Yuja Wang Directs Mahler Chamber Orchestra

2022 photograph of Yuja Wang (photography by Norbert Kniat, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Last night saw the return of Yuja Wang to Davies Symphony Hall. Her many past appearances have presented dynamite performances of an impressively diverse repertoire. Last night she served as Director of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, leading from the keyboard for two works: Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 16 (second) piano concerto in the first half and Alexander Tsfasman’s “Suite for Piano and Orchestra (Jazz Suite)” in the second. Between these “bookends” was a performance of Prokofiev’s Opus 25 (“Classical”) symphony in D major, conducted by Concertmaster Matthew Truscott.

Sadly, too much of this evening was too heavy-handed. Even Truscott’s approach to the Opus 25 symphony, which abounds with lighthearted rhetoric, never quite caught the upbeat spirit of this early composition. For her part, Wang approached the keyboard for the Opus 16 concerto as if she were applying a sledge hammer. Mind you, the roaring rhetoric in the ensemble for the first movement of the concerto probably served as an invitation for Wang to find her own ways of roaring.

As might be expected, there were a generous number of encores. Wang began with one of the solo piano pieces from Glass’ Glassworks album. She then moved on to unannounced Chopin with rhetoric that was far too aggressive. Finally, she was joined by percussion and bass accompaniment for selections of Latin music.

Sadly, none of the evening’s selections were particularly memorable.

Guitarist Teicholz Gives Faculty Artist Recital

Guitarist Marc Teicholz (from the Conservatory Web page for last night’s performance)

Yesterday evening I decided to check out the latest performance livestreamed from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. This was a Faculty Artist Series recital, the faculty member being guitarist Marc Teicholz. He shared the performance with pianist Eric Zivian.

Note that I did not used the verb “accompanied.” This was a program in which both Teicholz and Zivian gave solo performances. The music performed involved a coupling of Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 28 collection of 24 solo piano preludes accounting for all the major and minor keys with a similar collection composed by Sergio Assad for solo guitar entitled 24 Preludios Chopinianos. Zivian would play each of the preludes, and Teicholz would then play the Assad prelude in the same key. Assad’s account of the eighth of the preludes in F-sharp minor (Molto agitato) was basically a transcription of Chopin, while the other selections were more inventive, reflecting the mood rather than the exact notes.

It has been a while since I last found myself confronting what I had previously called “the flood of physical mannerisms that Zivian exhibits, presumably to convey his personal attachment to the music he is playing.” Sadly, yesterday evening those mannerisms were as abundant as ever. The good news was that Teicholz delivered guitar performances that were as engaging as they were disciplined. (The same can be said of Assad’s talents as a composer.)

The intermission took place at the halfway mark, following the first twelve couplings of preludes by the two composers. By that time I had had enough. There is only so much Zivian I can endure over the course of any recital program.

Tiffany Poon’s Third CMSF Recital in Herbst

Tiffany Poon on the cover of her Nature album (from the Amazon.com Web page)

Yesterday afternoon pianist Tiffany Poon returned to Herbst Theatre for her third appearance as a Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF) recitalist. Some readers may recall my disappointment with her last performance two years ago, which I described as “a very long program that offered absolutely nothing to satisfy any seriously attentive listener.” The second half of the new program was devoted to the recent release of her Nature album, while the first half was dominated by Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 35 sonata in B-flat minor, his second sonata given the title “Funeral March.”

This was definitely an improvement over her last visit, when she performed the full cycle of Chopin’s Opus 28, his set of 24 preludes in all major and minor keys. Over the course of the four movements of Opus 35, she delivered a firm grasp on intensity without devolving into banging. The second half of the program accounted for about half of the tracks on the Nature album. These were presented in roughly chronological order.

She began in the Baroque period with one of the keyboard compositions by François Couperin, “Les fauvétes plaintive” (the mournful warblers), coupled with a similar setting by Jean-Philippe Rameau, “Les tendres plaintes” (tender complaints) from the RCT 3 suite in D major in the Pièces de Clavecin collection. The program then leapt forward about a little less than two centuries with selections by Gabriel Fauré, Camille Saint-Saëns, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Lili Boulanger.

Fauré’s first barcarolle, Opus 26 in A minor, was impeded by a heavy damper pedal. This was particularly frustrating, since the theme was carried by the left hand. Saint-Saëns was represented by “Le cygne” (the swan), the best-known movement from The Carnival of the Animals, arranged for solo piano by Lucien Garban. This was followed by Debussy’s first “Arabesque” composition, with a middle section that was overly rushed. Poon found herself on sounder ground with Maurice Ravel, beginning with “Jeux d’eau” and followed by the second and third of the Miroirs compositions. Boulanger’s “D’un jardin clair” concluded the program, followed by an encore performance of Franz Liszt’s “Liebestraum No. 3” in A-flat major.

