Voices of Music to Celebrate Valentine’s Day

The Voices of Music ensemble led by Hanneke van Proosdij at the harpsichord (from the Web page for purchasing tickets)

Those that recall the announcement of the four concerts scheduled by Voices of Music for its 2025–2026 season probably know that the third of those performances in San Francisco will take place this coming Saturday on Valentine’s Day. The title of the program will be Love Songs from the 17th Century. The program will be organized around composers from England (Henry Purcell and John Blow) and Italy (Salamone Rossi, Arcangelo Corelli, and Marco Uccellini). The ensemble will be led jointly by Hanneke van Proosdij from the keyboard and lutenist David Tayler. The vocalist will be soprano Danielle Reutter-Harrah, with string performances by Elizabeth Blumenstock and Augusta McKay Lodge on baroque violins and cellist William Skeen.

The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. this coming Saturday, February 14. The venue will be the Old First Presbyterian Church at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. A Web page has been created for purchasing tickets. Ticket prices are $63 for adults, $58 for seniors, $40 for “Young Professionals” under the age of 40, and $10 for full-time students with valid identification.

VoM Celebrates Xmas with Generous Episode

Violinists Augusta McKay Lodge and Isabelle Seula Lee, soloists for the Vivaldi concerto with David Tayler providing continuo on archlute

Yesterday afternoon Voices of Music (VoM) decided to celebrate the season with the Happy Holidays release of Episode 46 from Season 5. This was a particularly generous offering, since it consisted of two separate programs. The first of these was a complete account of the Vespro di Natale (Christmas vespers) collected in the 1630 publication by Alessandro Grandi. The second was a more secular review of selections from eleven past concerts. Each selection accounted for a different composer as follows:

1. Isabella Leonarda: Sonata Duodecima in D Minor
2. Johann Christian Bach: Symphony Opus 6 Number 6 in G minor (W C12)
3. Arcangelo Corelli: the “Ciaccona” movement from the trio sonata in G major, Opus 2, Number 12
4. Andrea Falconieri: his setting of “Folia”
5. Antonio Vivaldi: the eighth concerto in the Opus 3 collection, L’estro armonico (the harmonic inspiration), composed in A minor with solo parts for two violins
6. Maurizio Cazzati: Ciaconna
7. Giovanni Battista Buonamente: the second composition in the sixth book in the collection entitled Sonate et canzoni a due, tre, quattro, cinque, et a sei voci, a sonata for three violins in D minor
8. Anthony Holborne: “Almaine: The Night Watch” from Pavans, Galliards, Almains and other short Aeirs, both grave and light, in five parts, for Viols, Violins, or other Musicall Winde Instruments
9. Johann Sebastian Bach: “Badinerie,” the final movement of the BWV 1067 (second) orchestral suite
10. Michael Praetorius: instrumental dances from the Terpsichore publication
11. Giuseppe Torelli: Trumpet Concerto in D major (G.9)

It goes without saying that this is a generous list. However, because each of the individual selections was relatively brief, the program as a whole proceeded at an engaging clip. Because each of the pieces was captured on video from a different concert, there was a generous amount of diversity among the contributing performers. However, there was a consistency, particularly in the presence of Hanneke van Proosdij. While most of her work took place behind a harpsichord, she also presented her solid command of the recorder.

The good news is that the YouTube Web page allows the attentive listener to either enjoy the overall “flow” of the selections or take “deep dives” into individual offerings. It has been a while since I heard the old cliché “The Internet changes everything.” Nevertheless, this is a case in which a single Web site serves up a generous wealth of different ways to approach the early music repertoire.

Voices of Music Focuses on Arcangelo Corelli

The Voices of Music ensemble playing the D major (fourth) concerto grosso from Arcangelo Corelli’s Opus 6

This afternoon I returned to YouTube for the latest Sundays at Ten Web site, compiled by Voices of Music (VoM) in a collection of selections from past performances. The title of the program was Corelli in Rome, Episode 45 from Season 5. It was framed by two of the concerti grossi in Arcangelo Corelli’s Opus 6 collection, the second in F major and  the fourth in D major. The “core” of the program consisted of two Adagio movements from his Opus 5 sonatas. The first of these was from the third sonata in C major for violin, followed by the fourth sonata in F major for recorder. That latter was given a publication by John Walsh with rich ornamentations, and that version was performed by Hanneke van Proosdij. The violin sonata was performed with Augusta McKay Lodge, accompanied at the harpsichord by Paolo Zanzu. The remaining work on the program was the Ciaconna movement from the final (twelfth) sonata da camera in the Opus 2 collection.

Taken as a whole, the selections proceeded at an engaging clip. The Opus 6 performances both lasted about ten minutes, while all of the single-movement offerings were less than four minutes in duration. As usual, the camera work provided a useful guide to following how the thematic material would migrate from one instrumental voice to another. While the video was a collection of performances taking place on different programs, the sequencing of the individual selections made for a coherent account conceived to survey Corelli’s achievements. By all rights, this would have stood up perfectly well as a “live” recital program!

