Violinist Nancy Zhou will Begin New Year at SFCM

Violinist Nancy Zhou and pianist Jeffrey Kahane (from the SFCM Web page for their recital)

The first recitalist to begin the new year with the next Faculty Artist Series at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) will be violinist Nancy Zhou. She will be accompanied at the piano by Jeffrey Kahane. She has prepared an imaginative program reflecting on two different aspects of music history.

The first half of the program will be a Brahms-Schumann coupling, but not the one that most readers will expect! The opening selection will be Johannes Brahms’ Opus 78, his first violin sonata in G major. This will be followed by the second of the three romances (Allegretto) for violin and piano collected by Clara Schumann for her Opus 22. The second half of the program may amount to a “call and response” program. It will begin with the BWV 1016 sonata in E major for violin with keyboard accompaniment by Johann Sebastian Bach. This will be followed by Ferruccio Busoni’s Opus 36a, his second violin sonata in E minor.

This performance will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, January 26. The venue will be the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, located near the entrance to the SFCM building at 50 Oak Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni station. Tickets may be reserved from the event page for this concert. That Web page also includes a hyperlink for live-stream viewing (and listening).

Another Uneven Shenson Spotlight Piano Recital

Pianist Tony Siqi Yun (from his event page on the San Francisco Symphony Web site)

The third recitalist for this year’s Shenson Spotlight Series presented by the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony Hall was another pianist, Tony Siqi Yun. As was the case last month, the results were uneven; but, as least as far as I am concerned, there was at least one bright spot. It has been almost two years since I have had an opportunity to listen to the music of Ferruccio Busoni in performance; and, as fate would have it, that last occasion took place in Davies. That was when pianist Igor Levit, Artist-in-Residence for the 2022–23 SFS season, played Busoni’s Opus 39 piano concerto. (This was the first time SFS presented the work.) The high point of last night’s recital came with the performance of “Berceuse” (lullaby), the last of Busoni’s set of seven solo piano pieces collected under the title Elegies.

Every Busoni composition involves a delicate balance between introverted expressiveness and extroverted technical fireworks. That balance made Levit’s account of Opus 39 “click;” and things “clicked” again in Yun’s performance of “Berceuse.” To a great extent, that same balance could be found in the opening selection of the program. Johannes Brahms Opus 18b is a set of variations on a theme transcribed for solo piano from its original version as a movement in the Opus 18 (first) string sextet in B-flat major. (As some readers might guess, that transcription was dedicated to Clara Schumann.) This was my first encounter with this arrangement, and I wish more pianists would give it the attention it deserves.

On the other hand, I fear that I am beginning to tire of up-and-coming pianists deciding to lay their emotional expressiveness bare with yet another performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 57 (“Appassionata”) sonata in F minor. All that Yun seemed to convey in his performance was that he could be both heavy-handed and frantic at the same time. This may have done justice to any of those “scowling Beethoven” portraits, but it was far from a satisfying account of the music itself. Things were a bit better over the course of the full journey through Robert Schumann’s Opus 13, given the title “Symphonic Études.” The good news was that the overplayed outbursts were fewer in number, but the overall listening experience felt like a slog long before the music’s halfway mark.

Fortunately, Yun chose an encore that would quiet things down after his Sturm und Drang approach to Schumann. He turned to Johannes Brahms’ Opus 118 collection of six solo piano pieces, composed in 1893. He chose the second of these, an intermezzo in the key of A major. This is the one of the six that tends to receive the most attention. (I had to analyze it in one of my undergraduate classes.) As had been the case with his Busoni selection, Yun found just the right expressive approach to this music, allowing me to depart from an evening of mixed results with an optimistic disposition.

SOMM to Release Tribute to Fischer-Dieskau

While I had recognized the name of baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau through my regular perusals of the Schwann catalog of recordings, my “first contact” with listening to his voice came about when I added Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem to my collection. The libretto incorporated poems written by Wilfred Owen during World War I; and Fischer-Dieskau took the “role” of a German soldier, complemented by tenor Peter Pears representing an English soldier. Fischer-Dieskau had more than a few problems with English pronunciation; but none of them interfered with the expressiveness of his delivery, whether it involved the intensity of battle or the poignant setting in the final movement of “Let us sleep now,” sung in duo with Pears.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau on the cover of the “tribute” album about to be released (from the Amazon.com Web page for this recording)

However, my account of Fischer-Dieskau’s recordings has been relatively modest, particular in light of the eleven-CD box set of the recordings he made for EMI. This Friday, SOMM Recordings will release a two-CD album entitled Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: A Centenary Tribute; and, as is usually the case, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders. The second CD is devoted entirely to two interviews, the first for his 75th birthday in 2000 and the second for his 80th birthday in 2005. The first CD offers an engaging interleaving of familiar vocal works among the less familiar.

All of the familiar offerings are by Gustav Mahler, with three songs from Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit coupled with three of the Rückert-Lieder songs. These are all recital recordings with pianist Karl Engel accompanying Fischer-Dieskau. There are also five tracks of settings by Ferruccio Busoni of poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as well as also single settings of Goethe by Richard Strauss and Max Reger. The less familiar composers in the repertoire are Anna Amalia, Johann Friedrich Reichart, and Carl Friedrich Zelter. The album then concludes with three songs in Hungarian, two by Zoltán Kodály and one a folk song.

I have to confess that one of the reasons that drew me to this album is my interest in the Busoni catalog. I am almost certain that this was my first encounter with his approach to art song, and Fischer-Dieskau could not have been a better advocate. It is also worth noting that the Kodály tracks provided accompaniment by the London Symphony Orchestra with Kodály himself on the podium. Thus, as “centenary tributes” go, the “historical content” of this album is decidedly impressive. My guess is that Busoni and Kodály will be the primary factors in drawing me back to this album for further listening!

Steven Isserlis’ “Anniversaries” Cello Recital

Yesterday afternoon in Herbst Theatre, cellist Steven Isserlis presented a recital program for Chamber Music San Francisco entitled 2024 Anniversaries. This year marks the centennial of the deaths in 1924 of two major composers that “transitioned” from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The first of these was Ferruccio Busoni, whose “Kultaselle,” a set of ten variations on a Finnish folk song, began the program. The second was Gabriel Fauré, represented by his Opus 109 (first) cello sonata, composed in the key of D minor. (Fauré was also the “encore composer,” with the selection of his Opus 78 “Sicilienne,” which was later incorporated into his Opus 80 incidental music for Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande.)