Taken as a whole, that seriously attentive listener did not have to contend with “absolutely nothing.” Nevertheless, the performance, taken as a whole, was an uneven one. Poon clearly wanted her audience to appreciate Boulanger; and, as far as I am concerned, she succeeded. Similarly, her approach to playing Rameau with a contemporary instrument could not have been more engaging; and, as was already observed, Ravel was a high point in her program. Taken as a whole, the program may have been uneven; but the assets were still worthy of attentive listening.

March 8 Will be Even Busier than Expected!

Readers may recall that this site has already accounted for two events taking place on Sunday, March 8, which is now about a week and a half away. The earlier of those events is the next performance by the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, which will begin at 2 p.m., and the other will be a Chamber Music San Francisco program at the Presidio Theater, which will begin at 3 p.m. The latter of these will be a Groupmuse event. It will be “competing” with two other Groupmuse events, one of which is already sold out.

Photograph of a living room, presumably where Scarfe’s recital will be performed (from its Groupmuse Web page)

The full title of the other event is A Victorian Living Room Concert: Solo Piano with Ian Scarfe. The living room is in a historic Victorian home that even has its own name: “Agape.” Scarfe is no stranger to the venue, which is where he played his very first Groupmuse recital. Program details have not yet been finalized, but the composers he has selected are Philip Glass, Frédéric Chopin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, and Manuel de Falla.

As readers will expect, Groupmuse has created a Web page for purchasing tickets, twelve of which are available as of this writing. Ticket prices will be $20 at the door, but reservations may be made for $5. The performance will begin at 2:30 p.m. after doors open at 2 p.m., and the performance will conclude at 4 p.m.

Ian Scarfe to Bring Spanish Music to Century Club

Poster for the event being described, showing the three performers (screenshot from the Groupmuse Web page)

Pianist Ian Scarfe will begin the new year with his next visit to the Century Club of California. Once again, he will be joined by a cellist, this time James Jaffe. The title of next month’s program will be An Afternoon in Spain – Classical Spanish Music and Flamenco. Each of the instrumentalists will begin with a solo selection.

Scarfe will open the program with Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 19, his “Boléro” in A minor. This will be followed by Jaffe’s performance of the three-movement suite for solo cello composed by Gaspar Cassadó in 1926. (Cassadó was taught by Pablo Casals and was probably influenced by his teacher’s performances of the solo cello suites by Johann Sebastian Bach.) Scarfe will then accompany mezzo Deborah Rosengaus in a performance of Siete canciones populares españolas, Manuel de Falla’s arrangements for soprano and piano of seven traditional Spanish songs.

The remainder of the program will be devoted to settings of Spanish dances. Scarfe will begin with Isaac Albéniz’s Opus 37, the six Danzas Españolas. This will be followed by the “Ritual Fire Dance,” an episode from the music composed Falla for the ballet El amor brujo (the bewitched love). The program will then conclude with the Spanish Dances collection by Enrique Granados.

For those that do not already know, the Century Club is located at 1355 Franklin Street, between Post Street and Sutter Street. However, all arrangements must be made through a Groupmuse Web page. Ticket prices begin at $25, with $5 to hold a reservation. As of this writing, 43 of 75 spots are still available. The performance will begin at 2 p.m. on Sunday, January 25. Doors will open at 1:30 p.m. Drinks will be provided at the intermission (both with and without alcohol). However, the club itself is not wheelchair accessible.

Attacca Quartet Begins its Own SFP Series

Attacca Quartet members (clockwise from upper left) Amy Schroeder, Nathan Schram, Andrew Yee, and  Domenic Salerni (photograph by David Goddard, courtesy of SFP)

Some readers may recall that, this past June, San Francisco Performances announced that this current season would have a new three-concert series devoted entirely to performances by the Attacca Quartet. The series was given the title Contemporary Chamber, with the “mission” that each of the three programs would include at least one contemporary offering. That series began last night, and the contemporary composer was David Lang, represented by his two-movement “daisy.” That was complemented, after the intermission, by a series of nocturnes that began with Frédéric Chopin and concluded with Radiohead. Sadly, the program provided no specifics for that journey.

That may have been just as well. While the arrangement of Chopin was engagingly effective, none of the following nocturnal selections came even close to the Polish composer’s demanding standards. The listening experience reminded me of Winston Churchill’s famous definition of history: “One damned thing after another!” When coupled with Lang’s contribution, the entire core of the program came across as disappointing.

