan Opera. I found that I could only negotiate that performance by rousing up as many memories of the Luis Buñuel film on which the libretto was based as I could muster. Under those circumstances, the music had about as much impact as the furniture (if that much).

Through past experiences of Adès performances by the San Francisco Symphony, I knew that loud and louder were the composer’s favorite dynamic levels. Notwithstanding the usual Spinal Tap joke about cranking the amplifier up to eleven, Gražinytė-Tyla took the second movement of Adès’ symphony (a march), and cranked the volume level all the way to the threshold of pain and then crossed that threshold. Again I had to reflect back on Buñuel and the subtle quietude with which his fascinatingly perverse plot unfolded.

Unfortunately, that rhetoric of overblown dynamics spilled over into the concluding Debussy selection. Yes, there are several stunning moments in the composer’s approach to imagery that deserve intense dynamics. Indeed, there is a lush grandeur to the coda of the final movement that almost suggests familiarity with the rich Yiddish connotations of “kvell.” Unfortunately, Gražinytė-Tyla seemed interested in little more than amplitude, rather than its impact on personal dispositions. Debussy definitely deserved better.

Víkingur Ólafsson Exchanges Bach for Kurtág

This Friday Deutsche Grammophon (DG) will release its latest album of recordings of Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. Some readers may recall that his last release came out in September of 2018 with the title Bach Reworks / Part 1. Those expecting that the new album will be Part 2 may be disappointed. The title of the new album is From Afar, and Ólafsson has shifted his attention from Johann Sebastian Bach to György Kurtág. As expected, Amazon.com has created a Web page for processing pre-orders of this new release.

I first encountered Kurtág’s music at a recital presented by San Francisco Performances back when my “profession” was information technology. The recitalist was pianist Marino Formenti, and the title of his program was Kurtág’s Ghosts. The selections were an extended collection of compositions taken from the ten volumes that Kurtág had entitled Játékok (games). The individual selections were miniature unto an extreme, often assigned titles that could be playful (as in games) or provocative, if not both.

The tracks on From Afar draw upon the first, third, and fifth of those ten volumes. They are interleaved with selections by Bach (often arranged for the keyboard), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Béla Bartók, and Thomas Adès. There are also a few arrangements of Icelandic sources. Furthermore, in addition to surveying the Játékok repertoire, the album begins with Kurtág’s arrangement of Bach’s BWV 619, one of the chorale preludes collected in the Orgelbüchlein. Those readers that recall my thoughts about Bach Reworks may recall my conclusion that all of the tracks “seemed to have everything to do with the ego of the pianist and little to do with anyone else, not just Bach but also the transcribers.”

An intimate performance of a Bach transcription by Márta and György Kurtág (screen shot from a YouTube video)

While the advance material for From Afar claims that the album was “inspired by a life-changing meeting” with Kurtág, I have to say that I wonder what, specifically, inspired Ólafsson. I offer the album’s opening track as a case in point. Ólafsson’s performance of Kurtág’s Bach arrangement was labored and tedious unto an extreme. My immediate reaction was to ask myself whether this was Kurtág having his way with Bach, perhaps in some of the ways that Ólafsson did in Bach Reworks. Fortunately, I was able to find a YouTube video of Kurtág playing one of his Bach transcriptions, a four-hand version that he played with his wife Márta. To my surprise (and satisfaction), Kurtág’s arrangement was about as true to the source as one could expect; and the only playfulness in the performance had to do with the interleaving of the hands of husband and wife.

I also have to wonder if Kurtág had inspired Ólafsson to record all of his selections twice, first on a grand piano and then on an upright. This means that the album has two CDs, one for each of the instruments. (That’s the good news. Had the two performances been interleaved, the listening experience would probably have driven me crazy!) The track listing in the booklet provides a side-by-side account of the durations of each of the 22 tracks. This is clearly “useful data” for comparing the two performances, but I must confess that I was far more interested in comparing the printed durations than in getting my head around how they related to the individual track performances.

Natasha Paremski Saves the Best for Last

Pianist Natasha Paremski (from the SFP event page for this performance)

Last night in Herbst Theatre San Francisco Performances (SFP) launched the second week of its twelve-concert series to mark the return of live performances. The seventh of these offerings was a solo recital by pianist Natasha Paremski, who had previously been selected as one of the two pianists to launch SFP’s 40th anniversary season on September 27, 2019. Her portion of that program gave free rein to an abundant virtuoso display in her interpretations of music by Maurice Ravel (the finger-busting Gaspard de la nuit suite), Mily Balakirev (the shorter but equally demanding “Islamey”), and Serge Prokofiev (his Opus 22 Visions fugitives).

Last night’s selections provided more than ample opportunity for Paremski to showcase her technical skills. However, where the music behind all that razzle-dazzle was concerned, her performance only became significantly compelling with her encore selection. This was “Chandeliers” by Hyung-ki Joo, probably best known to audiences here as half of the madcap Igudesman & Joo duo with its hysterical assaults on not only the icons of the classical music repertoire but also the many mannerisms of those performing that music. Composed in response to the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Joo’s poignant score reflected the rhetoric of shell shock that prevailed across the United States with an epicenter on the island of Manhattan. Paremski clearly understood Joo’s rhetorical devices, and her account of this short piece could not have been more compelling, particularly with the twentieth anniversary of that catastrophe less than two months in the future.

