Joshua Bell Returns to SFS Great Performers

Violinist Joshua Bell (from the Web page for last night’s recital)

Last night violinist Joshua Bell returned to San Francisco as the recitalist in the latest event in the Great Performers Series presented by the San Francisco Symphony. He was accompanied at the piano by Shai Wosner for a program of four violin sonatas, two each from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The composers for the first half of the program were Franz Schubert and Edvard Grieg, and those in the second half were Sergei Prokofiev and Maurice Ravel.

The program got off to an uneven start in which Bell and Wosner seem to have had different approaches to Schubert. Schubert has had a significant role in Wosner’s repertoire, and he has released several Onyx Classics albums of that composer’s piano music. On the other hand, I am not sure that I have had an opportunity to listen to Bell play Schubert previously. Last night I could see why, since Bell never seemed to find the right way to fit himself into Wosner’s account of the D. 574 violin sonata in A major.

Things got better when Bell advanced to the other end of the nineteenth century. He was much more in his element with movements having tempo adjectives such as “appassionato,” “espressivo,” and “animato.” Nevertheless, he overplayed his hand even when Wosner tried to establish a more disciplined frame of reference. On the other hand, Bell consistently found the right approaches to expressiveness in the Prokofiev and Ravel sonatas, and his chemistry with Wosner could not have been better. The evening concluded with an encore performance of “Mélodie,” the last of the three movements in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’us lieu cher (memory of a dear place). In many ways, the brevity of the Tchaikovsky movement came across as more expressive than any of the multi-movement sonatas, making for a “less is better” evening.

A Northern Lights Festival in Detroit

Yesterday evening the Detroit Symphony Orchestra presented its latest live-streamed performance. Once again, due to the shift in time zones, my wife and I settled down to dinner while viewing the concert through the YouTube app on our living room television set. The title of the program was Northern Lights Festival, presenting three Scandinavian composers. The ensemble was led by Principal Guest Conductor Tabita Berglund.

The first of those composers was Einojuhani Rautavaara. “Cantus Arcticus” is also known as “Concerto for Birds and Orchestra,” since the full forces of the orchestral ensemble are augmented with recordings of birdsong. (The composer’s source was the sound-effects collection of Finnish Radio.) There was no questioning the uniqueness of sonorities in the interplay of the birdsongs with the instrumental sonorities. Nevertheless, it did not take the composer long for establishing that interplay in the mind of the attentive listener. After that, the composition began to overstay its welcome for a duration that gradually became intolerable.

Johan Dalene, violin soloist for the performance of the Sibelius violin concerto conducted by Tabita Berglund (screen shot from last night’s YouTube’s video feed of the performance)

Fortunately, the composer Jean Sibelius (who died in 1957 at the ripe old age of 91) had a much better command when it came to sustaining attention. His D minor violin concerto was completed in 1904 with subsequent revisions in 1905. The music is particularly demanding on the soloist, but Johan Dalene brought a freshness to this music that has received a lot of attention from a lot of violinists.

The second half of the program was devoted entirely to music that Edvard Grieg composed for Henrik Ibsen’s verse-play Peer Gynt. The play is in five acts, and Grieg’s original score consisted of 26 movements. Berglund began with the prelude music for the first act, given the title “At the Wedding.” This was followed by the two suites extracted from the full score, played in reverse order with the four movements of Opus 55 preceding the four in Opus 46. For many, this meant that the final selection was the most familiar.

The United States is a significant distance from Scandinavia, but yesterday’s live-streamed performance definitely established a “meeting of two worlds!”

SFP Art of Song Series to Conclude Next Month

Soprano Miah Persson (from the Web page for tickets to her performance)

The final vocalist in the Art of Song Series will be Swedish soprano Miah Persson. She will be accompanied at the piano by Magnus Svensson. The title of their program will be Nordic Songs.