The good news is that the rest of the program was framed by two composers, both of whom had a prodigious command of the talent for creating music for string quartet. Joseph Haydn has been called the “Father of the String Quartet;” and his command of that genre yielded 83 compositions (the last being incomplete), all accounted for in Volume III of the Hoboken catalog. Last night’s selection was Hoboken III:48, the fifth in the collection of the six Prussian Quartets (Opus 50). This began the program, which concluded with the fourth of Béla Bartók’s six string quartets. Bartók may not have been as prodigious as Haydn, but he definitely had his own prodigious techniques of invention!

Both of these compositions were given solid and thoroughly engaging accounts by the four Attacca performers: violinists Amy Schroeder and Domenic Salerni, Nathan Schram on viola, and cellist Andrew Yee. My only quibble was the too-smooth transition from Radiohead to Bartók. This undermined the intensity of Bartók’s opening gesture, but my guess is that there were enough members of the audience that were already familiar with that gesture! For my part, expectation was already beginning to mount while Attacca galumphed its way through that muddled sequence of nocturnes!

Nevertheless, Attacca’s approaches to both Haydn and Bartók were so well informed in technique and so expressive in execution that any shortcomings in the overall program could be easily overlooked!

Cadillac Hotel to Host Something Different

Many readers probably know by now that this site does its best to keep up with the Concerts at the Cadillac events. These performances almost always include the Patricia Walkup Memorial Piano in the lobby of the Cadillac Hotel. Late next month, that piano will be the center of attention. Six amateur pianists, all living in the Bay Area, will contribute to a recital. As of this writing, the works to be performed and their respective performers will be as follows:

1. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Fantasia for keyboard in F-sharp minor, H 300 (Asako Tsumagari)
2. Frédéric Chopin: the sixth (E-flat minor) and eleventh (E-flat major) études from the Opus 10 collection (Christina Lee)
3. Franz Liszt: the last of the three nocturnes in the Liebesträume collection, S. 541/3 (Kaidi Zhang)
4. John Williams: the theme music for the film Schindler’s List (Daniel Abreu)
5. Sergei Rachmaninoff: the first movement of the Opus 36 piano sonata in B-flat minor (Jonathan Chu)
6. Alexander Scriabin: the last two movements in the Opus 23 piano sonata in F-sharp major (Calvin Huang) 

Photograph of Morton Feldman at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw (from a Wikipedia Web page) 

I have to say that I am impressed by the breadth of repertoire prepared for this recital. My only misgiving is that I wish at least one of these pianists would have dared to be a bit more adventurous. For example, as can be seen on his Wikipedia page, there is a more-than-generous list of solo piano compositions by Morton Feldman. I have barely begun to account for them in my collection of recordings, and I am not sure I have experienced a performance by any of the local performers other than the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. (For those whose curiosity has been piqued, that performance can now be seen on a YouTube video.)

As usual, this show will begin at 1 p.m. on Friday, October 24. The Cadillac Hotel is located at 380 Eddy Street, on the northeast corner of Leavenworth Street. All Concerts at the Cadillac events are presented without charge. The purpose of the series is to provide high-quality music to the residents of the hotel and the Tenderloin District; but all are invited to visit the venue that calls itself “The House of Welcome Since 1907.”

Bridge Releases Album of Cellist Louise Dubin

Cover of the album being discussed (from its Bandcamp Web page)

The beginning of this month saw the release by Bridge Records of the album Passages, a diversity of selections performed by cellist Louise Dubin, joined by another cellist, Julia Bruskin, and pianist Spencer Meyer. The subtitle of the album is “French Cello Works;” and it continues her interest in the music of Auguste Franchomme, which had previously been recorded on the Delos album The Franchomme Project, on which she also performed with Bruskin. The other composers represented on the album are (in order of appearance) Charles Koechlin, Gabriel Fauré, Frédéric Chopin (piano music arranged for cello and piano by Franchomme), Francis Poulenc (arranged by Maurice Gendron), Philippe Hersant, and Claude Debussy.

Most listeners will probably find this album a journey of discovery. Dubin saved the most familiar for the last, Debussy’s only sonata for cello and piano. Some readers may also recognize Franchomme’s name from when cellist Camille Thomas played his arrangements of Chopin for a San Francisco Performances recital in April of 2024. Dubin’s album includes another such arrangement, this time of the seventh the twelve études collected in Opus 25.

While it would be fair to say that Dubin is not shy about diversity, I found that both the selections for this new album and how they were ordered began to feel like “one thing after another” after the first few tracks. This is not to say that her technique lacks expressiveness. Nevertheless, after listening to the album several times, I found that my attention began to drift somewhere around the middle of the fourteen tracks. Perhaps if I sat in the audience for one of Dubin’s recitals, I would have come away with more positive impressions.