Unfortunately, the program that Paremski planned for her recital never rose to that same height of compelling the attentive listener. The first half of the program was devoted to music of Frédéric Chopin, highlighted by what might be called a “conversation” with Thomas Adès. This was followed, in the second half, by the first of Sergei Prokofiev’s three “War” sonatas, Opus 82 in A major.

The Adès contribution consisted of his Opus 27 set of three mazurkas, composed for a series of concerts marking the bicentenary of Chopin’s birth in 2010. Introducing this music to the audience, Paremski noted that Adès claimed that his collection was inspired by one of Chopin’s collections of three mazurkas; but he did not say which one. She selected the three Opus 63 mazurkas as the most likely candidate, interleaving them with the Adès compositions. Almost all of Chopin’s mazurkas are strikingly brief; and, were it not for the fact that at least half of them predated Louis Daguerre’s invention of photographic technology, one could almost take them for “snapshots,” intimate glances at individuals or settings. (In Dances at a Gathering choreographer Jerome Robbins actually set one of those mazurkas with a “snapshot moment.”)

Sadly that sense of intimacy eluded Paremski’s interpretations of both the Chopin and the Adès offerings. Indeed, she seemed to give little, if any, attention to the rhetorical aspects of her performances of not only the mazurkas but also the other two Chopin selections, the Opus 60 barcarolle in F-sharp major and the Opus 61 “Polonaise-fantasie” in A-flat major. As a result, the whole first half of the program established a disconcerting sense of “one damned thing after another,” which seriously undermined any potential for attentive listening.

The Prokofiev performance, on the other hand, was just plain brutal. It is worth bearing in mind that, during World War II, the Soviet Union evacuated many of its treasured artists (including Prokofiev) to the Caucasus, isolating them from any Nazi threats. (Most of us know that Dmitri Shostakovich was not one of those artists. As a result he lived through the Siege of Leningrad, and there is a famous photograph of him serving in a fire brigade.) Thus, to some extent, Prokofiev’s musical impressions of the War were abstract; but they still sustained a powerfully compelling rhetoric. Unfortunately, the substance of that rhetoric never managed to rise above Paremski’s banging away at her keyboard, as if extremity was the only relevant disposition.

As a result, her interpretation of “Chandeliers” emerged as the only significantly compelling offering of the evening. Her capacity for rhetoric clearly changed significantly since her last appearance in 2019. Perhaps, like many of us, she is still going through a readjustment of “business as usual” in the wake of over a year of pandemic conditions.

SFGC Features Britten Next Month at Davies

The San Francisco Girls Chorus (and friends) at a previous performance in Davies Symphony Hall (from the event page for next month’s concert)

Next month the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC), led by Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe, will make its annual return to Davies Symphony Hall. The title of this year’s holiday concert will be A Ceremony of Carols, named after Benjamin Britten’s composition for a chorus of high voices and harp. Next month’s performance, however, will be a much larger-scale “mixed version” that will bring the a cappella vocal ensemble Clerestory together with hundreds of choristers from all seven levels of the SFGC Chorus School and Premiere Ensemble. The harpist for this occasion will be Bridget Kibbey. The program will also include compositions by Thomas Adès, Ysaÿe Maria Barnwell, Ēriks Ešenvalds, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Robert Johnson, as well as a selection of the usual holiday offerings. Where necessary, organ accompaniment will be provided by Robert Huw Morgan. Also, for “something completely different” the guitar-percussion duo The Living Earth Show will perform Nicole Lizee’s “Family Sing-A-Long.”

This performance will begin at 7 p.m. on Monday, December 16. Davies is located on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and Grove Street. It is also convenient to north-south and east-west Muni lines, as well as the Civic Center station for both Muni and BART. Tickets range in price from $30 to $62. They may be purchased online through a City Box Office event page or by calling 415-392-4400.

New Hadelich Release Couples Brahms and Ligeti

from the Amazon.com Web page for this recording

This past Friday Warner Classics released its latest album of performances by German-American violinist Augustin Hadelich. Hadelich has made several visits to San Francisco, all of which I have enjoyed for the imaginative approaches he would take to traditional repertoire. In his new album he has not departed from tradition; but he has situated it in a decidedly non-traditional context. Performing with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Hadelich begins with Johannes Brahms’ Opus 77 concerto in D major and follows it with György Ligeti’s only violin concerto, presumably in the final version, which was first performed on June 9, 1993.

I am not sure to what extent these two concertos “inform each other when placed side by side” (Hadelich’s words); but there is no question that the contrasts are striking. As is often the case, Brahms composed his concerto with both awareness of and respect for the structural conventions of the Classical period; but his expressive rhetoric is clearly rooted in nineteenth-century Romanticism. On the other hand Ligeti turns to pre-Classical practices for most of this approaches to structure, refracting them through a generous supply of approaches to expression, many of which are based more on basic sonorities, rather than a thematic lexicon.

One result of this contrast is that one approaches the opportunity to listen to Brahms with a relatively clear set of expectations. Where Ligeti is concerned, even the most attentive listener often does not know quite to expect until (s)he actually experiences it. About a month ago I joked that Esa-Pekka Salonen’s recent cello concerto might be remembered best as “the one with the bongos.” In a similar manner, those who have experienced Ligeti’s concerto are probably likely to associate it with the ocarinas that must be played by the oboist, two clarinetists, and bassoonist. (The two flute players are similarly required to play recorders of different sizes.)