Is the Balanchine Legacy Going Stale?

During my graduate student years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I would take breaks by going down to New York to see performances by the New York City Ballet. This was back in the days when George Balanchine was still in charge, and I was consistently hooked on the ways that he could take concert music as repurpose it for his choreography. He had a particular interest in the Baroque period; and, while the  performance of the music coming out of the orchestra pit was seldom (if ever) “historically informed,” the choreography always seemed to find the right imaginative structures to go with compositions by the likes of Johann Sebastian Bach, Arcangelo Corelli, and Antonio Vivaldi.

Indeed, the last two of them provided the source material for one of Balanchine’s most interesting undertakings, “Square Dance.” The choreography was set to a collection of movements extracted from their compositions. In Balanchine’s New Complete Stories of the Great Ballets, the author observed that the music “was of course derived from old folk dance forms and rhythms that were later refined for the courts of Europe.”

That said, it is worth noting that, when “Square Dance” was first performed, the staging could not have been more literal. While the structure of the choreography may have been organized around Baroque music, Balanchine recruited Elisha C. Keeler, described in Complete Stories as “the famous square dance caller,” to call the steps drawing upon the texts he would invoke for any other square dance. Sadly, by the time I had an opportunity to see this piece performed, Keeler was no longer a participant. Mind you, I took that adverb in the last sentence very seriously because a square dance really is not a square dance without a caller!

An example of the “geometric” choreography of “Concerto Barocco” (photograph by Ewa Krasucka, from a Wikimedia Commons Web page, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

In other words, “Square Dance” is now just another ballet in which the performers dance to Baroque music. Put another way, it is little more than a revamping of one of Balanchine’s earliest creations, “Concerto Barocco.” True to its title, that earlier ballet was set to Bach’s BWV 1043 concerto for two violins and strings in D minor. It would be fair to say that just about any serious music lover knows this concerto, and I suspect that this would also have been the case when music lovers in the audience saw “Concerto Barocco” for the first time. As it is now performed, “Square Dance” is basically “‘Concerto Barocco’ redux;” and to be quite frank personally, I am much happier with choreography that follows a single coherent composition, rather than one that is a pastiche of multiple movements from multiple composers!

Sainte-Agathe to Conduct PBO in December

Valérie Sainte-Agathe has been Artistic Director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) since 2013. According to my archives, my first encounter with her came at the end of February of 2014, when SFGC contributed to a performance by the San Francisco Symphony of Gustav Mahler’s third symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. She has served as Chorale Director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale (PBO) since 2022; and she will make her debut conducting both the ensemble and the chorale at the beginning of December.

Banner design for the Gloria Web page on the PBO Web site

That debut will be a “seasonal” program, best typified by the performance of the eighth of the twelve concerti grossi in Arcangelo Corelli’s Opus 6 collection, composed in the key of G minor and given the title “Christmas Concerto.” This will be balanced by the second half of the program, which will be a performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s best known choral composition, his RV 589 setting of the “Gloria” portion of the Mass. The remainder of the program will consist of two premiere performances. The opening selection will be the world premiere of “Quem Pastores Laudavere,” composed by Roderick Williams. The remaining selection on the program will be the United States premiere of “The Holdfast,” composed by Caroline Shaw. She prepared her own libretto, weaving original texts with excerpts from Thomas Hardy’s poem, “The Darkling Thrush.”

As usual, this performance will take place in Herbst Theater, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, December 5. (At 6:45 p.m. Sainte-Agathe will lead a performance by SFGC in the lobby.) Ticket prices range from $40 to $125, with a $20 rate for those under the age of thirty. They may be purchased through a City Box Office Web page, which includes a diagram showing where seats are still available.

Voices of Music Reviews Recurring Bass Lines

The title of today’s offering in the Sunday Mornings at Ten video series, compiled by Voices of Music and now available through a YouTube Web page, was Ciaconna! The program explored the approaches of six different composers from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries in inventing variations on a simple repeated bass line. For most of those compositions, the bass line was the “Folia,” whose Wikipedia page describes it as “one of the oldest remembered European musical themes.”

Screenshot of the full Voices of Music ensemble performing Geminiani’s arrangement of Corelli

One of those composers was Arcangelo Corelli; but, presumably for the sake of variety, he was not represented by the “Folia” theme. Rather, the program began with the Ciaconna movement from the last of the twelve sonate da camera trio sonatas collected in his Opus 2. Corelli was the first composer on the program, followed by Andrea Falconieri, Antonio Bertali, Maurizio Cazzati, Tarquinio Merula, and Francesco Geminiani. That last was the latest of the bunch, represented by his arrangement of Corelli’s approach to the “Folia” variations. This was performed at a “Christmas special” concert involving the largest ensemble of musicians represented by the entire video. I sometimes think that Geminiani’s personal motto was “More is better,” particularly since his arrangement of Corelli’s approach to the “Folia” involved 24 movements!