Ian Scarfe to Livestream Recital from Living Room

Those that follow this site regularly know that this has been a relatively busy month for Ian Scarfe. It should therefore be no surprise that his final performance this month will be livestreamed from his living room! The title of the program will be Canticle of Saint Francis: Piano Music inspired by the Natural World, and the repertoire will take the audience from morning to night. However, it will be almost the same one that he prepared for the recital that he will be giving at the Century Club on September 21, entitled Harmonies, Sonorities, and Birdsong! The “revised version will be as follows:

Peter Nicolai Arbo’s illustration of Peer Gynt for Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's book Norske Folke og Huldre-Eventyr (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The program will open with Edvard Grieg’s keyboard version of the “Morning,” originally composed as music for a performance of Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt. This will be followed by selected nocturnes by Frédéric Chopin and the nocturne in G-flat major composed by Ottorino Respighi. The next selection will be Franz Liszt’s S. 175/1, “St. Francis of Assisi's sermon to the birds,” the first of the two pieces in his Deux Légendes collection. The second half of the program will begin with one of the movements from Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus, the “Regard de la Vierge,” which reflects on Mary’s experience of the Annunciation. There will then be a final avian appearance in Amy Beach’s Opus 92, “A Hermit Thrush at Eve.”

This performance will take place online through Zoom. It will begin at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, September 23. Registration will be required for those wishing to attend. Zoom has created the registration Web page for this event. Donations will be welcome at the suggested amount of $20. For those that prefer to attend a “physical” performance, one will take place in the Mission at the Mission Dolores Basilica at 4 p.m. on Sunday, October 12. The Basilica is located at 3321 16th Street.

Kissin Brings Satisfying Shostakovich to Davies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lisiecki’s Quantity Doesn’t Rise Up to Quality

Jan Lisiecki at the piano (photograph by Christoph Köstlin, courtesy of SFP)

Last night Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki returned to Herbst Theatre to present his third solo piano recital for San Francisco Performances (SFP). He began his first recital with the first four of the eight preludes that Olivier Messiaen composed in 1928. For his return, he prepared a program consisting entirely of preludes.

The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 28 set of preludes in all major and minor keys. The first half also included its own fair share of other Chopin preludes, as well as three by Sergei Rachmaninoff, two from his Opus 23 collection and the other the notorious Opus 45 in C-sharp minor. Johann Sebastian Bach was represented only by the first two of his Well-Tempered Clavier preludes, BWV 846 in C major and BWV 847 in C minor. Lisiecki also returned to Messiaen, this time with only the first three of the preludes he had previously performed. The other composers included on the program were Karol Szymanowski (his three Opus 1 preludes) and Henryk Górecki (the first and last of his four Opus 1 preludes, both of which reminded me of Peter Schickele’s quip about holding a black belt in music).

While Lisiecki seems to have mastered a solid command to account for the overall plethora of notes in this program, he fell painfully short of bringing any expressiveness to his interpretations. Indeed, I was reminded of what I wrote about his emphasis on technical display in his debut, which I described as “often hammered out with an intensity that bordered on brutality.” There is no question that this was an impressive technical display, but I would hesitate to call it musicianship.

As a result, I was not particularly disappointed when the title of the encore selection announcement was muttered beyond recognition!

Lisiecki to Return to San Francisco Performances

Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki (from his SFP event page)

San Francisco Performances presented the debut of Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki in December of 2013, when he was the featured artist in that season’s Young Master’s Series. He began that program with the first four of the eight preludes that Olivier Messiaen composed in 1928. Later this month, he will return to Herbst Theatre with a program consisting entirely of preludes.

Once again, Messiaen will be included in the program. However, Lisiecki will also perform the complete cycle of preludes composed by Frédéric Chopin for his Opus 28. The other contributors to the program will be Johann Sebastian Bach (of course), Sergei Rachmaninoff, Henryk Górecki, and Karol Szymanowski. This promises to be an engaging journey in which familiarity with rub shoulders with discovery!

This program will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 20. Ticket prices are $85 (premium Orchestra and front and center Dress Circle), $75 (remainder of Orchestra, all Side Boxes, and center rear Dress Circle), and $65 (remaining Dress Circle and Balcony). As always, they may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. The venue will be Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is the main entrance to the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel.

Jeneba Kanneh-Mason: Too Much for One CD?

It has been a while since I wrote about one of the members of the Kanneh-Mason family, a clan that seems to have yielded an abundance of musical talent. My most recent encounter was this past September, when I wrote about Isata’s Mendelssohn album, which, like the Takács Quartet album I discussed yesterday, accounted for music by both Felix and Fanny. Where the future is concerned, cellist Sheku will be visiting Davies Symphony Hall at the beginning of June for the final offering in this season’s San Francisco Symphony Great Performers Series.