Personally, I feel most at home with listening to Ligeti when he decides to be playful, and there is no shortage of playfulness in this concerto. At the same time, there is also no shortage of distinctively bizarre sonorities, not just from the soloist but also from the ensemble, which requires detuning of one of the violins and one of the violas. Some of those sonorities seem to involve a better realization of natural overtones, but not all of them!

Did Hadelich himself have fun in playing this concerto? I like to believe that he did, as I like to believe that the cadenza for the final movement provided by Thomas Adès was inspired by Ligeti’s own prankish spirit. More importantly, after listening to this recording, I would very much appreciate an opportunity to listen to Hadelich play this concerto in concert.

None of this is to dismiss my enjoyment of his approach to Brahms. For one thing, in this case he prepared his own cadenza for the concerto’s first movement. For another, if the interpretation is not a prankish one, it still overflows with good will. This is a thoroughly joyous account of the concerto, and Hadelich’s joy seems to be shared by Harth-Bedoya’s conducting. Indeed, there is so much “giocoso” in the final Allegro giocoso movement that the attentive listener is well primed for just about anything that Ligeti should choose to serve.

Adès’ Efforts to Turn a Buñuel Film into Opera

Poster for Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, complete with sheep (from Wikipedia, fair use)

This past season the opera production that most attracted my curiosity was The Exterminating Angel, the third opera composed by Thomas Adès with the ambitious goal of basing it on the film of the same name by Luis Buñuel. I first encountered Buñuel’s work during my student days in the Sixties; and, by the time I received my doctorate, I had become almost obsessed with seizing every opportunity to attend a screening of one of his films. I even remember that my first encounter with The Milky Way took place in Haifa, when I was teaching at the Technion, at the city’s closest approximation to an “art house” cinema. To this day I regard that film as the most absurdist perspective on Catholicism I have ever encountered.

I was still a student when I saw The Exterminating Angel for the first time. It was presented by a student film society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We in the audience saw it in the lecture hall that I associate with freshman chemistry, and it seems as if everyone there bought into the sharp-edged humor of the script. The setting was a dinner party of a very elite group, all of whom fancy themselves as intellectuals but cannot engage in conversation that rises above the level of inanity. The plot kicks in, so to speak, when, at the end of the evening, some intangible and unnamable force prevents each of the guests from leaving to return home. As the film progresses, we observe the deterioration of all signs of gentility until one of the guests suggests that they resume the positions they had after dinner and reproduce the conversation from that time. Sure enough, all are “liberated;” and give thanks to God by attending a Te Deum service (Tosca, anyone?) at the cathedral. At the end of the service, they discover that now they cannot leave the cathedral, while a riot erupts outside.

When I first learned that Adès had used this film as the source for his third opera, I was skeptical. This was one of those cases where the film was so much more than its underlying scenario. Buñuel always knew how to conjure up rich images; but he really went over the top in this case, particularly when he added sheep (lambs of God?) to the mix. However, the film also appealed to my sense of play: It was clear that it was rich in symbolism; but it was as if Buñuel had left the interpretation of each of the symbols as “an exercise for the reader.”

The opera was composed on a joint commission by the Salzburg Festival (where it was first performed on July 28, 2016), the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden (first performed there on April 24, 2017), and the Metropolitan Opera (providing the United States premiere on October 26, 2017). It was also selected for the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD series for live simulcast to movie theaters on November 18, 2017. That simulcast was recorded for subsequent broadcast on the PBS Great Performances at the Met series; and on April 1 (which I found to be a delightful coincidence) I copied its first broadcast in San Francisco to save in my xfinity cloud storage space. I ended up watching it in two segments taking the intermission as my point of interruption, and I completed my viewing this morning.

My primary impression was that much of the opera reminded me of how much I had enjoyed the film, but I came away with the sense that Adès had tried to find a musical approach to Buñuel’s sharpest edges without every quite meeting his goal. The bottom line was that this was a film in which everything clicked together to provide a coherent and entertaining whole: plot, images, dialog, and an overall sense of the flow of the narrative. Adès’ librettist Tom Cairns’ approach to plot was definitely capable enough to establish the narrative even for those unfamiliar with the film. The images, which included sets and costumes by Hildegard Bechtler and video by Tal Yarden, departed from Buñuel but definitely served the narrative as effectively. However, both the specifics of the dialog and that sense of flow felt more labored in the opera setting than it had on the screen.

Much of that labored sense, however, may have been the result of Adès rhetorical approach to the score. I know his second opera, The Tempest, only through the performance of excerpts conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado during his visit to the podium of the San Francisco Symphony in October of 2013. That concert provided me with my first exposure to soprano Audrey Luna, whose upper register is, to say the least, stratospheric. Adès had composed the role of Ariel for her in The Tempest, and her delivery was chillingly unreal. Luna sang the role of the opera singer Leticia (called, by the other guests, “the Valkyrie”); and, according to a New York Times article by Zachary Woolfe, she now holds the record for a note so high (A above high C) that “it has never been sung in the 137-year history of the Metropolitan Opera.”