An arpeggione built in 1968 (not performed by Isserlis yesterday afternoon) with its guitar-like frets (from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

The program also acknowledged works composed in 1824 by Franz Schubert and in 1924 by Ernest Bloch. The nineteenth-century offering was Schubert’s D. 821 sonata in A minor, originally composed for the arpeggione (a “hybrid” instrument, which was basically a bowed guitar). Bloch was represented by his three-movement suite Pieces from Jewish Life. The remaining work on the program was the final selection, Francis Poulenc’s only cello sonata.

As usual, Isserlis’ performance was as informed as it was spirited. His energetic expressiveness never fails to draw the attentive listener into the “engine room” of every work he selects for performance. The result is a perfectly balanced account of not only the “big picture” but also the many subtle “brush strokes” that bring the picture into being. That capacity to express detail was, as in the past, enhanced through the long-term chemistry that has emerged between him and his accompanist at the piano, Connie Shih.

Isserlis also deserves credit for his chemistry with his audience. The good news is that he does not try to account for each selection with an introductory mini-lecture. Rather, he homes in on a few specific items, which he feels are worth sharing. These inevitably provide useful orientation for a listener encountering a composition for the first time. My guess is that those familiar with the cello repertoire were in a minority yesterday, but they seemed consistently as attentive to everything that Isserlis presented as the more “seasoned” listeners were. Such chemistry is ultimately in the hands of the performer, and Isserlis could not have handled it better.

Another Single-Word-Title Album from Igor Levit

Igor Levit on the cover of his latest album (courtesy of Jensen Artists)

Those that have been familiar with this site for some time probably know that it has given a generous amount of attention to pianist Igor Levit. For the most part the articles have provided commentary for his recordings, most (if not all) of which have single-word titles. However, here in San Francisco this was a banner year for Levit, since he gave four performances in Davies Symphony in his capacity as Artist-in-Residence for the San Francisco Symphony (SFS).

From a personal point of view, I have to say that I took considerable satisfaction in having an opportunity to listen to a concert performance of Ferruccio Busoni’s Opus 39 piano concerto, which Levit performed with SFS. Those familiar with the work of pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk probably know of his reputation for presenting “monster” concerts, which featured outrageously flamboyant technical challenges. Busoni’s concerto is a “monster” in its own right; but it “goes to the next level,” framing all of that flamboyance in an overall architecture, which I had described as “symmetry within symmetry” when I wrote about the structure of the score.

One week from today Sony Classical will release its eighth album of solo piano performances by Levit. The title of the album is Fantasia; and, as in the past, Amazon.com has created a Web page to process pre-orders. Over the course of two CDs, Levit serves up fiery performances of three major virtuoso undertakings. The first of these was a keyboard composition by Johann Sebastian Bach, his BWV 903 “Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue.” This is given a “back-to-back” performance, coupled with Franz Liszt’s B minor piano sonata. However, the demands that must be met to provide convincing accounts of these two pieces are dwarfed by those of the “main event” on the second CD, Busoni’s “Fantasia contrappuntistica.” This was composed about six years after the piano concerto. While many will probably find it more accessible than the concerto, there is no questioning the magnitude of technical challenges posed by both compositions.

Too be fair, one must also take note of one more demanding composition on this new album. This is Alban Berg’s Opus 1, a single-movement piano sonata composed during his studies with Arnold Schoenberg. However, where technical challenges are concerned, the bar is relatively low. (I say this because I was able to get my own fingers around this piece, back in the days when they were more agile!) More significant are the ways in which Berg found his own path for working with the absence of a tonal center. Furthermore, it would be fair to characterize this as a “cerebral” composition, which can also be said of BWV 903 (Bach being the ultimate pedagogue of his day) but not of the flamboyant rhetorical turns found in both Liszt and Busoni.

It is also worth noting that my past recital encounters with “Fantasia contrappuntistica” have been performances by two pianists. As a result, Levit’s new solo recording deserves a special place in my catalog of recordings. Mind you, having experienced his solo work in the Opus 39 piano concerto, I cannot say that I was particularly surprised to find that the “Fantasia contrappuntistica” would also get solo treatment.

Bach on the Nineteenth Century Piano

Piano soloist Oliver Moore (from the American Bach Soloists Web page for last night’s recital)

The title of the second of the four concerts prepared for this year’s annual San Francisco Bach Festival presented by American Bach Soloists was Explorations: Bach Beyond Baroque. This was a solo piano recital by guest artist Oliver Moore performed in the Barbro Osher Recital Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. With the exception of the opening selection, the BWV 867 prelude-fugue coupling in B-flat minor from the first Book of Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, all of the works on the program were composed during the nineteenth century.

Two of those selections were Bach arrangements by Camille Saint-Saëns and Ferruccio Busoni, respectively. The first of these was the opening Sinfonia for the BWV 29 cantata Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir (we thank you God, we thank you). This was followed by the Chaconne movement that concludes the BWV 1004 solo violin partita in D minor. These constituted the first half of Moore’s program. The second half was devoted to major piano compositions by Johannes Brahms, his Opus 24 “Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel,” and Franz Liszt, the “Fantasy and Fugue on the Theme B-A-C-H.” Moore concluded with an encore selection, Busoni’s transcription of the BWV 734 organ chorale on Martin Luther’s hymn “Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g’mein” (dear Christians, one and all, rejoice).

Taken as a whole, this was an impressively prodigious program of nineteenth-century piano technique at its richest. All of the works demanded the highest of keyboard skills, and it would not surprise me if Busoni had mastered all four of them for his recital performances. In that respect one could almost imagine that Moore was channeling Busoni’s spirit. His intensity definitely did justice to nineteenth century keyboard techniques at their most flamboyant. The Liszt selection was originally composed for organ, but the composer clearly could not resist adding it to the repertoire of his piano recitals.