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

This coming Friday Sony Classical will release what I think will be the debut album of pianist Jeneba, given the title Fantasie. As is almost always the case, Amazon.com has already created the Web page for this album, which is currently processing pre-orders. This is, to say the least, a major undertaking, which reminds me of the old nothing-succeeds-like-excess jibe.

If this album were a book, I would describe it as being structured in four chapters:

1. Frédéric Chopin
2. Americana
3. Claude Debussy
4. Alexander Scriabin

Each of those individual composers is represented by two compositions. The entire album is framed by two multi-movement sonatas, beginning with Chopin’s Opus 35 (“Funeral March”) sonata in B-flat major and concluding with Scriabin’s Opus 19 in G-sharp minor, a two-movement work given the subtitle “Sonata-Fantaisie.” Both of those composers are also represented by two shorter works. The Chopin sonata is followed by the first two nocturnes in his Opus 27 set, and the Scriabin sonata is preceded by the first and eleventh preludes in his Opus 11 collection of preludes in all major and minor keys. The Debussy selections are also preludes, “La fille aux cheveux de lin” (the girl with the flaxen hair) from the first book and  “Bruyères” (Heather, named after a town Eastern France) from the second.

Bearing in mind that the Kanneh-Mason family is British, I have to confess that I was most interested in how Jeneba approached the three American composers in her program. She began with the first of Florence Price’s “Fantasie nègre” pieces, composed in 1929, revised in 1931, and based on the spiritual “Sinner, please don’t let this harvest pass.” The original version of this music was first performed by Margaret Bonds, who happens to be the second of those three Americans. “Troubled Water” is basically a fantasia on the African-American spiritual: “Wade in the Water.” The final composer is William Grant Still, represented by “Summerland,” which is the second piece in his Three Visions suite composed in 1935. (This is probably the best known of the three parts, since it was subsequently arranged for violin and orchestra.)

Taken as a whole, Jeneba has presented a decidedly generous offering. (Those that took the trouble to “do the math” will have discovered that this album offers 67.5 minutes of music!) That would make for a relatively impressive recital program, particularly if intermissions were scheduled on either side of the “Americana” segment. (Were I to produce that recital, those would be the intermission choices I would make; but, since I am just a listener, I am just as glad to have no say in the matter!)

Nevertheless, I think it would be fair to caution those acquiring this new release that it is not particularly conducive to beginning-to-end listening. (My guess is that those that try will begin to feel the onset of fatigue during the elaborate embellishments in the American selections.) On the other hand, each of the individual tracks is given an account that is thoroughly absorbing in its clarity. As a result, those with the appropriate gear are likely to have a richer (and, perhaps, better-informed) listening experience through MP3 technology, rather than a CD player!

Hough’s Liszt-Chopin Major Undertaking

Last night pianist Stephen Hough (“Sir” now included on the program sheet) returned to Herbst Theatre for another program presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP). This follows up on last March, when he served as “guest artist” in a recital by the Castalian Quartet. The selection was Johannes Brahms’ Opus 34 piano quintet in F minor. For his return, now as a soloist, he remained in the nineteenth century, performing full-length sonatas by two of Brahms’ predecessors. In “order of appearance” these were Franz Liszt prior to the intermission and Frédéric Chopin at the conclusion.

A representative example of Stephen Hough’s approach to expressiveness (photograph by Hiroyuki Ito, courtesy of SFP)

Those familiar with the repertoire know that both of these selections are major undertaking. Sadly, Hough failed to provide a convincing account of either of them. Mind you, Liszt’s only piano sonata poses no end of challenges to even the most qualified performer, particularly if its three “movements” (if there be such) are performed without interruption. To be fair, Liszt commanded a broad spectrum of expressiveness in just about everything he composed; but sustaining all of that expressiveness over the course of half an hour is far from a walk in the park. To continue that metaphor, rising to that challenge requires endowing the attentive listener with some sense of “journey.” Hough never rose to that challenge, leaving the listener to contend with little more than one outburst after another.

The Chopin selection, on the other hand, was his Opus 58, the last of his three piano sonatas. This was composed in 1844 (the first having been composed in 1828). From a structural point of view, that “sense of journey” is much better defined, even if there is no shortage of diverting embellishments. However, in the context of the first half of the program, Hough played his way through that journey as if he were channeling Liszt again. It was as if he sought to drown the audience in notes just to make sure they came away feeling they got their money’s worth!

Mind you, there was other evidence of Hough’s notes-as-currency approach to music. The intermission was followed by his own “Sonatina Nostalgica. This was inspired by the village of Lymm in Cheshire, England; and the music serves as a “tour guide” for a visitor to that village. This was clearly a modest setting, but the overflow of notes in Hough’s score subjected that village to a tempest worthy of William Shakespeare’s imagination.