Voices of Music: Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam

Unless I am mistaken, my busy schedule has not allowed me to set aside time for a Sunday Mornings at Ten video compiled by Voices of Music since August of last year. The title of today’s offering, Episode 18 in the current (fifth) season of the series, was Amsterdam music printing in the 18th century. More specifically, the selections were from publications by Estienne Roger, a French Huguenot who escaped to Amsterdam to avoid the implications of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

Trumpeter Dominic Favia playing Torelli’s concerto with the Voices of Music ensemble (screenshot from the video of his performance)

As might be guessed, most (if not all) of those publications involved Italian sources. Today’s program presented published works by three of the best known Italian composers: Antonio Vivaldi, Arcangelo Corelli, and Giuseppe Torelli. The selections from the first two of those composers involved only the VoM strings (with harpsichord continuo provided by Hanneke van Proosdij). However, the Torelli selection was a concerto in D major for trumpet and strings, entry 188 in the catalog compiled by Estienne Roger. The soloist was Dominic Favia, who delivered all the intricacies of his part with engaging confidence.

Each of the videos was recorded during a different performance. The “program,” as it was presented this morning, was a compilation of those sources. The “unity” involved Roger’s publications, which included the Vivaldi and Corelli selections and may also have included the Torelli concerto.

Voices of Music Releases Video for Christmas

Yesterday evening (also known as Christmas Eve), Voices of Music (VoM) released its latest video. As might be guessed, this was a “seasonal” offering: the eighth of the twelve concerti grossi in Arcangelo Corelli’s Opus 6 collection of twelve. The last time I reported VoM performing this music was on December 23, 2018, when I wrote “Corelli’s score for this particular concerto includes the inscription ‘Fatto per la notte de Natale’ (made for the night of Christmas); and it is popularly known as the ‘Christmas Concerto.” However, this was not the performance that was captured on video. That would have to wait until December of 2021, when the performance captured on video took place in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church; and the results are now available for viewing on YouTube.

The Voices of Music violinists performing Corelli: Elizabeth Blumenstock and Kati Kyme (front) with Isabelle Seula Lee, Linda Quan, Maxine Nemerovski, and Rachell Ellen Wong (rear) (screen shot from the video being discussed)

Because the music is a concerto grosso, it is scored for multiple soloists and ensemble. There this particular selection is concerned, the soloists are two violinists (Elizabeth Blumenstock and Kati Kyme) and a cellist (William Skeen). However, the camera work does not go out of its way to dwell on the soloists. This is very much an ensemble piece, and that is how it is presented to those viewing this new video.

Corelli extended the usual structure of four movements to six. However, there are two sections of different tempo in the first movement, Vivace followed by Grave. Similarly, the third movement is divided into Adagio-Allegro-Adagio. As a result, there are seven time cues in the text for the YouTube, one for the third movement and the other six for a single tempo.

Mind you, most viewers will find it sufficient to let the video “speak for itself,” particularly if they are already familiar with the music (as I have been for quite some time)!

Another Useful Release from Rachel Barton Pine

Rachel Barton Pine on the cover her her latest album (courtesy of Shuman Public Relations)

It may seem a little out-of-the-ordinary to evaluate the release of a new recording on the basis of “utility.” However, having just reviewed my past articles about violinist Rachel Barton Pine, I realize that I have come away from every encounter with her with the satisfaction of having learned something new. This is definitely the case where her latest release is involved. This is a complete account of the Opus 5 violin sonatas by Arcangelo Corelli, which will be released by Cedille Records this coming Friday. As is so often the case, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

This is one of those collections which is probably best known for only a single track. That is the last of the twelve Opus 5 sonatas, which consists of only a single movement in D minor, a set of variations on the “Folia” theme with a duration of about a dozen minutes. “For the record,” as they say, my last encounter with that sonata was this past December, which violinist Michelle Walther performed as a solo.

Pine, on the other hand, performed each of the twelve sonatas with continuo accompaniment. However, over the course of the full canon, that continuo drew upon different combinations of resources from three instrumentalists: David Schrader (organ and harpsichord), John Mark Rozendaal (cello and viol), and Brandon Acker (theorbo, archlute, and Baroque guitar). This makes for an engaging diversity across the full canon.

Mind you, these sonatas were not composed to be played for an audience one after the other. Nevertheless, we have all those albums of concertos by Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach (who occasionally borrowed from Vivaldi), and George Frideric Handel that are casually subjected to beginning-to-end listening, frequently with great satisfaction! Pine has now provided an opportunity for Corelli to take his rightful place within that fold!

It is also worth noting that Pine is no stranger to San Francisco. Sadly, however, she has not visited since March of 2020, when she gave a duo recital with harpsichordist Jory Vinikour for the San Francisco Early Music Society. Now that we have emerged from the pandemic, I am hoping that she will be able to arrange a return visit through at least one of the many ensembles in our area devoted to historically informed performances of pre-classical music!