I suspect that most readers will not be familiar with this repertoire. The composers of the songs will be, in “order of appearance,” Wilhelm Stenhammar, Gösta Nystroem, Jean Sibelius, Emil Sjögren, Ture Rangström, and Edvard Grieg. By way of disclaimer, I can confess that my only encounter with songs by Sibelius came when I was writing about The Sibelius Edition, an entire account of the Sibelius catalog released in thirteen multi-CD volumes. Where Grieg is concerned, the last time I wrote about his vocal works was at the end of April of 2019 as part of my account of the Warner Classics’ 13-CD collection entitled Grieg: Piano, Orchestral & Vocal Works, Chamber Music.

The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 9. The venue will be Herbst Theatre, which many (most?) readers know is located in the heart of the Civic Center at 401 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Ticket prices will be $70, $60, and $50. As those readers probably also know, SFP has created a Web page for purchasing those tickets, which includes an account of all the selections to be performed.

A Premiere and Two Warhorses at Davies

Conductor Gustavo Gimeno (photograph © Marco Borggreve, courtesy of SFS)

Last night conductor Gustavo Gimeno returned to Davies Symphony Hall for the first of this week’s three subscription concerts performed by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). Also returning was the concerto soloist, pianist Javier Perianes, who made his SFS debut in June of 2015. On that occasion he played Manuel de Falla’s “Night in the Gardens of Spain” under the baton of Charles Dutoit. Last night his selection was Edvard Grieg’s Opus 16 piano concerto in A minor.

Familiar Grieg was coupled with one of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s most familiar symphonies, his Opus 64 (fifth) in E minor. These two warhorses were preceded by the world premiere of “Market Street, 1920s,” composed on an SFS commission by Principal Trombone Timothy Higgins. Those that have followed this site for some time may recall that I have taken a generous interest in Higgins’ efforts as a composer. His last effort performed in Davies, “Concert Music for Brass, Percussion and Timpani,” was composed for the brass players in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and was first performed here in March of 2024. As is almost always the case, “first impressions” do not always sustain; and I wish that things would unfold in such a way that last night’s encounter with Higgins’ latest effort will not be my last! [added 10/5, 8:30 a.m.: According to Steven Winn’s account of this performance in the San Francisco Chronicle, Higgins will be moving to the Chicago Symphony this coming fall; so it is unclear when (if ever) I shall have another encounter with his compositions!]

One thing is certain: “Market Street” was the freshest offering on the program. The remainder of the program consisted of what are sometimes politely called “chestnuts.” To be perfectly honest, I was already listening to too many performances of the Grieg concerto when I was in high school! Those are not the fondest of memories, and concerto soloist Javier Perianes’ delivery was so heavy-handed that I thought I was back in high school again! His encore of one of the plethora of the composer’s Lyric Pieces compositions was equally over-emoted, so I did not care very much which of the Opus collections was the one that supplied it.

Fortunately, things improved after the intermission. Tchaikovsky’s Opus 64 may be a warhorse, but every one of the clarinet passages delivered by Carey Bell made me sit up and take notice. (Some readers may know that the clarinet was my instrument in my high school days.) To be fair, this is one of those symphonies that gives the entire orchestra a generous workout; and Gimeno had no qualms in “pulling out all the stops” for the second (Andante cantabile) movement. Thus, while Bell’s clarinet work may have seized my attention, Gimeno’s conducting sustained it through to the conclusion of the final movement.

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.

Ian Scarfe to Return to Century Club

Recently, I have been trying to do my best to keep up with concerts by pianist Ian Scarfe at Monument SF. This past June he used the venue as a platform for the San Francisco performance of music from the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival. Later this month, he will return to another venue where I have seen him in action, the Century Club of California.

Cellist Kendra Grittani, who will be giving her first performance with pianist Ian Scarfe this coming September 19

This will be a program entitled Harmonies, Sonorities, and Birdsong. Scarfe will be joined by cellist Kendra Grittani for a “grand finale” performance of Claude Debussy’s (only) sonata for cello and piano. The second half of the program will begin with three compositions by Debussy’s predecessor in France, Gabriel Fauré, only one of which was composed for cello and piano, the Opus 24 “Élégie.” The second half will begin with the Opus 17 “Berceuse,” which was originally composed for violin and piano, followed by the first of the three Opus 7 songs, “Après un rêve.”