One way of approaching the score is to assume that Adès decided to work with provocative sonorities as a substitute for Buñuel’s lexicon of provocative images. Almost as important as the extremes of Luna’s soprano part was his use of an ondes martenot played by Cynthia Millar (who also played it at both Salzburg and Covent Garden). Indeed, as video versions go, I have to confess that I was often more drawn to the overhead shots of Millar’s playing than I was by what was happening on stage. At the very least I came away with the impression that recent technologies have made the ondes martenot a more “cooperative” instrument than earlier models had been, allowing Adès to take it in directions that would not have been risked by earlier composers. Furthermore, if his ondes sonorities were not scary enough, the six perfectly synchronized snare drums that dominated one of the instrumental interludes definitely wrenched the guts.

Nevertheless, one of the most salient impressions of the film was Buñuel’s playful attitude. He could get a bit nasty in his play from time to time; but, for the most part, he knew how to get his viewers to laugh with him at the absurdity of his characters and the situation that overcame them. Adès’ score, on the other hand, is, for the most part, deadly serious. Yes, there are times when he cracks a smile or two; and some of the camera shots of his conducting even remind us when those times are. The most memorable of those occasions comes when the sheep in the film appear on the stage during the opera’s third act, to be introduced by an off-the-wall account of the “Sheep may safely graze” aria from Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 208 secular cantata that was definitely laugh-out-loud funny.

With my viewing experience still comfortably lodged in short-term memory, I would have to say that I came away with no great craving to see this opera a second time; but it did leave me “hungry” for a chance to see the Buñuel film again.

Renewed Acquaintance with the Danish String Quartet

Towards the end of last month, the Danish String Quartet, consisting of violinists Frederik Øland and Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, who shared the leadership chair, violist Asbjørn Nørgaard, and cellist Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, made its San Francisco debut. They played in Herbst Theatre at a Shenson Chamber Series concert presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP); and I was delighted with the listening experience. What I had not realized at the time was that this was not my first encounter with the ensemble.

That “first contact” took place in the fall of 2013, when I had an opportunity to listen to a two-CD album of the complete string quartets (and one string quintet) of Carl Nielsen reissued by Dacapo. At that time Carl-Oscar Østerlind was the cellist. Otherwise, all the members then were the same as they are now, including the fact that the violinists alternated the leadership chair. This had also been my first contact with Nielsen’s chamber music for strings. My impressions were generally positive; but, apparently, they were not positive enough to leave a deep impression in memory.

At the Herbst recital Nielsen only appeared in the encore, a selection that was brief and not particularly representative. On the other hand a significant portion of the program was devoted to folk music from Nordic countries; and it was difficult to tell how much the musicians were playing from written-out arrangements and how much they were “jamming” over familiar themes. There was definitely a spontaneity that suggested the latter. However, because that sense of spontaneity also pervaded their readings of music by Ludwig van Beethoven and Béla Bartók, they could just as easily have been playing from notated score sheets.

courtesy of Universal Music

Fortunately, I have been able to revive the spirit of that portion of the program, thanks to the release this past September of Last Leaf by ECM New Series, the label with which the quartet now does all of its recording. In this case most of the tracks are identified as “traditional” with many modified by a specific nationality, such as “Danish” or “Swedish.” The track listing credits the ensemble with all arrangements; but that spirit of spontaneous “jamming” is again present. Furthermore, six of the sixteen tracks identify specific composers, suggesting that these may have been the notated arrangements, while the others could be played by ear. Regardless of the process behind the product, so to speak, listening to this music again on a recording turned out to be just as refreshing as listening to it in concert, perhaps even more so because much of the thematic material was more familiar. I also discovered that some of the concert selections, such as “Five Sheep, Four Goats,” came from an earlier ECM New Series album, Wood Works.

Further investigation revealed that the ensemble was also just as committed to living composers as they were to those of the recent and distant past. In May of 2016, ECM New Series released a recording of string quartets composed by Thomas Adès, Per Nørgård, and Hans Abrahamsen. Fortunately, I had experienced the Adès selection, “Arcadiana,” thanks to another SFP chamber music recital, which took place this past April. On that occasion it was played by the Calder Quartet (violinists Benjamin Jacobson and Andrew Bullock, violist Jonathan Moerschel, and cellist Eric Byers); and, having experienced “first contact,” I enjoyed the opportunity of getting to know the piece better.

On the other hand both Nørgård and Abrahamsen provided new “first contact” listening experiences. I was particularly struck by their capacity to achieve expressiveness through brevity (a capacity shared with “Arcadiana”). With so much satisfaction from such a modest round of listening experiences, I find that I now have eager curiosity to find out what other directions the Danish String Quartet has followed in order to build up their repertoire.

Cellist Isserlis Brings a Compelling Program of Late Works to SFP

Over the past few seasons there has been an interest among San Francisco Performances (SFP) recitalists in exploring music written by composers towards the ends of their respective lives. András Schiff led the way with a three-concert series (co-hosted by SFP with the Great Performers Series of the San Francisco Symphony) in which he explored the last three piano sonatas composed by the four major “First Viennese School” composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert. That project concluded in October of 2015; and it was followed this season by the four Late Style recitals that pianist Jonathan Biss gave with a prodigious diversity of colleagues. Last night SFP concluded its Virtuosi Series with a recital by British cellist Steven Isserlis accompanied by Canadian pianist Connie Shih; and the program could easily have been taken as an “appendix” to Biss’ project.