To be fair, however, listeners were warned of that plethora of notes as soon as the light’s dimmed. He began with three short pieces by Cécile Chaminade: “Automne,” “Autre fois” (another time), and the pastoral “Les sylvains.” Each of these was conceived with sensitive rhetoric of brevity, but it seemed as if Hough’s only concern was of how many notes he could pack into each of these brief intervals of time.

Things were a bit more tolerable in his first encore, the third “Warum?” (why) movement in Robert Schumann’s Opus 12 Fantasiestücke (fantasy pieces). This was followed by (presumably) Hough’s own fantasia take on the song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” composed by the Sherman brothers (Richard M. and Robert B.) for the Walt Disney movie Mary Poppins. Sadly, it would have taken more than “a spoonful of sugar” to make Hough’s take on Disney to go down smoothly!

Those who enjoy the pleasures of piano music, whether playing it or listening to it, deserved better.

David Oistrakh’s Early Recordings on Warner

This past Tuesday I prepared readers for the 31 CDs classified as Premières, Rarities & Live Performances in the Warner Remastered Edition box set collection of recordings of performances by Russian violinist David Oistrakh. This “appendix” to the collection was curated by Bruno Monsaingeon, whom I had previously encountered through the videos he had produced for another major Warner Classics anthology, The Menuhin Century. While I was not particularly taken with his video skills, his efforts with Oistrakh’s audio archives seem to be at least a bit more promising.

Dividing this new collection into “mind-sized chunks” (a phrase readers may recall from my articles about the Warner Remastered Edition of recordings of the conductor Otto Klemperer) was not a particularly easy matter. Nevertheless, I knew exactly where to begin: with the two CDs identified as Early Recordings. To be more specific, “early” accounts for a period between December of 1935 and October of 1949. It includes two multi-movement compositions from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and one from the late nineteenth century. The earliest of these is Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1043 concerto for two violins in D minor, with Georges Enescu (probably better known to most readers as a composer) taking the other violin part. This is followed by Franz Schubert’s D. 667 (“Trout”) quintet (whose other performers are probably unfamiliar). The “late work” is Ernest Chausson’s “Concert,” scored for violin, piano, and string quartet, from which the second (“Sicilienne”) movement has been omitted.

Now, to be fair, I have been a sucker for D. 667 for the better part of my writing career (if not my entire life). If the quality of the sound leaves much to be desired, I can still appreciate that balance maintained by pianist Lev Oborin in performing with the “non-standard” (violin, viola, cello, and double bass) quartet. Similarly, this was my first encounter with Enescu as a performer; and, while his performance with Oistrakh may not have been “historically informed,” I still enjoyed the interplay of their two solo parts. On the other hand, I came away with the impression that the Chausson selection was included because Monsaingeon did not know where else to put it!

Efrem Zimbalist, one of Oistrakh’s contemporaries, with his violin (from the George Grantham Bain collection at the Library of Congress, digitally altered by Royalbroil, no known copyright restrictions)

Where the shorter pieces are concerned, most readers probably have already seen my citation of “the generous number of encore selections that were recorded by Jascha Heifetz.” Ironically, two of those selections were recorded by Oistrakh, the arrangement of Claude Debussy’s song “Beau Soir” and the Sarabande movement from Bach’s BWV 808 in G minor, the third of his “English” keyboard suites. Also, as a Philadelphian, I could appreciate the arrangement by Efram Zimbalist of the “Persian song” from Mikhail Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila. (When I was growing up, Zimbalist was Director of the Curtis Institute of Music, although, at that time, I was more interested in his son’s television career!)

Oistrakh also took on five (count them!) solo piano compositions by Frédéric Chopin. These included two mazurkas, two nocturnes, and one étude. I fear these fall into the dog-walking-on-hind-legs category of the achievement being done at all, regardless of whether it was done well! The fact is that, when I attend a recital, I usually I find a recitalist playing too many encores to be a bit irritating; and that is basically the impression that these Early Recordings CDs left with me. Perhaps it is just that I cannot relate to Monsaingeon’s talents as a curator.

Hough to Return to SFP for Solo Recital

Stephen Hough at the piano (photograph by Sim Canetty-Clarke, courtesy of SFP)

Pianist Stephen Hough (now Sir Stephen Hough) is no stranger to San Francisco. Indeed, when I was just beginning to exercise my writing chops, I remember having the opportunity to observe one of his master classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Nevertheless, I have to confess that my thoughts about him have run both hot and cold over the course of his past visits. According to my records, his last visit took place this past March, when he shared the stage with the Esmé Quartet for a San Francisco Performances (SFP) recital. The “main attraction” of that program was Johannes Brahms’ Opus 34 piano quintet in F minor, when I wrote the following about his performance of that music:

Hough’s face was constantly buried in his tablet, almost entirely as if he was unaware of his four colleagues; and, sadly, those colleagues tended to fumble their way through the intricacies of Brahms’ counterpoint.