The first half of the program will open with two solo piano compositions by Edvard Grieg, the keyboard version of the “Morning” music, originally composed as music for a performance of Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt. This will be followed by “Småfugl” (little bird), the fourth of the six pieces in Opus 43, the third of the books given the title Lyric Pieces. More birds will appear in the performance of 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. There will then be a final avian appearance in Amy Beach’s Opus 92, “A Hermit Thrush at Eve.” The first half of the program will conclude with the nocturne in G-flat major composed by Ottorino Respighi.

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. The performance will begin at 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 21; and doors will open at 1:30 p.m. Drinks will be provided (both with and without alcohol). However, the club itself is not wheelchair accessible.

Dalene and Hong Disappoint in Herbst

Violinist Johan Dalene (photograph by Mats Bäcker, courtesy of SFP)

Violinist Johan Dalene made a significant impression a little over two years ago, when he made his San Francisco debut through the Shenson Spotlight Series curated by the San Francisco Symphony. Last night he returned, giving a San Francisco Performances recital in Herbst Theatre, accompanied, once again, by pianist Sahun Sam Hong. This time the impression was not as memorable.

The program was at its best at its “central core” with a performance of Witold Lutosławski’s 1984 partita. What struck me most about this offering was that violin and piano were on equal footing, the best possible testament to the partnership that Dalene has formed with Hong. The work consists of three primary movements separated by “Ad libitum” interjections. Since this was my first encounter with the music, I have no idea how much of the music was improvised; but the performance came across as if both violinist and pianist were muddling their way through the score.

Polish Lutosławski, who led off the second half of the program, was “paired” with Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s “Notturno e Danza” in the first half. There was no end of elaborate detail outlined in the program notes by Eric Bromberger, but none of that really came across in Dalene’s delivery. His capacity for expression registered more convincingly with the more traditional composers, the “Tzigane” by Maurice Ravel and the “bookends” of sonatas by Robert Schumann (Opus 105 in A minor, his first) and Edvard Grieg (Opus 13 in G major, the second). There was also an encore of an unnamed work by Grażyna Bacewicz (who was, herself, a violinist).

Taken as a whole, this was an evening best forgotten.

Johan Dalene to Make his SFP Debut This Month

Violinist Johan Dalene (photograph by Mats Bäcker, courtesy of SFP)

Swedish-Norwegian violinist Johan Dalene made his San Francisco debut at the end of January of 2023, when he was selected as one of the chamber music soloists for the Shenson Spotlight Series presented by the San Francisco Symphony. At the end of this month, he will return to San Francisco, again with his accompanist Sahun Sam Hong and the piano. This time his recital will be presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP).

Once again, Dalene will frame his program with two sonatas. His Shenson recital began with Edvard Grieg’s Opus 45 (third) violin sonata in C minor; so, for his return, he will conclude the program with Grieg’s Opus 13 (second) sonata in G major, composed about twenty years earlier in 1867. The program will begin with Robert Schumann’s first sonata in A minor, his Opus 105, composed over a decade earlier in 1851. At the center of this nineteenth-century “framework” will be Maurice Ravel’s “Tzigane,” which was first performed in 1924 (and was most recently performed here earlier this month as Midori’s encore). It will be both preceded and followed by much later twentieth-century compositions. The selection in the first half of the program will be Einojuhani Rautavaara’s “Notturno e Danza,” composed in 1993; and the Grieg sonata will be preceded by Witold Lutosławski’s 1984 partita.

This program will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 28. Ticket prices are $70 (premium Orchestra and front and center Dress Circle), $60 (remainder of Orchestra, all Side Boxes, and center rear Dress Circle), and $50 (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.

David Oistrakh on Warner: Nineteenth Century

As I continue to work my way through 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, I shall now focus on recordings of chamber music and concertos composed during the nineteenth century. This accounts for six of the CDs, and only one composer merits a “presence” on two of them. That composer is Robert Schumann, and even those recordings are not particularly comprehensive.