Isserlis organized his program around three cello sonatas, each by a composer from a different stylistic period but all composed late in life. The earliest of these was the Opus 65 sonata in G minor by Frédéric Chopin (who died in 1849), composed between 1845 and 1846. At the other end of the Romantic period, Isserlis played the Opus 117 (second) sonata, also in G minor, by Gabriel Fauré. Ironically, this counts as twentieth-century music. Fauré died at the age of 79 in 1924. Furthermore, he had a major spurt of productivity that began in 1915; and the Opus 117 sonata was composed in 1921. Thus, the “modern” sonata on the program, composed by Claude Debussy in D minor, actually predates the Fauré sonata. Late in his life Debussy began a project to compose six chamber music sonatas for different instruments. The cello sonata was the first of these, composed in 1915; and Debussy died in 1918, having completed only three of the sonatas.

The chamber music side of the Chopin catalog is remarkably sparse. Ironically, all of it involves the cello. In addition to the duo he composed jointly with Auguste Franchomme, there are two very early works, the Opus 3 “Introduction and Polonaise brillante” for cello and piano in C major, written between 1829 and 1830, and the 1830 piano trio in G minor (Opus 8). Then there is the Opus 65 sonata.

Multiple-movement compositions of an extended duration were never in Chopin’s comfort zone. However, illness had already taken over Chopin’s body by 1845; and that confrontation may have steeled his resolve to return to a traditional extended form and really make it work. The result is that there is a far steadier control of exposition, development, and recapitulation in the opening encounter that is encountered in any of his other sonata allegro movements. With the following Scherzo, he is on more familiar ground; and the Largo could almost be another nocturne that happens to be scored for cello and piano. This leaves the Finale movement, which neatly ties up the entire package with a brisk (and, at time, rollicking) Allegro.

As might be guessed, the piano part for this sonata kept Shih busy. There are any number of familiar tropes there, and Shih handled them all deftly without ever giving the impression that this was a piano composition with an obligato cello part. For his part, Isserlis always seemed to find just the right way to phrase Chopin’s cello line, never short-changing the expressiveness without ever getting bogged down in excess syrup. Playing as a duo, Isserlis and Shih made a clear case that this was the “late work” of a composer determined to summon all of his resources in the pursuit of a new path.

Fauré, on the other hand, was a much more prolific composer of chamber music; and that genre occupied him throughout his life. However, most of his music for cello and piano tended to be short salon-style pieces. Both of his cello sonatas were not written until that burst of activity that begin in 1915. Opus 117 is the more compact of the two; but he had no trouble maintaining his “old school” ways in his approach to thematic content and harmonization. One might almost say that there is a yin-yang relationship between Opus 117 and the Debussy sonata, the latter breaking with all the traditional structural principles of the former, almost as if Debussy were turning to a narrative line for his structure rather than any of the building blocks of the nineteenth century. For all of that opposition, however, Isserlis’ approach to both of these sonatas made a clear case that each composer had his own coherent strategies for exploring the expressive qualities of the solo instrument. Thus, having these two works share the same program amounted to an ingenious illustration of just how things were changing during the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Indeed, both of these sonatas could easily serve as “supporting context” for the major effort in French literature that was unfolding while these pieces were being written, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu). Thus, the idea of underscoring the complementary relationship between Debussy and Fauré with a nod to Proust was a stroke of genius. That nod came at the very end of the program with Thomas Adès’ Opus 26, his four-movement “Lieux retrouvés” (re-found places). Isserlis was actually the one to call out Proust in the spoken introduction that preceded his performances; but, in doing so, he hit on a fascinating parallel.

Those who know a bit of French probably recognize chercher as the verb for “to seek,” while trouver is the verb for “to find.” Isserlis’ introduction seemed to suggest that, just as Proust added the “re” prefix to chercher, Adès had done the same for trouver. Thus, Isserlis suggested that Adès was seeking a way to explore memory through music as Proust had done through writing. However, if Proust’s memories were triggered by a madeleine dipped in tea, each of the four movements of “Lieux retrouvés” involves a different sense of place as a memory source. The first deals with “views” of a variety of different bodies of water and the dynamics of their movements. The second approaches impressions of a mountain through the eyes of mountaineers. The third is a pastoral interlude that precedes the bustle of a large city, expressed as a “Cancan macabre.” This last movement imposes diabolical demands on the performers; but their command of the music was so secure that it was easy to enjoy of the humor of Adès madcap rhetoric.

For those who attend SFP recitals regularly, it is worth noting, as an aside, the sharp contrast between Isserlis’ approach to Adès and that of the Calder Quartet’s performance about two weeks earlier. Both performances provided excellent accounts of what I had previously called Adès “awesome wealth of intricate clockwork precision.” However, Calder never managed to grasp any of the narrative qualities in their performances of the two Adès selections. One might say that Isserlis’ understanding of Adès included a semantic dimension that had eluded the Calder readings. (I had encountered a similar problem when listening to the Calder performance of Béla Bartók in 2014.) Isserlis’ impressions on the listener run deep by virtue of his appreciating and manifesting qualities that go beyond the marks on the paper into a far broader domain of understanding, and those qualities are responsible for his performances being so compelling.