Hough will return to SFP at the beginning of this coming February. This time he will be a solo recitalist, meaning that “playing well with others” will not longer be a factor. Each of half of his program will conclude with a major piano sonata. The intermission will be preceded by Franz Liszt’s S. 178, his only piano sonata, composed as a single movement, whose duration is usually about half an hour. The final work on the program will be another sonata in B minor, this time Frédéric Chopin’s four-movement Opus 58, the last of the three sonatas he composed (the first having been published posthumously).

Each of these formidable undertakings will be preceded by shorter offerings. The Liszt sonata will be preceded by three pieces by Cécile Chaminade, who happened to be born in 1857, the year when S. 178 was first performed. (This was after Liszt’s death in 1853.) The pieces that Hough has selected are “Automne,” “Autre Fois,” and “Les Sylvains.” The intermission will be followed by Hough’s own “Sonatina Nostalgica,” the final movement from his Partita and Sonatina Nostalgica.

This performance will begin on Tuesday, February 4, at 7:30 p.m., in Herbst Theatre, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Ticket prices are $85 (premium Orchestra and front and center Dress Circle), $75 (remainder of Orchestra, all Side Boxes, and center rear Dress Circle), and $65 (remaining Dress Circle and Balcony); and they may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. Single tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545.

Noe Music Launches 32nd Season

Most readers probably know by now that the Noe Valley Ministry, located in Noe Valley at 1021 Sanchez Street, just south of 23rd Street, has become a preferred venue for concerts and recitals. Next month will see Friction Quartet launch its 2024–2025 season there, and the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble will do the same the following month. Hopefully, however, readers know that the venue has its own concert series, entitled, simply enough, “Noe Music.” Programs are curated by its Co-Artistic and Executive Directors, Meena Bhasin and Owen Dalby. Both of them also perform during the season, Bhasin on viola and Dalby on violin.

This past Thursday, Noe Music presented an event that served as a “prelude” to the new season. This was a special benefit concert to celebrate the arrival of a new Steinway Model D Concert Grand Piano. Pianists Stephen Prutsman, Elizabeth Joy Roe, and Jeffrey LaDeur put the new instrument through its paces to celebrate its arrival.

Jon Kimura Parker at the piano (photograph by Tara McMullen, from the Noe Valley Music Web page for purchasing tickets.

The concert season itself will begin one week from tomorrow. It will begin with a recital by pianist Jon Kimura Parker. He has chosen to “launch” the season with three familiar composers from three different historical eras. He will begin with one of the most familiar piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven, the second Opus 27 sonata in C-sharp minor, best known as the “Moonlight.” He will then advance the time-line with Maurice Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau,” composed early in the twentieth century. This will be followed by preludes selected from Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 28 collection.

Parker will then move into more adventurous territory. He will perform a fantasy composed by William Hirtz, arranging familiar themes from the score that Harold Arlen composed for the movie The Wizard of Oz. He will then be joined by Dalby and Bhasin, along with their cellist colleague Amos Yang; and the four of them will conclude the program with a performance of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 60, his C minor piano quartet.

This event will begin at 4 p.m. on Sunday, September 29. It is expected to last about two hours. General admission will be $45 with a special $60 rate for reserved seating in the first few rows. Students will be admitted for $15. A Web page has been created for ordering tickets online.

SFIPF: A Disappointing Program of Transcriptions

Late yesterday afternoon at Old First Presbyterian Church, the San Francisco International Piano Festival (SFIPF) continued with its second program, a solo recital by Asiya Korepanova entitled Transformations. That title was selected by Korepanova because all seven of the works she played were transcriptions of her own design. This would have been an impressive undertaking had it been successful. Sadly, Korepanova’s overly aggressive keyboard technique tended to undermine any suggestion of expressiveness in either the music itself or its realization through transcription.

Asiya Korepanova playing Chopin at SFIPF (screen shot from the video of the performance)

The program itself was framed by music for cello and piano. Korepanova began by coupling Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 3, a “Polonaise brillante,” with an extended introduction, with Gabriel Fauré’s Opus 24 “Élégie.” At “the other end” the program concluded with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 19 sonata for cello and piano. All three of these offerings were overwhelmed with aggressive technique, which, in the case of Opus 19, obliterated any sense of coherent phrasing.

The “meat for the sandwich” consisted of four songs, each by a different composer of a different nationality. She began with Amy Beach’s setting of Victor Hugo”s “Extase,” the second of her three Opus 21 songs. This was followed by “Liebesode,” the sixth in Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs collection. She then moved on to César Franck’s “Le mariage des roses,” and concluded with the complete four-song cycle of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Songs and Dances of Death.” These are all selections that deserve more attention in the current vocal repertoire; but, sadly, Korepanova did little, if anything, to make a convincing case for them.