Nevertheless, I came away from the second half of the program with the feeling that neither Liszt nor the relatively young Brahms were willing to honor the enough-is-enough injunction. Brahms’ Opus 24 clocks in with 25 variations. Each of these is a masterpiece of brevity, but the attentive listener can be forgiven for looking at his watch by the time a dozen of those variations have punched the clock. By the time the fugue takes over, one would be forgiven for wondering just what it was that Brahms wanted to prove. Liszt, on the other hand, saw both the fantasy and the fugue as invitations to go as wild as possible, leaving the listener with the impression that, while he may have been long-winded, Brahms had the clearer account of structure, if not showy-execution.

By the time Moore had concluded his encore, my guess is that most of the audience welcomed the conclusion of the marathon. Nevertheless, he brought a refreshing contrast to the Baroque rhetoric that dominated Thursday night’s program. Artistic Director Jeffrey Thomas clearly appreciated that too much of anything has its limits. Thus, one could come away from the two successive programs with the sense of an imaginative approach to contrasting styles.

Igor Levit Concludes Residency with Solo Recital

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, pianist Igor Levit concluded his tenure as San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Artist-in-Residence with a solo recital that concluded this season’s Great Performers Series. The first half of his program consisted of a coupling of two collections of relatively short pieces. The first of these was a selections of six chorale preludes that Johannes Brahms had composed for organ, arranged for solo piano by Ferruccio Busoni. This early twentieth-century arrangement was coupled with Fred Hersch’s second “book” of a collection entitled Songs Without Words, composed in 2022.

The second half of the program began much later in the twentieth century with Zoltán Kocsis’ 1978 arrangement for solo piano of the opening prelude to Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. This was followed by Franz Liszt’s B minor piano sonata, composed about half a decade before Wagner’s opera. Levit’s one encore selection continued this “reverse traversal” of the nineteenth century with a performance of the third of the D. 780 collection of six solo piano compositions given the overall title Moments musicaux by composer Franz Schubert.

Over the course of his SFS visit, Levit traversed a repertoire that was as highly imaginative as it was extensive. He had begun his visit with the most conventional of his offerings, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 73 (fifth) piano concerto in the key of E-flat major, often known as the “Emperor.” His Liszt selection, coupled with its encore, presented a return to this domain of familiar repertoire. Mind you, the Liszt sonata can be an unwieldy beast; and too many pianists present it simply for the sake of letting the audience know how skillfully they can jump through all of the composer’s fiery hoops.

In that context Levit should be credited for trying to present the score as music, rather than some kind of Olympic challenge. He provided one of the clearer accounts of how this single-movement composition can be parsed into a sequence of episodes that constitute a coherent narrative. This established the encore as a perfect context, contrasting Liszt with a composer who, in the spirit of Buckminster Fuller, knew how to make “more and more with less and less” in his cycles of short pieces.

On the other side of the sonata, so to speak, Levit introduced the second half of the program with a composer that excelled in making more and more with more and more. The Tristan prelude is a perfect example unfolding a rich repertoire of themes couched in a series of harmonic progressions that never (even in the final measure) establish a sense of finality. (Mind you, this is a prelude to an opera with a very long first act!) What struck me as important, however, had more to do with the way in which Levit could negotiate the dynamics to reflect on the original orchestral version than with how Kocsis had telescoped Wagner’s score down to the resources of a single keyboard.

In the first half of the program, I was particularly drawn to how easily Hersch could shift away from jazz piano gigs into a more formal recital setting. As his notes explained, his Songs Without Words compositions were “written out completely,” in contrast to the usual jazz “charts.” Each of the six short pieces was endowed with its own distinctive “personality” in Levit’s interpretation; and I have to say that I was delighted with the freshness Hersch brought to a genre usually associated with the nineteenth century.

Cover of Levit’s album that couples chorale preludes by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johannes Brahms (from the album’s Amazon.com Web page)

I was equally struck by how the entire program had been framed with Brahms at the beginning the Liszt at the conclusion. Busoni’s arrangements of Brahms’ organ music were as perceptive of those he had composed based on the organ chorales of Johann Sebastian Bach. Some readers probably know that I have been writing about Levit’s recordings for some time; and, in the collection I have accumulated, I particularly liked how he had the chorale preludes of Bach and Brahms reflect each other in his Encounter album. Levit seems to believe that, where sacred music is concerned, Brahms deserves just as much attention as Bach; and last night I was particularly delighted with the case he made for Brahms.

Igor Levit Brings Ferruccio Busoni to SFS

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall pianist Igor Levit gave the first of the three performances of the third of four programs he had prepared in his capacity as Artist-in-Residence for the 2022–23 season of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). The program consisted entirely of Ferruccio Busoni’s Opus 39 piano concerto, given its first SFS performances. Busoni was no stranger to grand undertakings; and this work, completed in 1904, was definitely one of the grandest of them. The score requires not only a full orchestra but also a male chorus, which joins the instrumentalists for the final movement, given the title “Cantico.” The text is taken from the final scene of the verse drama Aladdin by the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger.

As a composer, Busoni often tried to achieve just the right balance between Apollo and Dionysius. On the Apollonian side, his piano concerto is structured as “symmetry within symmetry.” The original title page for the concerto even includes an illustration for the sort of symmetry he had in mind:

Busoni’s “architectural” visualization of symmetry in his piano concerto (taken from the original title page for the score, courtesy of SFS)

The concerto is structured in five movements, performed with minimal separating breaks. It begins with a “Prologo e Introito” and has a “Cantico” as a concluding coda. Within this framework, there are three full-length movements entitled “Pezzo giocoso” (playful piece), “Pezzo serioso” (serious piece), and “All’Italiana,” based on a tarantella. “Pezzo serioso,” in turn is in three “parts” preceded by an introduction. Needless to say, the title-page illustration is not so detailed but definitely captures Busoni’s emphasis on symmetry in his structure.

The music itself, on  the other hand, is unmistakably driven by Dionysius. The pianist is required to jump through one hoop after another, each of which has its own set of challenges regarding both dexterity and expressiveness. Every now and then, the orchestra is given an opportunity to present its own take on the thematic material; but the overall structure is decidedly “all about the piano,” even when the male chorus adds its own solemn rhetoric to the mix. Mind you, there is a bit of irony lurking in the final line of the text: “Praising the divine, the poem is silent!” There is clearly no room for silence in Busoni’s Dionysian intensity; and both Levit and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen could not have managed their dynamics any better, particularly when it came to keeping silence at bay!