One CD presents the first two piano trios, Opus 63 in D minor and Opus 80 in F major, with Oistrakh joined by cellist Sviatoslav Knushevitsky. However, each trio has a different pianist with Lev Oborin in Opus 63 and Alexander Goldenweiser in Opus 80. The recording sessions were four years apart, in 1948 and 1952, respectively; and, since Oistrakh did not die until 1974, I was more than a little disappointed that he neglected to record the last of the trios, Opus 110 in G minor. Instead, he recorded the first (Opus 105) violin sonata with Vladimir Yampolsky; and the remaining selection Is the Opus 17 Fantasie, which was composed for solo piano. This was arranged for violin and piano by Fritz Kreisler, but the recording is an orchestration of this version by Sarah Feigin. I must confess that I much prefer the “original version;” but, apparently, the “powers that be” behind the USSR Symphony Orchestra had ideas of their own about repertoire!

Eugène Ysaÿe with his violin (photograph from the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress, public domain)

Each of the remaining four CDs is devoted to a single composer. On “order of appearance” in the box set, these are Edvard Grieg, Karol Szymanowski, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Eugène Ysaÿe. Greig receives a more thorough account than Schumann with a CD of all three of the violin sonatas. On the other hand I would have preferred recordings of all six of the Ysaÿe solo violin sonatas, rather than the assortment of selections, which also include piano and orchestral accompaniment. Similarly, I would have appreciated a more thorough account of Szymanowski selections. The Tchaikovsky Opus 35 concerto was, of course, inevitable; but the remaining shorter selections on the CD struck me as a hodgepodge of encore pieces.

Steven Isserlis Returns to SFP

Stephen Isserlis with his instrument (photograph by Satoshi Aoyagi, courtesy of SFP)

Cellist Steven Isserlis is no stranger to San Francisco. Over the course of my writing, I have accounted for performances his has given for not only San Francisco Performances (SFP) but also the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Music San Francisco. Last night I returned to Herbst Theatre to attend his most recent SFP appearance, accompanied at the piano, as in the past, by Connie Shih. The program was framed by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century compositions, Ludwig van Beethoven and Edvard Grieg, respectively. However, the intermission was flanked by two decidedly distinctive twentieth-century compositions, Bohuslav Martinů’s H. 277 (first) sonata for cello and piano and three collected pieces for the same duo by Nadia Boulanger.

For my part, that “core” made for a delightful journey of discovery. Like many, I have been aware of Boulanger for her reputation as a pedagogue, rather than a composer. However, there was nothing pedagogical about the short pieces that Isserlis played. The first two of them revealed a thoroughly engaging lyricism, while the last, given the tempo marking “Vite et nerveusement rythmé” was downright fun. (Isserlis is at his most enjoyable when he takes on compositions with the “fun” attribute.)

Martinů began his career as a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic. However, his desire to become a composer took him to Paris; and his need to escape Adolf Hitler took him to New York. American life was good to him, and he eventually became a citizen. He also found teaching positions at the Mannes College of Music, Princeton University, and the Berkshire Music School (during Tanglewood summers). The sonata that Isserlis played was composed in Paris in 1939, but its aggressive rhetoric reflects  what was happening during Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia. Such approaches to composition are often dismissed as “agitprop,” but Martinů found just the right way to express his dispositions.

Where the sonatas are concerned, it would be fair to say that those familiar with Grieg but not with the sonata would have felt right at home with his tropes. There was no mistaking the rhetoric, but the sonata still had an originality of its own. Most important is that the overall disposition was one of affability. This tends to be Isserlis’ “sweet spot” in his repertoire selections, and it made for an engaging farewell to the audience as the final selection.

At the other end of the time-line, so to speak, beginning with the second of the Opus 5 Beethoven sonatas was definitely the right way to seize attention. One consistently needs to be reminded that the younger Beethoven had no trouble relishing playful rhetoric; and, even though the key was G minor, the play could not have been more engaging. Nevertheless, I must confess to a personal bias for listening to music like this played on instruments appropriate for the period. That said, however, Isserlis still delivered a convincing account of the composer’s light tough and high spirits.