Nevertheless, her audience demanded an encore. They got “Maria,” probably the best known tune from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. She managed to inject just about every well-known Lisztian trope into her arrangement. Perhaps she was thinking of the West Side of Budapest!

Sunset Music and Arts: August, 2024

Polish pianist Tomasz Kamieniak (from the Sunset Music and Arts event page for this recital)

As is the case this month, the month of August will also see only one recital presented by Sunset Music and Arts. This month’s solo violin recital will be complemented next month by a solo piano recital. The recitalist will be Polish pianist Tomasz Kamieniak.

He has prepared a program of eight selections, each by a different composer. Since he, himself, is also a composer, he has given himself one of the slots with a performances of “Potsdamer Platz. Hommage à Marlene Dietrich,” the second piece in his Opus 67 collection Drei Berliner Klavierwerken.

The only composer to appear twice on the program will be Charles-Valentin Alkan. Kamieniak will play “Aime-Moi” (love me), the first piece in the Opus 15 collection Morceaux dans le Genre pathétique. Alkan’s other “appearance” will be as the arranger of the Allegro con brio movement from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 37 (third) piano concerto in C minor, for which Alkan also provided the cadenza. The other “arranger” on the program will be Franz Liszt, who arranged six of the songs collected in Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 74. These are generally published with German titles. Kamieniak will play three of them as follows:

• Frühling (spring)
• Das Ringlein (the ring)
• Bacchanal (merrymaking)

Other composers known for their virtuosity will include Louis Moreau Gottschalk (his Opus 31 “Souvenir de Porto Rico”), Sigismond Thalberg (the Opus 46 “Grand Caprice sur des motifs de l’Opéra la Sonnambula”), and “An American Idyl,” from Leopold Godowsky’s Triakontameron, subtitled “30 Moods and Scenes in Triple Measure.” The twentieth century will be represented by Walter Niemann with one of the movements from his Opus 119 Jura-Sommer: Kleine Impressionen.

This performance will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, August 9. For those not familiar with this concert series, it takes place at the Incarnation Episcopal Church, which is located in the Sunset at 1750 29th Avenue. Admission will be free with a suggested donation of $20 per person. [added 10/17, 8:25 a.m.:

Yesterday afternoon Sunset announced a second program for this month. The title of the program is Echoes of the Ages: A Journey Through Classical Song.  The journey will be led by mezzo Michelle Alexandra Pavlova. She will be joined by MonaLisa Pomarleanu, who is also a mezzo. Their accompanist will be pianist Dwight Okamura. The program has not yet been announced, but it has been planned to include selections from all periods between the Renaissance and the late Romantic period of Johannes Brahms and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The performances will again begin at 7:30 p.m., this time on Saturday, August, 24. Venue and ticketing information are the same as in the above paragraph.]

Kupiński Duo Plays Chopin and Sor

The Kupiński Guitar Duo of Dariusz Kupiński and Ewa Jabłczyńska (screenshot from the Omni Foundation YouTube video)

As was announced this past Tuesday, this morning saw the release of a second video from the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. This one presented the Kupiński Guitar Duo, whose members are Dariusz Kupiński and Ewa Jabłczyńska. (Readers may recall that they were joined by Marcin Dylla in a three-guitar arrangement of the “Concierto de Aranjuez” by the Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo.) The major work on their new program was Fernando Sor’s Opus 54b, a fantasy duet for two guitars composed in 1833.

While this composition was new to me, I must confess that I was far more interested in the works that preceded it. All of them were arrangements of solo piano music by Frédéric Chopin: three waltzes and one mazurka. The mazurka was the last in the Opus 17 collection of four. This is a particularly ambiguous mazurka. There are no sharps or flats in the key signature, and there is a middle section in A major. However, the piece never really settles into A minor until near the conclusion. However, while a single A (440) is dying off, there is an ambiguous progression, which concludes with an F major chord in first inversion. This, for me, was the high point of the video for the intensity of its expressiveness.

The waltzes, on the other hand, were far less unsettling. Their respective keys were C-sharp minor (the second in the Opus 64 set), B minor (the second in the Opus 69 set), and E-flat major (the Opus 18 “Grande Valse Brillante,” which was Chopin’s first published waltz). What I found particularly interesting was the back-and-forth arrangement in which each of the two guitarists accounted for the expressiveness of the respective themes. Considerable attention to sharing the thematic material (if not a certain amount of haggling) made for a visual experience that reinforced the auditory experience, even with the occasional splashes of wit!

Hopefully, these two guitarists will eventually find their way to performing a recital here in San Francisco!