This was a full-evening performance, lasting about 75 minutes. My own eyes alternated between the action up on stage and the listing of the movements in the program book to guide my way through the overall structure. It pretty much goes without saying that there was never a dull moment; and, when I could not always keep track of who was doing what in the ensemble, I could usually compensate by looking at the reflected images above the stage! In contrast to all that was there to be seen by both instrumentalists and pianists, the male chorus sang behind a thin curtain, suggesting that the voices themselves were other-worldly.

In  spite of the many demands made on the soloist, Levit still had enough energy to provide an encore. He judiciously selected a “completely different” aspect of Busoni’s efforts. He played the solo piano transcription of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 659 chorale prelude based on the hymn “Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland” (come now, Saviour of the heathen), composed for organ with two keyboards and pedals. (This was one of the selections on Levit’s Encounter album.) This brought a calming influence that would send all of us on our way home with a quieter disposition!

Melnikov Couples Composers with Keyboards

Alexander Melnikov (photograph by Marco Borggreve, from the San Francisco Performances announcement of his visit in 2018)

This coming Friday harmonia mundi will release a new solo album by keyboardist Alexander Melnikov. He has been a familiar presence here in San Francisco, primarily through the auspices of San Francisco Performances. Past programming has included two solo recitals and, most recently, a performance by his trio, whose other members are violinist Isabelle Faust and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras.

In all my articles about those occasions, I referred to him as a pianist. However, the title of his new album is Fantasie: Seven Composers, Seven Keyboards. That required a noun with a broader scope! As many are likely to assume, Amazon.com has created a Web page for pre-orders of this new release.

The seven composers are as follows:

1. Johann Sebastian Bach
2. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
3. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
4. Felix Mendelssohn
5. Frédéric Chopin
6. Ferrucio Busoni
7. Alfred Schnittke

The earliest instrument is a two-manual harpsichord created by Hans Ruckers II in 1624, but this served as a model for a reproduction made by Markus Fischinger in 2019. The most recent instrument is the Steinway D-274. This instrument has become so popular among concert pianists that it has its own Wikipedia page, which cites it as “the flagship of the Steinway & Sons piano company.”

Melnikov is clearly serious in his appreciation of how the construction (and, as a result, the sonorities) of the instrument has evolved over the centuries. In fact, he owns three of the early models:

1. Christopher Kern’s 2014 reproduction of a fortepiano made by Anton Walter in 1795
2. A fortepiano made by Alois Graff in 1828, restored by Edwin Beunk
3. An 1885 Érard piano dating from around 1885, restored by Markus Fischinger

That list leads me to wonder if Melnikov does not have his own Steinway, probably because he does not have room for it! Whatever the case may be, he clearly believes that it is important to play on an instrument whose sonorities would have been familiar to the composer.

I have to confess that I have been interested it this “proper pairing” of instrument and composer for many decades. Indeed, when I was responsible for arranging guest lecturers to visit the research laboratory where I worked in Connecticut, I managed to persuade Malcolm Bilson to give a lecture-demonstration about the eighteenth-century fortepiano. He had no trouble preparing for this, since he arrived at our lab with his instrument in his VW microbus.

Melnikov’s recording reminded me that Bilson’s visit marked the tip of an iceberg larger than I realized had existed. At the risk of tempting virulent disagreement, I would suggest that, on the basis of sonorities, the “piano as we know it” began to take shape relatively early in the nineteenth century (which, on this album, would mean the Mendelssohn selection). On the other hand, even after three or four listening experiences, I feel as if I am just beginning to get my head around the “steps to Parnassus” that lead from the eighteenth century to the contemporary Steinway.

In other words, I expect to spend a fair amount of time with this album, taking it for granted that Melnikov will be able to guide me through the six stages of transition that link Schnittke to Bach.

Jason Chiu’s “Romantically Charged” Recital

Jason Chiu in an earlier recital performance (courtesy of Old First Concerts)

Yesterday afternoon Old First Concerts presented the first of this month’s eight programs performed in and live-streamed from Old First Presbyterian Church. The series began with a solo piano recital by Jason Chiu described as a “romantically charged” program. The “core” of this program involved relatively short selections by three nineteenth-century female composers. The first of these was a nocturne in B-flat major by Maria Szymanowska, one of the first professional virtuoso pianists of that century. This was followed by the first of the four pieces in Fanny Mendelssohn’s Opus 8 Songs Without Words. The “set” then concluded with Cécile Chaminade’s Opus 153, entitled “Caprice-Impromptu.”

Each of these pieces could be taken as a “salon” selection, although the Mendelssohn composition was not published until after her death. However, this “core” was flanked on either side by selections that reflected, rather than embodied, the romantic spirit and were created for the concert hall, rather than the salon. Thus, the program began with Ferruccio Busoni’s reworking of the Chaconne movement from Johann Sebastian Bach’s D minor solo violin partita (BWV 1004), transforming it into a flamboyant display of keyboard virtuosity. That selection was “paired” at the conclusion with another major finger-busting undertaking, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 57 (“Appassionata”) sonata in F minor. This “early emergence” of romanticism was preceded by an “afterthought” of that movement, represented by Maurice Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau.”

This made for an imaginative perspective on the emergence, progress, and decline of the romantic aesthetic. Chiu established that perspective through his overall program plan, and each composition was executed in a manner that confirmed its contribution to that program. One might say that Chiu had prepared a thoroughly engaging performance, whose engagement was established on an imaginative historical perspective. In other words this was a program that appealed to both “head and heart” in equal measure, leaving me curious about how Chiu has planned (or will plan) his other recital programs.

Mitropoulos in the Late Nineteenth Century

Having examined the recordings in Sony Classical’s Dimitri Mitropoulos: The Complete RCA and Columbia Album Collection that account for the early nineteenth century and the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, I found that the recordings of music from the remainder of the nineteenth century amounted to a rather mixed bag. For the most part, the recordings made with the Minnesota Orchestra outnumber those made with the New York Philharmonic. However, after Mitropoulos moved to New York, he also served as a conductor for the Metropolitan Opera; and, as a result, there are recordings of both Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera.