Taken as a whole, the program was very much a journey worth taking. The encore was a brief “Romance” by Camille Saint-Saëns. This made for a somewhat more “optimistic” disposition than had emerged from Grieg’s minor-key rhetoric, so it served the overall program well. It is always good to leave the audience with positive spirits!

Scarfe to Return to Monument with Piano Recital

Pianist Ian Scarfe (from his Web page for upcoming events)

Last year Ian Scarfe, Director of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival, brought his musicians to Monument SF for a performance of the suite that Aaron Copland extracted from the music he composed for Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring” as performed in its original version for thirteen instruments. Next week he will return, this time to present a solo piano recital. As many may expect, he has prepared an engagingly diverse program.

The “traditional” works on the program will be two suites from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively. The first of these will be Edvard Grieg’s Opus 40, usually known as the Holberg Suite. This will be followed by Le Tombeau de Couperin by Maurice Ravel. Both of these suites reflect on past centuries, and both of them were also orchestrated by their respective composers. He will also perform his own transcription of the music composed by Philip Glass for a sound track for the 1931 Dracula film. Other composers on the program will link past and present, with Johann Sebastian Bach and Johannes Brahms on one end and Radiohead and Aphex Twin on the other.

Once again, the performance will take place in the Monument event space, which is located in SoMa at 140 9th Street. It will begin at 7 p.m. next week on Thursday, February 13. As in the past, ticketing is being managed by Groupmuse, which has created a Web page for reservations.

Steven Isserlis to Return for SFP “Anniversary”

Presumably, readers know by now that this is the 45th anniversary season of San Francisco Performances (SFP), and the occasion is being celebrated by an additional subscription series presenting frequent past visitors. Next month will present two of those visitors. As was announced a week ago, the first of these will be pianist Marc-André Hamelin, who has prepared an impressively diverse program for his performance on Saturday, February 8.

Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih (from the SFP event page for tickets to their recital)

Hamelin will be followed exactly a week later by the second visitor. Cellist Steven Isserlis had been scheduled to return almost exactly two years ago, but that performance had to be cancelled due to travel and visa issues related to the pandemic. This year he will be Hamelin’s “successor,” performing (as he usually does) with pianist Connie Shih as his accompanist. The program will be framed by two relatively familiar cello sonatas, the first by Ludwig van Beethoven (the second of his two Opus 5 sonatas) and the last by Edvard Grieg, his Opus 36 sonata. The first half of the program will conclude with Bohuslav Martinů’s first sonata, and the intermission will be followed by a set of three pieces for cello and piano composed by Nadia Boulanger.

This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on (as already mentioned above) Saturday, February 15. The venue will be 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.

Samantha Cho at Old First Concerts

Screen shot of Samatha Cho at the piano keyboard in Old First Church

Last night I live-streamed the latest recital to be presented by Old First Concerts. The recitalist was pianist Samantha Cho, who is currently on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The second half of her program was devoted entirely to four-hand performances, for which she was joined by Alison Lee.

Her program began right off the bat with a world premiere performance. This was “Tether” by Monica Chew, currently based in Oakland. Sadly, as this piece wended its way, I could not shake the frequent reminders of my composition teacher to beware of “noodling.” If there was little sense of direction, then one could appreciate Cho’s failure to provide a particularly compelling account of the music. However, she muddled her way through the rest of the first half of the program with little to draw attention to composers that were definitely worthy of it: Toru Takemitsu, Edvard Grieg, and Earl Wild.

Things picked up a bit for the duo performances. These began with chorale preludes from two of Johann Sebastian Bach’s best-known cantatas, BWV 147, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, and BWV 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme. The chorales themselves came from the final movement of BWV 147 (“Jesus bleibet meine Freude”) and the middle movements of BWV 140 (“Zion hört die Wächer singen”). These are some of the most familiar excerpts from Bach’s sacred music, and they were both given perfectly satisfying accounts. Cho and Lee then concluded with music actually written for four hands, Claude Debussy’s Petite Suite, consistently catching the upbeat spirit of their selection.