There were, fortunately, some lighter moments in the evening. The intermission was followed by Reynaldo Hahn’s arrangements and embellishments of two Irish airs. Similarly, Isserlis turned to Chopin’s arrangement of a Polish song for his encore. This was the last (seventeenth) in the Opus 74 collection, a “hymn from the tomb” about falling leaves, whose title in English would probably be “Faded and Vanished.” Chopin wrote this piece in 1836, but the opus number was only assigned posthumously. This selection, along with the Hahn arrangements, reminded us all of the beauty of a well-shaped melodic line and provided just the right balance against the more cerebral elements of last night’s program.

Calder Quartet’s SFP Program Balances Adès and Beethoven

Last night San Francisco Performances (SFP) concluded its four-concert Chamber Series with a recital by the Calder Quartet, whose members are violinists Benjamin Jacobson and Andrew Bullock, violist Jonathan Moerschel, and cellist Eric Byers. This was the group’s first SFP appearance since making its debut in the annual gift concert in 2005. However, they presented a three-concert series playing the six string quartets of Béla Bartók during the 2014–2015 SFJAZZ season. The ensemble was formed by students in the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. It won the prestigious 2014 Avery Fisher Career Grant and has maintained an active schedule of concertizing, recording, commissioning, and mentoring the efforts of emerging composers. Their current repertoire includes over 40 commissioned works to date.

Last night’s concert was distinguished by the way in which the group balanced two strikingly different composers. The first half presented two compositions by Thomas Adès from different periods of his creative development, while the second half was devoted entirely to the second (in E minor) of the three Opus 59 quartets that Ludwig van Beethoven composed for Count Andrey Razumovsky. A recent, and relatively short, piece by Andrew Norman separated the two Adès selections.

Adès has a distinctive gift for fashioning works with an awesome wealth of intricate clockwork precision. Yet, for all of the thought he puts into those underlying mechanics, it is clear that his capacity for expressiveness is as strong as are his “mechanical” skills. However, this wealth of virtues poses a problem that is just as distinctive, which is that it is extremely challenging to get a grip on what Adès is doing by listening to most of his pieces only once. The prodigious inventiveness that goes into his structures can only begin to be appreciated once the listener gets his/her bearings; but, by the time those bearings are established, the music has progressed well into its discourse and may even be in the course of wrapping up its journey.

Both of the Adès works performed last night, The Four Quarters, which was composed in 2011, and the much earlier Arcadiana, composed in 1994, are suites of relatively short movements. In both cases the movements are conceived to establish highly distinctive perspectives but they also tend to be relatively brief. However, Adès has a subtle rhetorical capacity to blur the boundaries between exposition and transition. As a result, mind requires more that a little orientation when it comes to “parsing” an Adès suite into its individual movements. Since the movements all have distinctive titles listed in the program book, this poses a potential hazard. The listener who does not identify the boundaries correctly may have trouble figuring out when any particular title is being represented by the music being performed.

This meant that there were major differences in the very act of listening between the first and second halves of the program. The movements of Beethoven’s E minor quartet are firmly established by perfect cadences decisively executed, and the structures within the movements conform to familiar approaches to segmentation. Even those encountering the E minor quartet for the first time are likely to have “orientation expectations,” which could come from symphonies or piano sonatas, as well as other string quartets. Such expectations cannot be put into play where Adès suites are concerned. Indeed, his approaches are so inventive that even the structure of the program itself, preceding Arcadiana with The Four Quarters, did little to orient listening to Arcadiana on the basis of past experience.

I suspect that this problem is on my mind because, while I have enjoyed a fair-to-moderate amount of experience in listening to Adès compositions, I have never heard a single one of them on two separate performance occasions. This is more that a little frustrating, because I usually come away from those occasions thinking how nice it would be to listen to the music again. Could it be that last night’s program might have benefitted had a single Adès piece be played on either side of Norman’s “separating” composition? Enquiring minds want to know!

Norman provided his own program note for his part of the program. “Sabina” is a musical reflection of the composer’s impressions of the interior of the Santa Sabina basilica in Rome, particularly the play of light brought on by the clerestory windows, which are made of translucent stone, rather than glass. One might almost call this piece an instance of a “new impressionism” in music; and it, too, deserves more than a single isolated listening experience. (I also have to express pleasure with the brevity of Norman’s text. Unless I am mistaken, this is my third encounter with one of his introductions. The other two were so long-winded that I found myself befuddled even before the performance began! Last night found the sweet spot that deftly balanced explanation with actual experience.)

Since we are in the midst of Passover, it is hard to avoid asking, where the second half of the program was concerned, “Why is this Beethoven performance different from all of the Beethoven performances?” While that position is probably unduly extreme, it raises the question of whether there were any elements that endowed last night’s performance with its own distinctive immediacy. In that respect I must confess that I was a bit worried during the first three movements that this was a reading that was lapsing into the routine. However, there was an energy to the final Presto movement that set it apart from its predecessors. There was even some sense that Beethoven still had a sense of humor, reinforced by a cleverly calculated approach to making each iteration sound as if it were the final climax and then going on to establish an even higher “peak.” If nothing else, Calder definitely knows how to leave its audience endowed with a listening experience with a satisfying sense of accomplishment.

The Calder Quartet will Return to San Francisco Performances Next Week

Next week San Francisco Performances (SFP) will conclude its Chamber Series with the last of its four scheduled concerts. The Calder Quartet, whose members are violinists Benjamin Jacobson and Andrew Bullock, violist Jonathan Moerschel, and cellist Eric Byers, made its SFP debut when its was selected to perform the annual gift concert in 2005. The group was formed by students in the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. They then continued their studies at the Colburn Conservatory of Music with Ronald Leonard. The ensemble was then named Graduate Resident String Quartet at the Juilliard School, where the members received Artist Diplomas in Chamber Music Studies. This will be the quartet’s second SFP appearance.