My guess is that Mitropoulos had more opportunities to be adventurous in Minneapolis. Thus, while we have a recording of the familiar D minor symphony by César Franck, we have less-encountered alternatives such as Ernest Chausson’s Opus 20 symphony in B-flat major and Alexander Borodin’s second symphony in B minor. There is also an opportunity to listen to the pianist Egon Petri as soloist in a performance of Ferruccio Busoni’s arrangement for piano and orchestra of Franz Liszt’s “Rhapsodie espagnole.” Somewhat ironically, while Gustav Mahler performed as a conductor in New York, the recording of Mitropoulos conducting his first symphony was made in Minneapolis, leading me to wonder whether this may have been a “first contact” experience for the Minnesotans.

The New York recordings are fewer in number and leave less of an impression, particularly when Mitropoulos revisits repertoire he had conducted in Minneapolis. While his approach to Boris seemed to be an attentive one, the Met recording was so abridged as to leave almost no sense of the narrative behind the opera. The recording was made at the Metropolitan Opera House in March of 1956, which seems to date from a period when knowledge of the Russian language was not prerequisite. Thus, the excerpts were sung in an English translation that never rises above the level of clunky.

Far more interesting is the Saturday afternoon radio broadcast of Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, which took place on December 10, 1955. This was the production at which, earlier in the year, Marian Anderson had made her Met debut in the role of Ulrica. Sony Classical’s Beyond the Music Anderson anthology included the CD of the RCA recording of excerpts from this production, but Anderson can only be heard on one track! That CD is also included in the Mitropoulos collection, but the last two CDs are devoted to reproducing that subsequent radio broadcast. This does far more justice to Anderson, not to mention her colleagues on the stage, which included Giorgio Tozzi, Roberta Peters, Jan Peerce, Robert Merrill, James McCracken, and Zinka Milanov!

If the overall scope of this portion of the Mitropoulos anthology is limited in its eyebrow-raising moments, it is worth noting that, in the overall catalog, his commitment to recording was much more concerned with the twentieth century. Indeed, I have decided that the repertoire is too extensive to be covered by a single article. Instead, I shall write separate articles about music composed in Europe and works that originated in the United States. Mitropoulos was serious about both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and I am hoping to do justice to his dedication to this repertoire.

Once Again, Encores Prevail Over the Program

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco Symphony presented the final program in its Great Performers Series. The performer was pianist Evgeny Kissin. Sadly, this was the latest installment in a series of recitals in which execution of the encore selections prevailed over the presentation of the published program. Readers may recall that this was the case when Lang Lang visited Davies as a Great Performers soloist, presenting engaging “encores” on either side of his performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 988 “Goldberg” Variations at the end of March. Over in Herbst Theatre, about a month ago, the recital by baritone Matthias Goerne and pianist Seong-Jin Cho was similarly problematic until Goerne presented “Bist du bei mir” (from Bach’s Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach) as his encore.

Kissin presented four encores to his wildly enthusiastic audience (the first time I saw so much enthusiasm packed into almost all available seats). Of those the first two made for the most satisfying listening. While, during the program itself, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 540 Adagio movement in B minor brought overwrought rhetoric to even the slightest marks on the score page, the encore selection of the K. 485 Rondo movement in D major engaged the attentive listener with every note, through a clear rhetorical understanding of every phrase. Similarly, Ferruccio Busoni’s piano transcription of Bach’s BWV 659 organ chorale prelude for “Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland” (now comes the gentiles’ Saviour) brought a rich interpretation to the original organ setting, while Carl Tausig’s arrangement of the BWV 565 toccata and fugue in D minor, which began the program, was interpreted by Kissin as one blustering gesture after another.

The original autograph score (first page) of Chopin’s Opus 53 polonaise (courtesy of the Heineman Music Collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library Dept. of Music Manuscripts and Books, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The remaining two encore selections were compositions by Frédéric Chopin to complement the all-Chopin second half of the program. The program concluded with the Opus 22 “Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise,” which was preceded by seven mazurkas selected from the Opus 7, 24, 30, and 33 collections. The first of the Chopin encores was the Opus 53 (“Heroic”) polonaise in A-flat major. The evening then concluded with a Chopin waltz with no mention of key or opus number.

The one work on the program that was not “reflected” in an encore was Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 110 sonata in A-flat major. This sonata is probably best known for its unconventional overall structure, including a fugue, which is subsequently repeated in inversion. The music presages departures from conventions yet to come, but all Kissin could do was bang his way through each of the episodes with the fugal material suffering the most.

Those seeking attentive listening experiences in a piano recital were, sadly, left disappointed.

Kremer’s DG Chamber Music: 19th Century

Having accounted yesterday for violinist Gidon Kremer’s latest ECM New Series album of Mieczysław Weinberg’s solo violin sonatas, I shall return to working my way through the 2015 Deutsche Grammophon (DG) collection, Gidon Kremer: Violin Sonatas and Other Chamber Works. I began this month by writing about the eighteenth-century selections in this collection; and this morning I shall move on to the nineteenth century. This is the century that receives the most attention in the anthology.

In that context the most generous allocation goes to Franz Schubert with three CDs. These account for the three sonatinas for violin and piano: D. 384 in D major, D. 385 in A minor, and D. 408 in G minor. Taken as a whole, those pieces fill a single CD. Another CD is devoted to the D. 574 sonata in A major (not published until after Schubert’s death) and the D. 934 fantasia in C major (also published posthumously). The remaining CD is devoted entirely to one more posthumous composition, the D. 803 octet in F major.

The last selection was recorded during performances on the tour of a program entitled Music from Lockenhaus – Gidon Kremer and Friends. Before Kremerata Baltica was launched, Kremer founded the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival in 1981; and in 1987 Kremer took that show on the road. The Lockenhaus musicians that joined him for D. 803 were violinist Isabelle van Keulen, violist Tabea Zimmermann, cellist David Geringas, bassist Alois Posch, clarinetist Eduard Brunner, hornist Radovan Vlatković, and bassoonist Klaus Thunemann. I had the good fortune to listen to D. 803 in concert back in the Eighties, and I have been a sucker for it ever since. However, my overall “Schubert addiction” has me “hooked” on all three of the CDs in this collection.