Plans for 2024 American Bach Summer Festival

Tickets are now available for the 36th Season of American Bach, led by Artistic Director Jeffrey Thomas. The season will begin next month with the annual Summer Festival. Some readers may recall that last year the Festival had been pared down to only four concerts. This year the offerings will be reduced by half, with only two performances taking place over the course of a single weekend. Both will be held in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church at 1111 O’Farrell Street, on the southwest corner of Franklin Street, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Ticket prices will range between $44 and $106. They may be purchased online through Tix hyperlinks attached to the specific dates as follows:

Jacob Ashworth, Tatiana Chulochnikova, Tomà Iliev, and YuEun Kim in the banner for the Viva Vivaldi event page

Saturday, July 27: The title of the first concert will be Viva Vivaldi. Readers may recall that last year saw a performance of the four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi known collectively as The Four Seasons. What made the occasion somewhat different from the usual approach was that each concerto featured a solo performance by a different ABS violinist. In order of appearance these were as follows:

1. Spring: Tomà Iliev
2. Summer: Tatiana Chulochnikova
3. Autumn: Jacob Ashworth
4. Winter: YuEun Kim

Next month that lightning will strike again, although I am not sure whether the assignment of violinist to concerto has yet been finalized. Cellist Gretchen Classen will then perform the composer’s sonata in A minor (whether this will be RV 43 or 44 has not year been specified). This will be followed by a sonata for two violas and continuo in E minor (which may be the RV 67 trio sonata originally composed for two violins). The soloists will be Ramón Negrón-Pérez and Yvonne Smith. The “Four Seasons” violinists will then return as soloists for the RV 549 concerto for four violins in D major, the first concerto in the Opus 3 (L’estro armonico) collection.

Sunday, July 28: Theater of Fate will be a program of three solo cantatas in Italian, the first by George Frideric Handel and the other two by Antonio Vivaldi. The vocalists for this program will be soprano Maya Kherani and mezzo Sarah Coit. The program will then conclude with the third (in the key of C minor) of the twelve concerti grossi collected in Arcangelo Corelli’s Opus 6.

Does Balanchine Now Belong to the Past?

This morning I used my lunch break to catch up on the PBS broadcast of performances by the New York City Ballet (NYCB) in Madrid. The program consisted of two early works by George Balanchine and a significantly later one by Justin Peck, which was so much of a departure from the first half of the program that it did not take me long to bail on it. The Balanchine selections were “Serenade” and “Square Dance.” While both of them provided a solid reminder of Balanchine’s meticulous attention to music, I have to say that both of the performances came across as a relatively inadequate account of present-day dancers to evoke the spirit of Balanchine’s creativity during the middle of the twentieth century.

For those that do not already know, “Serenade” was the first ballet that Balanchine created after moving from Europe to New York. The dancers were students at the School of American Ballet. The ballet was first performed in 1934, a time when the very idea of a professional ballet company was little more than a consummation devoutly to be wished.

An example of the “geometry” of Balanchine’s choreography (screen shot from the YouTube video being discussed)

While Balanchine had some very strong ideas as to how choreography could reflect the abstract structures in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 48 four-movement serenade for string orchestra, he was also smart enough to work with the relatively inadequate materials available to him. This was particularly evident when, while working on the Allegro con spirito tempo of the final movement, one of his dancers collapsed from exhaustion. In the language of my fellow students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Balanchine immediately recognized that this was a feature, rather than a bug. Thus, what Tchaikovksy had composed for the Finale of his serenade become the penultimate movement of Balanchine’s choreography, which concluded with the poignant “Elegie,” which had been the third of the four movements in Tchaikovksy’s score.

The good news is that this highly emotional response to an abstract scenario carried the same impact that made “Serenade” one of the most powerful works in the NYCB repertoire when Balanchine was in charge. It did not matter how many times one saw this ballet, whether in New York or when it had been “exported” to another ballet company. The circumstances leading up to that “Elegie” and the narrative that responds to those circumstances remain some of the most powerful examples of what the “modern ballet” of the last century could achieve. Even when now danced by a corps whose members had not been born when “Serenade” was first created, the ballet continues to sustain a gut-wrenching impact, even for those that have not perviously seen any Balanchine choreography.

“Square Dance” did not enter the repertoire until 1957, over twenty years after the creation of “Serenade.” Nevertheless, like its predecessor, it is a ballet that Balanchine created in reflection on his selection of musical composition, drawing entirely on works by Arcangelo Corelli and Antonio Vivaldi. Nevertheless, the title of the ballet was no mere gratuitous gesture. While the strings in the orchestra pit were churning away at challenging virtuoso passages, Elisha C. Keeler was on  stage serving as the square dance caller, drawing upon American style to cue the performance to music from the Italian Baroque period.

Sadly, there was no caller for the performance in Madrid which was subsequently broadcast on PBS. I suspect that one problem was that finding an authentic square dancer willing to work with Balanchine musical selections would not have been an easy matter; and, had a caller been recruited, the Madrid audience would probably not know what to make of him (or her). The down-side to this approach to “Square Dance” is that the spirit of that particular dance form has been all but obliterated. Instead, one views a ballet setting music by Corelli and Vivaldi that seems to be following in the steps of music by Tchaikovsky. The very idea of a square dance is left to the viewers to scratch their respective heads.