The group has prepared a program that reflects its focus on contemporary composers. The first half of the program will consist almost entirely of music by Thomas Adès. It will begin with the suite The Four Quarters, which was written for the Emerson String Quartet in 2010. It will also perform Adès’ first work for string quartet, his Opus 12, which is another suite, this one entitled Arcadiana. The seven movements provide different reflections on the pastoral concept of an idealized Arcadia. These two selections will be separated by “Sabina,” which Andrew Norman composed in 2006 as a reflection on the Santa Sabina basilica in Rome. The second half of the program will be devoted to the second (in E minor) of the three Opus 59 quartets that Ludwig van Beethoven composed for Count Andrey Razumovsky.

This recital will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 12. It will take place in Herbst Theatre, located on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Tickets are being sold for $40 in the balcony, $55 for most of the Dress Circle, and $65 for premium seating. They may be purchased in advance through a City Box Office event page, which shows the Herbst floor plan and which prices apply to which sections. Tickets can also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545, as well as at the Herbst Box Office on the evening of the performance.

Two Fascinating Series will Begin on the Same Day Next Month (without overlap)

Several years ago during the month of December, I wrote about the idea of a concert subscription being a seasonal “gift that keeps on giving.” It turns out that several concert series will be getting under way next month. Two of them will begin on the same date, only one of which will be selling tickets in advance. Curiously, that last one comes from the same source that inspired my last effort to recommend a concert series as a Christmas gift.

That latter is the latest installment in the Saturday Mornings in San Francisco offering from San Francisco Performances. These involve a partnership between the members of the Alexander String Quartet (violinists Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz, violist Paul Yarbrough, and cellist Sandy Wilson) and SFP Historian-in-Residence Robert Greenberg. Each event involves works performed in their entirety but situated in a socio-historical context through introductory remarks provided by Greenberg.

Next month will see the beginning of the first part of a series of such lecture-demonstrations that will unfold over two seasons. The series has been organized around the fifteen string quartets composed by Dmitri Shostakovich, along with additional chamber works. This season’s series will cover the first seven of those quartets. These will be presented two at a time on January 21, February 4, and March 4, respectively. The seventh quartet (Opus 108 in F-sharp major) will be performed on May 13 along with the Opus 57 piano quintet in G minor. The pianist for Opus 57 will be Roger Woodward.

All of these events will begin at 10 a.m.. The venue will be Herbst Theatre, located at the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and McAllister Street. Prices for the tickets for the entire series are $200, $160, and $100; and subscriptions may be purchased online through a City Box Office event page, which shows which sections of Herbst correspond to which price levels. Single ticket prices are $55, $45, and $30. They may be purchased through a hyperlink on the SFP Saturday Mornings Series Web page. That hyperlink brings up a menu of the four specific dates, each with its own hyperlink.

January 21 will also mark the beginning of the Instrumental Series in the 2017 season of Sunset Music | Arts. This is only that institution’s third season; but it has grown to accommodate five separate concert series, the first of these being the Instrumental Series. Since these will all be held in the evening (and on different days of the week), there will be no conflict with the Saturday morning events at Herbst. The series will consist of three programs featuring two pianists and one trumpeter. Specifics are as follows:

Saturday, January 21, 7:30 p.m.: This will be a recital by Eric Tran, who is also a composer. The program he has prepared will include his own “Water,” as well as Thomas Adès’ “Darknesse Visible” and the last of Ferruccio Busoni’s six sonatinas, which is actually a fantasia on themes from Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen. The longer works on the program will be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 570 sonata in B-flat major and Franz Liszt’s solo piano transcription of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 68 (“Pastoral”) symphony in F major.

Sunday, May 21, 7 p.m.: The recitalist will be trumpeter Ari Micich, whose repertoire is broadly eclectic. His classical credentials include both the San Francisco Symphony and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and he is also an avid jazz musician. Details of his program have not yet been announced.

Saturday, September 16, 7:30 p.m.: The other solo piano recitalist will be Robyn Carmichael, whose touring schedule takes in both the United States and Europe. She has prepared an ambitious program, whose major works will include Franz Schubert’s D. 784 sonata in A minor and Robert Schumann’s Opus 13 “Symphonic Studies” (known in French as “Études Symphoniques”) consisting of a theme and twelve études, nine of which are variations on the theme. The program will begin with three keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti and will also include three short solo piano works by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

All performances will take place at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, located at 1750 29th Avenue, about halfway between Moraga Street and Noriega Street. Ticket prices are $20 for general admission with a $15 rate for students and seniors. Because the demand tends to be high, advance purchase is highly advised. Tickets may be purchased online through Eventbrite. Subscriptions are not being sold, but each of the hyperlinks on the above dates leads to the event page for single ticket purchases. Further information may be obtained by calling 415-564-2324.