In order of quantity, the next composer to receive “multiple” attention is Johannes Brahms with performances of all three of the violin sonatas: Opus 78 in G major, Opus 100 in A major, and Opus 108 in D minor. These are also personal favorites. While I still prefer Schubert over Brahms, Kremer’s chemistry with pianist Valery Afanassiev definitely draws attention to the virtues of all three of these sonatas. The final “multiples” composer is Robert Schumann with the two sonatas he composed late in life: Opus 105 in A minor and Opus 121 in D minor. Kremer performs these with pianist Martha Argerich. While she has never been my favorite pianist, I was glad to see the attention given to Schumann’s chamber music in this collection.

That leaves two remaining composers at the opposite ends of the timeline. At one extreme there is Carl Maria von Weber’s piano quartet in B-flat major. This is music that deserves more attention than it receives. Performing with violist Veronika Hagen, cellist Clemens Hagen, and pianist Vadim Sakharov, Kremer makes a convincing case for listening to this music. At the other extreme one encounters Ferruccio Busoni with his Opus 36a (second) sonata in E minor. This is another recording that Kremer made with Afanassiev. All of the movements of this sonata are played without interruption, concluding with a set of six variations on a theme capped off with a coda. I have had a long-standing interest in Busoni’s compositions, so its mere presence in this collection is sufficient to draw my attention! The more familiar I become with the Busoni canon, the better equipped I shall be to evaluate specific performances!

Federico Colli’s Art of Distortion

Last night in Herbst Theatre San Francisco Performances resumed its annual tradition of presenting a Subscriber Gift Concert. Drawing upon the generous support of George and Camilla Smith, both subscribers and donors were eligible to receive tickets free of charge. After those tickets had been committed, the remaining ones were sold to the general public for $45. With a few exceptions, there was unreserved seating for all in attendance.

Last night’s concert marked the California debut of the Italian pianist Federico Colli. On the surface the program he prepared provided what might be called a “bread-and-butter” journey through the keyboard repertoire. He began with a selection of seven keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, all in relatively conventional major (G and D) and minor (also G and D, as well as F) keys. This was followed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 333 sonata in B-flat major.

The intermission was followed by two seriously massive undertakings. The first of these was Franz Schubert’s D. 940 fantasy in F minor. This is probably Schubert’s best-known compositions for four hands on one keyboard (the only “competitor” being the first of the three D. 733 “Marches militaires”). Notwithstanding Eric Bromberger’s program note that the music “demands first-class performers,” as a rank amateur I have found myself in no end of opportunities to work through this composition with a partner not necessarily any more talented than I was.

While this music is decidedly thick in its textures, Colli decided to give it a two-hand account, performing an arrangement prepared by Maria Grindberg. Whether or not this should be likened to a dog walking on its hind legs must be left to the individual tastes of the listener. Nevertheless, one challenging arrangement deserves another; and the program concluded with Ferruccio Busoni’s solo piano reworking of the Chaconne movement from Johann Sebastian Bach’s D minor solo violin partita (BWV 1004).

The encore selection was composed by another currently active pianist. I first encountered (and wrote about) Fazil Say when Warner Classics released his six-CD set of all of Mozart’s piano sonatas. Apparently, after he finished that project, Say decided to have a little fun with the repertoire. He composed a somewhat jazzy and delightfully irreverent take on the “Alla Turca” movement from the K. 331 sonata in A major. This was all in good fun, and Colli passed that fun on to his audience with panache.

However, the four selections on the printed program sheet made for an entirely different listening experience. One might say that Colli had put in considerable time to establish the rhetorical details of everything he played, all the way down to the distinctions across the Scarlatti sonatas. Having established solid foundations for every selection, he lit a few sticks of dynamite and smashed them all to Kingdom Come. This might be called an “anti-logical” approach to every performance he prepared, since his every gesture seemed to thumb its nose at how all the other pianists would approach the music.

I suspect that any number of diverse reactions emerged on audience side. Some may have dismissed the whole affair as little more than a choreographic display of Colli’s approach to his keyboard. There were definitely others that left the house during intermission, having decided that enough was enough. Some of the voices I overheard during intermission were trying to decide whether or not to laugh at the whole affair.

Personally, I put the evening in the same category applied to Marcel Duchamp having added a mustache to the Mona Lisa and then providing a cryptic title that was little more than a dirty joke. During my time in Philadelphia, I visited the Museum of Art frequently and always went to visit that particular Duchamp piece as if I were meeting an old friend. Whether or not I would revisit a Colli recital expecting “more of the same” is another matter. Probably I would prefer to stay and home at listen to my Spike Jones is Murdering the Classics! CD.

SFP Gift Concert Open to General Public

One sign of concert activities returning to normal is that the annual Gift Concert presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP) will resume in a little less than two weeks. Free tickets are provided to subscribers and donors due to the generous support of George and Camilla Smith. Once those tickets have been committed, the remaining tickets go on sale to the general public, all priced at $45.

Pianist Federico Colli, this year’s SFP Gift Concert performer (from the event page for this concert)

In the past these events have occasionally, if not often, served to provide a debut opportunity. That will be the case this month, when the Gift Concert will be a solo recital by pianist Federico Colli. He has performed at many (if not most) of the major venues in Europe; and his touring has taken him to both Hong Kong and Seoul. On the other hand his visits to the United States seem to have been limited to New York and Chicago, meaning that this may also be his first opportunity to perform on the West Coast.

His program will begin with a selection of seven keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. Colli has recorded two volumes of Scarlatti sonatas on Chandos Records; so, presumably, his selection will reflect on the content of those recordings. This will be followed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 333 sonata in B-flat major.

Colli will conclude his program with a major virtuoso undertaking, Ferruccio Busoni’s arrangement of the Chaconne movement from Johann Sebastian Bach’s D minor solo violin partita (BWV 1004). If I am reading the Web page for this concert correctly, then his Busoni performance will be preceded by an equally challenging offering. This will be Franz Schubert’s D. 940 fantasia in F minor, which was composed for piano duet. Those familiar with the duet repertoire probably know that D. 940 holds a high place, particularly for the intricate skill of weaving thick counterpoint to be distributed across four hands. Since Colli will be giving a solo recital, it appears that he will attempt to account for all of that counterpoint with only two hands. If he succeeds, that can be marked down as one of the high points of the current concert season!

This concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 16. It will take place in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. This venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel. As already observed, all remaining tickets are being sold for $45. They may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. Single tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545.