Over the course of the evening, however, that spirit was a sometime thing, coming across more as an obligation to perform a recital, rather than an opportunity to engage with the audience.

“All San Francisco Concert” Anniversary

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco Symphony (SFS) marked the 45th anniversary of its All San Francisco Concert. This is the annual event that has more to do with the citizens of San Francisco (many of whom are not necessarily fans of classical music) than with the more “elite” concert-goers. As I previously observed, it was conceived for those “who work tirelessly to make the Bay Area a more just and equitable place.” Those working for Bay Area nonprofit, social services, and grassroots organizations are offered admission for only $12.

The program itself presented works by four composers whose names were likely familiar to most (if not all) of the audience. The first half coupled Jean Sibelius and Edvard Grieg, each represented by a suite extracted from a longer composition. The second half was devoted to “concert music” by two twentieth-century French composers, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted what amounted to full SFS resources, including harpist Katherine Siochi serving as soloist in the Debussy selection.

The chromatic harp built by Henry Greenway on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (photograph donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

The full title of that piece was “Danses pour harpe chromatique avec accompagnement d'orchestre d'instruments à cordes” (dances for chromatic harp with string orchestra accompaniment). My only encounter with a chromatic harp has been in a museum. The most familiar design can be seen in the above photograph. The instrument consists of two planes, corresponding to the white and black keys of a piano, respectively; and Debussy probably conceived his score with regard to how a pair of hands could deal with such a structure.

These days the music is almost always performed on the usual pedal harp. I have to confess that I really appreciated the view afforded by my seat last night. Since I am relatively familiar with the music, I was able to coordinate Siochi’s fingerwork with the sonorities I was expecting. She was accompanied only by the string section, and Salonen knew exactly how to capture the dance-like qualities of the score. This is music that deserves far more attention than it tends to get. The last SFS performance took place in May of 2006, around the end of my Silicon Valley days, when then SFS harpist Douglas Rioth played it with Edward Outwater conducting.

By way of contrast, the second of the two suites that Maurice Ravel extracted from his score for “Daphnis et Chloé,” the “symphonie chorégraphique” choreographed by Michel Fokine for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, can definitely claim warhorse status. It was taken from a one-act ballet in three sections and basically accounts for the final section. Ravel, of course, had a prodigious command of the wide spectrum of sonorities that he could summon from an orchestral ensemble; and there is no shortage of those sonorities in this particular suite. This was one of those occasions when it was clear that both the conductor and his ensemble were having a good time, and the final cadence erupted with enthusiastic approval from the audience.

The program began with a suite that was not as structured around a narrative. Jean Sibelius’ Opus 11, Karelia Suite consists of three movements extracted from his Karelia Music. As Lyle Watson observed in his Musical Quarterly article, the collection was conceived as a reflection on the folk music of Karelia without necessarily appropriating it. The suite is relative short in duration (usually clocking in at less that a quarter of an hour); but each of the three movements explores is own unique reflections on folk styles.

This suite was followed by another, more familiar, one: the first of the two suites that Edvard Grieg extracted from the music he wrote for a performance of Henrik Ibsen’s five-act play Peer Gynt. All four of the movements are familiar to most concert-goers; and the last of them, “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” is an unabashed roof-raiser. Salonen knew exactly how to built up the intensity of that movement, making for roaring approval from the audience at the final cadence.

Last night was the first performance of the new season, even though the “Opening Gala” is still a week and a half in the future! As a result, this was my first encounter with All San Francisco; and I think it would be fair to say that the chemistry between audience and orchestra involved more attention to the latter than I have seen in past Gala occasions. Last night’s audience clearly appreciated that the occasion was all about the music, and their enthusiastic response made it clear just how significant this ensemble is to our city.