As I wrote at the beginning of this article, I passed on Peck’s choreography when, after only a few minutes, I realized that, when compared with Balanchine, he had nothing to say. What I fear, however, is that there is a chemistry about Peck’s work that “speaks” to his audience in ways that Balanchine’s tradition no longer does. This program was yet another reminder that the NYCB legacy of my approach to the performance of ballet is a far cry from the ways in which those sharing the audience with me tend to think. Thus, if I am accused of being too rooted to the past, I can only reply, “Guilty as charged.” Nevertheless, I would rather live with that guilt triggered by past experience than endure most (if not all) of the present-day alternatives.

Christmas Returns to NCCO Repertoire

Trumpet soloist Lucienne Renaudin Vary (courtesy of NCCO)

Unless I am mistaken, the New Century Chamber Orchestra has not presented a “seasonal” concert in December since the onset of the COVID pandemic, meaning that the last such program was presented in December of 2019. Next month the holiday spirit will return with Christmas Ornaments, a program of festive works and the United States debut of trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary. The only departure from the celebratory will be the performance of Aaron Copland’s “Quiet City,” featuring cor anglais soloist Jesse Barrett; but the other “festivities” will be secular as well as sacred.

The most explicit holiday offering will be the eighth of the twelve concerti grossi that Arcangelo Corelli collected in his Opus 6, often referred to as the “Christmas concerto.” However, the festive spirit will be extended by coupling this concerto grosso with a trumpet concerto in E-flat major by the eighteenth-century Czech composer Johann Baptist Georg Neruda, the selection that will feature Vary as soloist. In addition, the program will conclude with a “Festive Christmas Medley” of familiar “holiday spirit” tunes arranged by Paul Bateman.

The Corelli concerto will be preceded by two compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, both “secular” but still in a “festive spirit.” The opening selection will be the BWV 1048 (third) “Brandenburg” concerto in G major, composed for an ensemble of solo strings. Music Director Daniel Hope will then perform as soloist in the BWV 1041 (first) violin concerto in A minor. The entire program will be performed without intermission.

The San Francisco performance of this offering will begin at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, December 17. The venue will be St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. Ticket prices will be $70 for premium seating, $55, and $30 for General Admission in the rear. All tickets are being sold online through a City Box Office event page. In addition, $10 tickets are available for students with valid identification, and patrons under 35 can purchase single tickets at the door for $15.

Michèle Walther and Mark Galvan at Arc Gallery

Yesterday afternoon the Arc Gallery in SoMa hosted a duo performance by violinist Michèle Walther and dancer Mark Galvan. The program was in two parts, each beginning with a composed work followed by three improvisations on themes of Walther’s own composition. All six of those themes were based on tracks from Walther’s Colibri album. The three tracks for the first part were “Big Island” (also called “Mother Nature”), “Sunday Morning,” and “Waves.” Those in the second part were “Dancing Snake,” “Colibri,” and “Dark Night of the Soul.” The first part began with the “La Folia” variations in the last of Arcangelo Corelli’s Opus 5 set of twelve sonatas. The second part began with Astor Piazzolla’s “Libertango.”

One might say that repetitive structures were the order of the day in Walther’s performances. The “Folia” is one of the oldest European compositions based on a simple theme which repeats with a diversity of elaborate variations, while “Libertango” also has a repeated theme at its core. However, her own works all involved working with sampling technology to build up multiple layers of repeated content. While this is a technique that has been around pretty much as long as electronic synthesizers have been used, Walther brought an engagingly original approach to creating her samples, initiating their repetition, and then playing against the resulting fabric.

I must confess that, for the better part of the afternoon, I was so drawn into the music that it was a while before I became aware of Galvan’s dancing. His technique is the result of Butoh training, a style that shook up a lot of the dance community (both audiences and performers) when it first migrated out of Japan in the early-to-mid Sixties. One might almost say that Butoh shook up both performers and audiences the same which in which John Cage’s 4’33” shook up “new music” audiences. However, as the technique matured, it also became more refined; and Galvan provided an engaging account of the results of that refinement, some of which were provocative but most of which emerged from a refined foundation. Most interesting was the way in which the front row of the audience included “plants,” who served as “helpers” during Galvan’s performance in the second half of the program.

Having cited Cage, it would also be fair to observe that, in the spirit of Merce Cunningham’s choreography, dance and music co-existed in this performances. As Clive Barnes used to write (not always positively), Cunningham’s dancers would perform through Cage’s music, rather than to it. Yesterday afternoon’s performance provided an account of such co-existence at its best. Hopefully, more opportunities to experience this approach will arise.

Michèle Walther to Perform at Arc Gallery

Violinist Michèle Walther (left) contributing to a previous gallery concert (from the Groupmuse Web page for the event being discussed)

Regular readers probably know by now that I occasionally turn to Groupmuse as a source for previewing performances, many of which depart from the usual concert experiences. The Arc Gallery, which is located in SoMa, has hosted a series of these events under the general title Art and Sound. The next of these events will take place next month with a solo performance by violinist Michèle Walther, who is a member of the Town Quartet.