Joseph Szigeti’s Columbia Recordings

1950 photograph of violinist Joseph Szigeti (from the Cushing Memorial Library of Texas A&M University, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

After several delays, all of which were probably due to the impact of COVID-19 on “business as usual,” Sony Classical finally released its anthology Joseph Szigeti: The Complete Columbia Album Collection about a month ago. Szigeti, a Hungarian violinist, was a leading figure during the twentieth century. He was a notable colleague of Ferruccio Busoni, Béla Bartok, Ernest Bloch, and Eugène Ysaÿe, the last of whom dedicated his first solo violin sonata to him. (Ysaÿe’s Opus 27 is a collection of six solo sonatas, each of which is dedicated to a different virtuoso violinist reflecting the respective composer’s style.)

The very first CD in the Sony collection is probably the best reflection of these connections. It begins with the first of Bartók’s two virtuoso rhapsodies, originally composed for violin and piano and subsequently arranged for violin and orchestra. Bartók wrote this piece for Szigeti, and Columbia recorded the two of them performing the composition on May 2, 1940. The following May 13 they returned to the World Broadcasting Studios in New York, this time joined by clarinetist Benny Goodman, to perform what is probably the most authoritative account of Bartók’s three-movement “Contrasts.”

While the collection does not include the concerto that Bloch wrote for Szigeti, that first CD also includes his 1923 Baal Shem suite, composed when Bloch was teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Music and given the subtitle “3 Pictures of Chassidic Life.” After these three pieces, however, there is a disappointing lapse in adventurous content. This is particularly disconcerting where the concerto is involved, since Discogs has a Web page for a Columbia vinyl that coupled the Baal Shem performance with one of the Bloch violin concerto played by Szigeti under the baton of Charles Munch conducting the Orchestra De La Société Des Concerts Du Conservatoire in Paris.

On the more positive side, there is a complete account of Szigeti’s performances at the Prades Festival. Based in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in the Occitanie region of Southern France, this festival was launched by cellist Pablo Casals in 1950 to commemorate the bicentenary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach, and Columbia provided recordings of the performances at those annual festivals. Of particular interest is the recording from the 1953 festival of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 87 (second) piano trio in C major, with Szigeti joined by Casals on cello and Myra Hess on piano. Hess also accompanied Szigeti in a performance of Franz Schubert’s D. 574 sonata in A major. There are also three recordings of Casals conducting Bach, which are definitely valuable historical documents but are not likely to go down very well with “Bach purists.”

In general, there is much to be said for the company that Szigeti keeps. For my part the deepest impressions come from the recordings he made of the piano and violin sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven (as the composer himself described them) with the piano part taken by Mieczysław Horszowski. I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that Horszowski also accompanied Szigeti in a recording of Busoni’s Opus 36a second violin sonata in E minor. This can be found on the penultimate CD in the collection, coupled with Szigeti’s performance of Busoni’s Opus 35a concerto in D major with The Little Orchestra Society conducted by Thomas Scherman.

In other words whatever liabilities there may be in this collection, they are more than sufficiently balanced by a wealth of assets.

Remembering Robin Sutherland

Yesterday evening the Ross McKee Foundation launched its spring season with its tribute concert honoring pianist Robin Sutherland, whose life ended this past December 18. Like the events of the fall season, this concert was a video live-streamed through the Ross McKee Foundation YouTube channel, which is now available for subsequent viewing. Sutherland was Principal Pianist for the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) for 45 years; and pianist Marc Shapiro, who shared SFS duties with him, was one of seven pianists to record video performances in Sutherland’s memory, all of which were compiled for last night’s live-stream. The other performers were Christopher Basso, Britt Day, Elizabeth Dorman, Jeffrey Kahane, Jeffrey LaDeur, and Keisuke Nakagoshi. The program then concluded with an audio recording of Sutherland playing Earl Wild’s “Hommage à Poulenc.”

This final offering served up a witty twist that I suspect Sutherland would have appreciated. Wild’s “hommage” had as much to do with Johann Sebastian Bach as with Francis Poulenc. Indeed, the “spinal cord” of this short composition was taken from the Sarabande movement of Bach’s BWV 825 keyboard partita in B-flat Major. Wild seemed to summon up a vision of Poulenc playing Bach at the piano, gradually succumbing to the temptation to add some of his own harmonic and motivic twists. To help the listeners “get the point,” the Sutherland recording was preceded by Dorman’s performance of that Saraband movement as Bach had written it. In addition, Nakagoshi oriented listeners with a sense of Poulenc’s piano rhetoric by playing “Mélancolie” as his offering to the evening’s program.

Jeffrey LaDeur’s contribution to the Robin Sutherland tribute concert (screen shot from the video being discussed)

Diversity was the key attribute of the entire offering, reflected by both the music being played and the keyboard styles of each of the players. In the midst of all of that diversity, some offerings were bound to be more memorable than others. In terms of my own dispositions towards the keyboard repertoire, I have to say that I was particularly drawn to the opening selection, Ferruccio Busoni’s solo piano arrangement of the second (Andantino) movement from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 271 piano concerto in E-flat major. Busoni clearly knew how to distinguish the ripieno passages from those for the solo piano (just as Bach had done in his BWV 971 “Italian” concerto for solo keyboard); and Jeffrey LaDeur’s account of Busoni’s text reflected every aspect of the arranger’s insight.

Old First Concerts: February, 2021

As of this writing, Old First Concerts has scheduled only one concert for next month. This will be the return of three of the members of the Wooden Fish Ensemble: violinists Terri Baune and Ilana Blumberg and pianist Thomas Schultz. The two violinists will present the world premiere of Hyo-shin Na’s “Weaving Variations,” preceding it with a performance Na’s “The Sway of the Branch II.” They will also perform the world premiere of “Three Pieces and More” by Boudewijn Buckinx. Schultz will play Frederic Rzewski’s North American Ballads, followed by Ferruccio Busoni’s arrangements of two chorale preludes by Johann Sebastian Bach. There will also be duets for violin and piano by Erik Satie and Arvo Pärt.

As is currently the case, this concert will be live-streamed through YouTube. The specific link to the YouTube streaming will be found on the event page for this concert. The performance will take place at 8 p.m. on Friday, February 26; and a hyperlink to the program notes will be added to the event page a few hours before the beginning of the concert. There will be no charge for admission, but all are invited to choose an amount to donate through the hyperlink on the event page. As usual, any changes in current plans will be updated through the Web page you are currently reading and the Facebook shadow site for this series of articles.