San Francisco Performances Virtuosi Series will Feature Some Welcome Returns and a Debut

Those who were following me on Examiner.com know that I had begun to write preview articles about the different concert series offered by San Francisco Performances (SFP) for the 2016–2017 season. Unfortunately, those articles are no longer accessible. For the benefit of those wanting to know what they missed (or are missing), I shall provide hyperlinks for the Heartfelt Gala event planned to honor SFP founder and outgoing President Ruth Felt, the Chamber Series, and Jonathan Biss’ Late Style project. This article will now turn attention to the Virtuosi Series, which has built up a strong reputation for providing San Francisco audiences with some of the most impressive visiting artists currently performing. As in the past, there will be four concerts in this series, all to be held in Herbst Theatre and all beginning at 7:30 p.m. Details are as follows:

Tuesday, November 15: This will be the San Francisco debut of Argentinian cellist Sol Gabetta, who will be accompanied by Italian pianist Alessio Bax. The program will be structured around two complementary sonatas, one each from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The nineteenth-century selection will be the first of Johannes Brahms’ two cello sonatas, Opus 38 in E minor. The twentieth-century composition will be Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 119 sonata in C major, which he wrote for Mstislav Rostropovich after hearing him give a recital performance of Nikolai Miaskovsky’s Opus 81 sonata in A major. Prokofiev will also be represented by an arrangement of an Adagio movement from his score for the ballet Cinderella, which he originally composed as his Opus 97 set of ten excerpts from the ballet scored for solo piano. Gabetta will begin her recital with Robert Schumann’s Opus 73 set of three Fantasy Pieces (Fantasiestücke), which he originally wrote for clarinet but indicated that the clarinet part could also be performed on viola or cello.

Monday, April 3: Violinist Alina Ibragimova will return to SFP, once again with pianist Cédric Tiberghien as her accompanist. The program has been arranged in such a way that both Ibragimova and Tiberghien will each give a solo performance. In the first half Tiberghien will perform Alban Berg’s Opus 1 sonata, and Ibragimova will begin the second half of the program with the fifth (in G major) of Eugène Ysaÿe’s Opus 27 set of six solo violin sonatas. The duo sonatas Ibragimova and Tiberghien have prepared for the program will be by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 1017 in C minor), Brahms (Opus 100 in A major), and Schumann (Opus 121 in D minor).

Tuesday, April 11: Virtuoso trumpet master Håkan Hardenberger will also be returning to SFP with pianist Roland Pöntinen as his accompanist; program details have not yet been announced.

Thursday, April 27: The final recital will feature the return of cellist Steven Isserlis. Pianist Connie Shih will be his accompanist. The program will feature “Lieux retrouvés” (reencountered places), a tour-de-force work written for Isserlis by Thomas Adès. The sonata selections will be by Claude Debussy, Frédéric Chopin (Opus 65 in G minor), and Gabriel Fauré (Opus 117, the second of the two that Fauré wrote). The program will also present a pair of improvisations on Irish airs composed by Reynaldo Hahn.

Subscriptions are now on sale for $240 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $200 for the Side Boxes, the center rear of the Dress Circle, and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $140 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Subscriptions may be purchased online in advance through a City Box Office event page. Orders may also be placed by calling the SFP subscriber hotline at 415-677-0325. Single tickets will not go on sale until the beginning of next week on August 1. In addition the SFP home page has hyperlinks for PDF files of the Season Brochure, the Season Calendar, and a ticket order form.

From the Folks Who Made an Opera of Jerry Springer

Whatever the opinions of Richard Faiman may be, apparently it is not all bread-and-butter at the Royal Opera House. Shortly after reading his review of their current production of Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto, I encountered this report by Alastair Jamieson on the London Telegraph Web site regarding plans for a new opera about Anna Nicole Smith:

Her controversial relationships, court battles over the paternity of her children and the sudden death of her 20-year-old son will among the dramatic twists in a libretto written by the co-creator of Jerry Springer The Opera.

The anti-heroine is considered by artistic directors at the Covent Garden venue to be a relevant character in a tale of modern times. The project is part of the Royal Opera House policy of staging a new opera on the main stage approximately every two years, with recent premieres including Harrison Birtwistle's Minotaur, and Thomas Adès' The Tempest.

Elaine Padmore, Covent Garden's director of opera told The Guardian. "It is not going to be tawdry; it is going to be witty, clever, thoughtful and sad. In broad outline, it will tell the story of her life, the people who influenced her, her progress ... Clearly the story is about a woman who met an ancient gentleman in a wheelchair, but it's not going to be a straight narrative; choices have been made about significant moments, selecting which incidents in her life are to be built up."

The opera will be written by Mark-Anthony Turnage, one of the most celebrated names of British contemporary music, with the libretto provided by Richard Thomas.

Ms Padmore added: "It is not just a documentary about her, but a parable about celebrity and what it does to people. It can be moving, it can be funny and it tells universal truths about human frailty.

"It is a very sad story - a larger-than-life American story, as was Puccini's Girl of the Golden West. It will be a slice of our times - of America in the pre-Obama days."

Needless to say, this will be a big gamble that will probably derive more from the apparent success of Jerry Springer The Opera than from any connection to any of the other operas named in this account. San Francisco probably knows Turnage best from the end of the last season of the San Francisco Symphony, when Benjamin Shwartz conducted his Three Asteroids, which I described in terms of "the world of Hollywood vulgarity" and the slogan for the Godzilla remake: SIZE MATTERS. Far be it from me to play up the extent to which this slogan may be applied to Anna Nicole (not to mention that The Fugs might have provided a more appropriate score for an opera project)!