SFS: 2024 All San Francisco Concert

This past March, when San Francisco Symphony (SFS) released its first announcement of plans for the 2024–25 season, I promised readers, “Specifics for the All San Francisco Concert will be announced later this year.” “Later” turned out to be this past Thursday. For those unfamiliar with the event, it was launched by SFS about 45 years ago to celebrate those “who work tirelessly to make the Bay Area a more just and equitable place.” Tickets are sold for the event at the subsidized price of $12 for Bay Area nonprofit, social services, and grassroots organizations.

As of this coming Thursday, a limited number of these tickets will be available to the general public at that same $12 price. On that date, this event will be added to the Calendar Web site for SFS; and tickets may be purchased online through that site. They will also be sold at the Davies Symphony Hall Box Office at 201 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of Grove Street. Purchases may also be made by calling 415-864-6000. The performance will take place in Davies at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 12.

Harpist Katherine Siochi performing at the 11th USA International Harp Competition at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, 2019 (photograph by James Brosher, from the Gallery on her Web site)

As tends to be the case, the program will tend to favor familiar offerings. The earliest work on the program will be the first of the suites that Edvard Grieg compiled from the incidental music he composed for the Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt. This will follow another suite, which will open the program, Jean Sibelius’ Opus 11 three-movement Karelia Suite. The second half of the program will shift from Scandinavia to France. It will conclude with yet another suite: the second of two extracted from the “choreographic symphony” that Maurice Ravel composed for Michel Fokine, “Daphnis et Chloé.” This will be preceded by the “Dances for Harp and String Orchestra” by Claude Debussy. SFS Principal Harp Katherine Siochi will make her SFS solo debut with this performance. Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct.

Shenson Spotlight: Violinist Alexandra Conunova

Violinist Alexandra Conunova (photograph by Anoush Abrar, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, violinist Alexandra Conunova was the third recitalist in the third season of the Shenson Spotlight Series, presented by the San Francisco Symphony. Conunova is Moldovan, and she was accompanied at the piano by Tamila Salimdjanova, who was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The major work on the program, however, was Norwegian, Edvard Grieg’s Opus 45, the last of his three sonatas for violin and piano.

Grieg completed this sonata in 1887. It may be worth noting that, while the first two sonatas were composed in a matter of weeks, Opus 45 took him several months. It is a major undertaking with a rich thematic vocabulary and no end of technical challenges for the soloist. (Since Grieg’s primary instrument was the piano, the accompanist was probably already familiar with many of rhetorical turns.) Conunova gave a fierce account in rising to the many challenged presented to her in her score pages. By the time things had calmed down in the coda of the final movement, the attentive listener had journeyed with her through a vast landscape of themes and developments.

Ironically, Johan Dalene played this same sonata a little over a year ago, when he presented his Shenson Spotlight Series recital; and Randall Goosby played it at his Spotlight recital the preceding year! Equally interesting is that Stella Chen, who will be the final Shenson recitalist, played the Opus 13, second, sonata in her San Francisco debut with Chamber Music San Francisco almost exactly a year ago. Grieg’s chamber music seems to have fared well here in the Civic Center, if not elsewhere!

The Grieg sonata was preceded by the opening selection, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 261. This was an Adagio movement in E major composed for violin and orchestra. Its Wikipedia page claims that it may have been written to replace the slow movement in the K. 219 (fifth) violin concerto. Most likely, Conunova played the duo arrangement prepared by Paul Klengel in the early twentieth century. This was one of those joys-of-unfamiliar-Mozart selections, which made for an excellent opening gesture.

Conunova followed her Grieg performance with more familiar selections from the “war horse” category. The first of these was a dynamite account of Camille Saint-Saëns Opus 28, the Rondo capriccioso preceded by an Introduction. She played this without any score pages, possibly to avoid setting them on fire with her dynamic rhetoric. The program then concluded with Franz Waxman’s “Carmen Fantasie.” This music originated in Waxman’s score for the movie Humoresque. After seeing the film, Heifetz asked Waxman to expand his efforts into a piece he could include in his performances. It was originally composed for violin and orchestra, but Heifetz seems to have arranged it for piano accompaniment. Last night it served as the “punctuation mark” at the conclusion of the program!