While this will be a violin solo, the music will be richly polyphonic. That is because Walther will be performing some of her original compositions, which require live looping technology. Her own work will alternate with performances of music by Arcangelo Corelli from the seventeenth century and Astor Piazzolla from the twentieth. The music will be coupled with interpretations and inspirations by dancer Mark Galvan, who is experienced in Japanese Butoh dance theatre. The overall theme of the program will be Darkness & Light - the Cycle of Life; and the title of the gallery exhibit is Four Square.

The performance will begin at 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 10. Those familiar with Groupmuse know that it sometimes provides details about the venue only after a reservation has been made. However, the Arc Gallery is located at 1246 Folsom Street, which (I think) is between Eighth Street and Ninth Street, making for a relatively short walk from the Civic Center. As of this writing, the Web page for this event specifies that there will be 40 spots for attendance, 34 of which are still available. There will be a $5 fee for making a reservation and a charge of $20 (or more) for the event itself. Neither masks nor records of COVID vaccination will be required.

Voices of Music Celebrates 100th Sunday Video

After last week’s “hiccup,” the latest installment in the Sunday Mornings at Ten series of YouTube concerts presented by Voices of Music (VoM) was launched this morning at 10 a.m. This was the 27th episode of the series’ third season; but, more significantly, it was the 100th episode since the series was launched. The program consisted of nine archived videos from different performances in the overall VoM series of concerts.

Antonio Vivaldi was featured with three of the violin concertos in The Four Seasons, the first four concertos in his Opus 8 collection entitled Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (the contest between Harmony and Invention). Their “order of appearance” (which was not their order in the Opus 8 publication) was “Winter” (the fourth concerto), “Summer” (the second concerto), and “Spring” (the first concerto). While there was a uniformity of instrumentation for Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach was also represented by three compositions, each with its own unique instrumentation. The first selection was the “Air” movement from the BWV 1068 orchestral suite. This was followed by a complete account of BWV 1048, the third of the “Brandenburg” concertos. The final Bach selection was his BWV 999, consisting of a single prelude movement for lute.

Three other composers were represented by single selections. The first of these was Johann Pachelbel’s canon in D major. Arcangelo Corelli was represented by the fourth concerto (in the key of D major) in his Opus 6 collection. Finally, the program concluded with the only vocal work, “As steals the morn” from George Frideric Handel’s pastoral ode L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, setting the poetry of John Milton.

This was, to say the least, a rich program. In fact, it was roughly twice as long as the usual Sunday Mornings at Ten episodes. Nevertheless, there was never a dull moment; and the video production facilitated keeping track of how the thematic material migrated from one instrument to another.

Performance of BWV 1048 by violinists Carla Moore, Maxine Nemerovski, and Gabrielle Wunsch, violists Katherine Kyme, Maria Caswell, and Lisa Grodin, cellists Tanya Tomkins, Elizabeth Reed, and William Skeen, with continuo by Farley Pearce on violone and Hanneke van Proosdij on double manual harpsichord

Nevertheless, if I had to “play favorites,” I would have to go with BWV 1048. This is a “concerto with a vengeance” with individual solo parts for three violins, three violas, and three cellos. The music itself makes for a rather thick texture; but, because each line is a solo, one can appreciate the interleaving of voices in Bach’s contrapuntal writing.

Here’s looking forward to the next 100 episodes!

Voices of Music to Present “Transalpine” Program

Featured violinists (clockwise from upper-left) Cynthia Freivogel, Augusta McKay Lodge, and Elizabeth Blumenstock (from the Arts People event page for the concert being discussed)

This Sunday will see the performance of the second of the three concerts scheduled for the 2022–2023 season by Voices of Music. The full title of the program is Musica Transalpina: Chamber music from Italy and England. This title was inspired by the invention of the violin in Italy, which was attractive enough to cross the Alps and (metaphorically at least) conquer all of Europe (including the other side of the English Channel). As might be expected, the program will feature three violinists, Elizabeth Blumenstock, Cynthia Freivogel, and Augusta McKay Lodge. Selections have not yet been finalized; but the composers to be represented on this program will be (in alphabetical order) Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Arcangelo Corelli, Biagio Marini, Thomas Morley, Nicola Matteis, and Henry Purcell.

The San Francisco performance of this program will begin at 8 p.m. on Sunday, February 19. As always, the venue will be St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. General admission for individual concerts will be $58, and the reduced rate, which applies to seniors and members of SFEMS, EMA, or ARS, will be $53. Full-time students with valid identification will be admitted for $5. A single Arts People event page has been created with hyperlinks for tickets for the remaining two concerts in the season.