Garrick Ohlsson and Kirill Gerstein at SFCM

As was announced this past Friday, this afternoon the Baltimore-based Shriver Hall Concert Series (SHCS) streamed a video of a two-piano recital given by Garrick Ohlsson and Kirill Gerstein. The performance took place in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Ohlsson lives in San Francisco, and Gerstein traveled from Berlin to share the stage with him. The video will be available for subsequent viewing until 8:59 p.m. on Wednesday, November 11, accessible through an SHCS Web page.

All three of the compositions on the program were two-piano arrangements of music previously composed for other resources. The least familiar of these was also the major offering. Ferruccio Busoni originally composed his “Fantasia contrappuntistica” for solo piano; and its “definitive edition” was first published in 1910. He prepared his own two-piano version, which was published in 1922. Rather than composing an expanded transcription, he reworked many of the passages, meaning that the latter version had a structure and rhetorical strategy of its own.

This afternoon was the closest I have ever been to anything other than a compact disc recording of either the solo piano or two-piano version of this music. As in some of his earlier compositions, Busoni used Johann Sebastian Bach as a point of departure. His primary source was the “Contrapunctus XIV,” the final (and unfinished) fugue from BWV 1080, The Art of Fugue. This was to be a three-subject fugue, whose third subject was based on Bach’s initials: B (German notation for B-flat), A, C, H (German notation of B natural). Beginning with a relatively faithful account of what Bach had written, Busoni developed his own extravagant fugue weaving the B-A-C-H subject in with the two that Bach had already composed and then expanded the scope by adding a fourth subject!

The other source was the Lutheran hymn “Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr” (alone to God in the highest be glory), for which Bach composed six chorale preludes, BWV 662–664 and BWV 675–677). The “Fantasia contrappuntistica” also includes three variations on the fugue subjects, preceded by an intermezzo and followed by a flamboyant cadenza. The Lutheran chorale is then revisited prior to a Stretta movement that piles up all the preceding thematic material. In lesser hands this could have well resulted in a train wreck. Instead, the final section affirms just how skilled Busoni could be in managing complex polyphony.

Fortunately, the video of this afternoon’s performance provided subtitles to guide the attentive listener through the unfolding of this monumental undertaking. Furthermore, the camera work, for the most part, assisted the listener in keeping track of who was responsible for managing which of the themes and polyphony as the performance proceeded. Thus, while the half-hour duration of the composition makes for an intense listening experience, the chemistry between the two pianists brought as much clarity as could be realistically expected to both the thematic material and the composer’s full arsenal of techniques for developing that material.

The remainder of the program was devoted to two-piano arrangements of works originally composed for full (and rather large) orchestral resources. The first of these was Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 45 “Symphonic Dances.” Rachmaninoff himself prepared the two-piano version. The good news was that he successfully provided a clear account of all of the thematic material and most of his techniques in developing that material.

Nevertheless, there were at least a few moments in which the instrumental rhetoric had more to offer than the arrangement. For one thing, in the original version the piano was just one of the instruments of the full orchestra; and, in that context, its sonorities have their own unique contributions to the overall texture. Then there is one particularly poignant theme that Rachmaninoff scored for saxophone, which is reduced to “just another tune” in the two-piano version. Nevertheless, that latter arrangement provided opportunities for keyboard virtuosity that made for an almost perfect follow-up to Busoni’s approach to two-piano writing.

Kirill Gerstein and Garrick Ohlsson building to the final climax of “La valse” (screen shot from the video being discussed)

The program then concluded with Maurice Ravel’s two-piano version of “La valse.” Ravel himself gave the first performance of this arrangement joined by pianist Alfred Casella. Recently, however, it has been easier to encounter performances of the solo piano version that Ravel also prepared. It goes without saying that no number of pianos can provide the breadth of sonorities found in the original orchestral version of “La valse.” On the other hand, to the extent that the music itself can be taken as a shell-shocked reflection on the aftermath of World War I, both Ohlsson and Gerstein provided a compelling interpretation of what amounts to an uncompromising account of deranged nostalgia. Ravel’s approach to instrumentation might have been more nightmarish, but Ohlsson and Gerstein still managed to capture much of the score’s shock value.

Shriver Hall to Stream Ohlsson-Gerstein Recital

Garrick Ohlsson (above) and Kirill Gerstein (photographs by Kacper Pempel and Robert Torres, courtesy of Morahan Arts & Media)

This weekend the Baltimore-based Shriver Hall Concert Series (SHCS) will present a two-piano recital that will bring San Francisco resident Garrick Ohlsson together with Kirill Gerstein, who will travel here from his home in Berlin. The recital will take place at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, observing all necessary quarantine practices for the occasion. The program they are preparing for this occasion is an impressive one.

Most importantly, it will be one of those rare occasions to listen to Ferruccio Busoni’s “Fantasia contrappuntistica.” The composition is structured in twelve parts requiring highly-demanding keyboard technique, all conceived as an homage to Johann Sebastian Bach. The score includes four fugues and a set of three variations on a Bach-inspired chorale theme. It was originally written for solo piano (which is presumably how Busoni himself performed it); but an arrangement for two pianos was subsequently prepared, which is the version that will be performed at this recital.

The program will also include two two-piano arrangements of orchestral compositions. The first of these will be Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 45 “Symphonic Dances;” and the two-piano arrangement was prepared by Rachmaninoff himself. Similarly, Maurice Ravel prepared a two-piano version of his orchestral “choreographic poem,” “La valse;” and he gave the first public performance of that arrangement with pianist Alfred Casella. Ravel also prepared a solo piano version, which was discussed on this site about a year ago.

This program will be streamed this Sunday afternoon, November 8, at 2:30 p.m. The video will then be archived for subsequent viewing until 8:59 p.m. on Wednesday, November 11. The fee for admission will be $15, and SHCS has set up a Web page for online purchase. Once a ticket has been purchased, a hyperlink for viewing the performances will be made available and will be valid for additional visits until Wednesday. The performance itself will be followed by a chat with the artists moderated by SHCS Executive Director Catherine Cochran.