December to Begin with “Alternative” Offerings

While the BayImproviser Calendar is my primary source for “bleeding edge” events, there are other opportunities to appreciate performances that do not always get the advance attention they deserve. My awareness of these events comes about through finding the right mailing lists that I choose to monitor. One of those lists is maintained by violinist Michèle Walther, who was one of the contributors to Center for New Music (C4NM) activities during the pandemic and tends to surface to participate in events that receive less attention than C4NM. I received her latest dispatch yesterday morning, and it accounts for a few potentially interesting offerings here in San Francisco during the first weekend of next month.

The first of these involves providing live music performed during screenings presented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Saturday, December 3, has been named A Day of Silents. Beginning at 11 a.m., six full-length silent films will be presented, all with live music accompaniment. The Sascha Jacobsen Ensemble, in which Walther frequently performs, will provide the music for two of those films, Pour Don Carlos, which is about the civil war that took place in Spain late in the nineteenth century, and The Toll of the Sea, one of the earliest color films, which drew upon the Madama Butterfly scenario and starred Anna May Wong. The first of these offerings will be screened at 3 p.m.; and the second will be the final program, beginning at 9 p.m.

The entire Day of Silents will take place at the Castro Theatre, which is located at 429 Castro Street, a short walk south of the Muni station at the corner of Market Street. General admission for both films is $18 with a $16 rate for Festival members. Tickets may be purchased online through the above hyperlinks attached to the film titles. Details about the size of the Jacobsen Ensemble and the contributing instrumentalists is not currently available.

Violinist and composer Alisa Rose (right) with the members of the Town Quartet (clockwise from upper left): Lewis Patzner, Michèle Walther, Ilana Thomas, and Jacob Hansen-Joseph) (from the Music on the Hill event page)

[updated 11/12, 9:40 a.m.: The following evening will see the latest performance by the Town Quartet. Walther shares the first violin position with Ilana Thomas. The other members of the ensemble are violist Jacob Hansen-Joseph and cellist Lewis Patzner. They will be joined by another violinist, Alisa Rose; and the program will feature a performance of her composition entitled “Embracing Roots.” (This will also serve as the title of the entire program.) That program will also include Arcangelo Corelli’s setting of the “Folia” theme in an arrangement by Francesco Geminiani with enhancements by Patzner. There will be two selections by Astor Piazzolla, one of which involves one of his his “four seasons” movements as arranged by Leonid Desyatnikov and enhanced by Walther. The remaining work on the program will be the “Sostenuto” movement from Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Opus 26, his second quartet in E-flat major.]

This recital will be presented by Music on the Hill, whose current venue is in Diamond Heights at St. Aidan’s Church at 101 Gold Mine Drive. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, December 4. Single tickets are being sold for $20. The simplest way to reserve tickets is by calling 415-820-1429. Further information about Music on the Hill can be provided by sending electronic mail to mathmuse2@yahoo.com.

VoM Ends Season with Virtuoso Violins

Last night, after having to cancel the second concert in its three-concert season, Voices of Music (VoM) gave its final San Francisco performance of the season in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. The full title of the program was The Art of the Violin: Music of Handel, Vivaldi, Corelli & Geminiani. There was a bit of irony in that title, since a contemporary of those four composers, Pietro Locatelli, had published his own collection of twelve violin concertos under the title L’arte del violino; and Vivaldi was one of his major influences.

In fact, of the six selections on the program, four were composed by Antonio Vivaldi. Two of them were taken from his twelve publications: RV 356, the sixth concerto, in the key of A minor, in the Opus 3 collection, and RV 277, the second concerto, in the key of E minor, in the Opus 11 collection, known as Il favorito (the favorite). The other two were based on manuscripts. RV 208 in D major was known as the “Grosso mogul” (Great Moghul), which included cadenzas which found their way into Johann Sebastian Bach’s solo organ version of this music, his BWV 594 in C major. The program then concluded with RV 564 in D major, a concerto with solo parts for two violins and two cellos.

Title page of Geminiani’s arrangements of Corelli’s Opus 5 sonatas (from IMSLP, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License)

George Frideric Handel was represented by his HWV 320, the second of the twelve concerti grossi in his Opus 6 publication. This particular concerto grosso incorporated solo parts for two violins and cello. The astute reader will notice that two composers have not yet been taken into account. That is because both of them contributed to the remaining work on the program. The concerto in F major for two violins and cello had its origin as the tenth, in the key of F major, of the twelve violin sonatas that Arcangelo Corelli published as his Opus 5. Francesco Geminiani then arranged all twelve of these sonatas as concerti grossi, and that was the version in which the F major concerto was performed.

Such an abundance of concertos involved an abundance of soloists. The featured violinists were Augusta McKay Lodge, Kati Kyme, YuEun Gemma Kim, and Chloe Kim. The participating cellists were William Skeen and Elisabeth Reed. As a result, the diversity of the selections also afforded the opportunity to appreciate different performance styles. Most important, however, was the consistently upbeat rhetoric of the music being performed. Those spirited accounts made the listening experience particularly refreshing, even when the concertos themselves may have been familiar to the listener.

PBO’s Evening of Disappointing Excess

Cello soloist Keiran Campbell (courtesy of PBO)

Last night in Herbst Theatre the instrumentalists of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale (PBO) presented the second of the six concerts planned for its 2021/22 concert season. The ensemble was led from the harpsichord by guest conductor Jonathan Cohen. Cellist Keiran Campbell appeared as guest soloist, and the program included the world premiere performance of “Giving Ground,” composed by Paul Stanhope.

The title of the program was Something Old, Something New, Something Mad. While it provided an accurate account of the diverse selections on the program, it also served as an omen for a presentation so tedious that it made the usual two-hour duration feel as if it went on forever. In fact the program consisted of ten selections, five on either side of the intermission; but there was so little spirit in the performances that the entire evening quickly began to feel like an eternal slog.

One problem may be that the resources were too heavy for the music being performed. Mind you, the overall scale of the ensemble was about what one would expect of PBO: ten violins divided equally between firsts and seconds, four violas, three cellos, and one bass, along with David Tayler on theorbo, Hanneke van Proosdij organ, and Cohen behind his harpsichord. However, by the time the intermission rolled around, I realized that I had been reflecting on the clarity that Voices of Music could deliver with an ensemble that was half the size with far more engaging transparency.

The gathering together of old, new, and mad emerged at the end of the program with “Giving Ground.” The title served as a nod to “La Folia,” which I have previously described as “one of the most famous ground bass lines.” Stanhope decided that the best way to confront such familiarity was by going cryptic. The result yielded the sort of opacity that can only be negotiated after mind has encountered several performances, after which one begins to become aware of what the shapes are and how they interact. Sadly, because this was the penultimate work on the program, I suspect that most of the minds in the audience were too fatigued to deal with this “first contact.” Fortunately, the program concluded with a much more familiar “La Folia” composition, Francesco Geminiani’s “La Folia” concerto grosso, which was basically an arrangement of the last of Arcangelo Corelli’s twelve violin sonatas.

Fortunately, the evening had a high point, which gloriously soared above all the other selections. This was Campbell’s performance of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Wq 172 cello concerto in A major. Those familiar with “Bach the son” are probably familiar with his preference for vigorous rhetorical stances. That vigor emerged in generous supply in the outer movements and even worked its way into the technical demands of the slower middle movement. Campbell clearly enjoyed presenting a performance guided by all of Bach’s rhetorical twists and turns, and the skill with which he negotiated all those technical demands was never short of downright awesome.

Had the rest of the evening reflected that engaging partnership of soloist, music, and conductor, the experience would have been more satisfying than a laundry list of old, new, and mad.

Diverse Program from SFCM Baroque Orchestra

This afternoon in the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), the Baroque Ensemble, led by Co-Director Corey Jamason at the harpsichord, presented an engaging diversity of “period” selections. The entire program was framed by concertos by Antonio Vivaldi, beginning with the RV 161 concerto for strings in A minor and concluding with the B minor concerto for four violins, RV 580, the tenth concerto in the Opus 3 publication known as L'estro armonico (the harmonic inspiration).

Within this framework there were two instrumental selections before the intermission, followed by two vocal selections. The vocalists were soprano Jayne Diliberto singing an aria from the opera Callirhoé composed by André Cardinal Destouches, followed by countertenor Kyle Tingzon singing the opening aria of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 170 cantata Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust (delightful rest, beloved pleasure of the soul). The instrumental offerings were a suite, drawing upon a variety of sources by Henry Purcell, and the fourth (in the key of D major) of the twelve concerto grossi published by Arcangelo Corelli as his Opus 6.

Taken as a whole, the ensemble tended to be a bit on the scrappy side, particularly where intonation was concerned. Nevertheless, it is still early in the academic year; and it is reasonable to assume that the students are still coming up to speed. Whatever their shortcomings may have been, the students still exhibited a keen interest in the diversity of their repertoire; and it is reasonable to expect the refinement will begin to emerge with greater experience. For this particular program they could benefit from not only Jamason’s expertise as both keyboardist and educator but also a visit from Marc Schachman, best known as the oboist of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.

Jennifer Meller performing her choreographic interpretation of Destouches’ music for his opera Callirhoé (screen shot from the video of the SFCM concert being discussed)

My only real peeve was with faculty member Jennifer Meller, who provided and performed solo choreography in conjunction with Diliberto’s aria performance. Working from four pages of dance notation, Meller performed a solo adaptation of “La Muszette a deux,” created in 1713 by Louis-Guillaume Pécour, both ballet master and dancer at the Paris Opera. Meller provided the following background for the program book:

The dance occurs in a pastoral Arcadian setting customary for a musette, and the dancer plays a follower of Pan. Playful and earthy with a touch of mischief, she uses her enchanted lyre to beckon all to forget their troubles and pursue the pleasures of uncomplicated love.

While Pan may have been the primary influence behind the choreography, I suspect that dancing barefoot was not socially acceptable in the early eighteenth century, particularly if the audience consisted of nobility, if not royalty! Thus, while the choreography may have been a plausibly faithful reconstruction, the execution was a bit too contemporary for my historical tastes.