The encore selection was Béla Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances suite, six short movements originally composed for solo piano and given an abundance of arrangements, including one for small orchestra (which was given a separate number in András Szőllősy’s catalog). The offering allowed the performers to return to their Eastern European roots. The music was probably familiar to many (most?) in the audience, providing just the right spirits to send us all on our way home!

Stella Chen Brings Schubert to CMSF

Some readers may recall that, about a week and a half ago, this site discussed Stella x Schubert, the debut album of both violinist Stella Chen and her accompanist, pianist Henry Kramer. It also observed that both of them would also be making their San Francisco debuts in a program presented by Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF). That debut took place last night in Herbst Theatre; and all high expectations fostered by the expressiveness and insights that the duo brought to their recording were fulfilled in their performance of not only Schubert but also (in order of appearance) Claude Debussy, Edvard Greig, and Franz Waxman.

Their Schubert selection was the primary composition on their album, the D. 934 fantasy for violin and piano, which includes an extended set of variations on Schubert’s D. 741 “Sei mir gegrüßt” song. (Sadly, CMSF programs include only biographical material, meaning that no background material had been written to account for the music being performed. Thus, the impact of D. 741 on D. 934 was probably best appreciated by Schubert mavens and/or regular attendees of vocal recitals.) What struck me about last night’s performance was that, in spite of my having listened to this music on Stella x Schubert several times, both Chen and Kramer conveyed a sense of in-the-moment expressiveness, much of which was particularly evident in Chen’s phrasing of many of Schubert’s passages.

Schubert was the “grand old man” of the evening, since all of the other works on the program were composed after his death. The earliest of these was Grieg’s Opus 13 (second) violin sonata in G major, which was written in 1867. In spite of the major key, darkness overshadows much of this sonata. The Norwegian composer Gerhard Schjelderup even went so far as to assert that “a Norway without tragedy is not a complete Norway.” Fortunately, neither of the performers gave any signs of wallowing in those tragic qualities; but the performance never shortchanged any of Grieg’s darker qualities.

Darkness also prevailed over the opening selection, Claude Debussy’s only violin sonata, composed in the key of A major and completed in 1917, shortly before his death the following year. I feel very fortunate to have had any number of opportunities to listen to the three sonatas Debussy composed near the end of his life. (His plan had been to compose six.) I must confess that I was a bit concerned about Chen beginning her recital with music with such tragic connotations. However, her focus was on the music, rather than the context; and she and Kramer delivered an account whose rhetorical foundations seized my attention from the opening measure and maintained its grip all the way to the final cadence of the concluding movement.

The final selection was, on the other hand, “something completely different.” Waxman was one of the most inventive Hollywood composers for the better part of the twentieth century. The “Carmen Fantasie” was originally written for violin and orchestra as music for the 1946 movie Humoresque. It was meant to be played by Jascha Heifetz, but he was replaced by Isaac Stern. Nevertheless, Heifetz added it to his concert repertoire; and he recorded it with Donald Voorhees conducting the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra in November of 1946. Last night Chen followed in Heifetz’ footsteps more than admirably, giving an absolutely dynamite account of the violin-and-piano arrangement that was subsequently published.

Arnold Genthe’s portrait photograph of Mischa Elman (from Wikimedia Commons, made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

Audience enthusiasm made it clear that an encore would be in order. Chen and Kramer concluded the evening with the final track on Stella x Schubert. This was Mischa Elman’s transcription of “Ständchen,” the fourth song in Schubert’s D. 957 Schwanengesang (swan song) collection. Elman was another major violinist of the twentieth century. He is not as well known as Heifetz and Stern, probably because his recorded legacy was much shorter; but he definitely made a substantive career, particularly after he moved to New York in 1914. His contribution to last night’s encore definitely deserves attention, and Chen and Kramer knew how to deliver that attention.

Sibelius and Salonen Shine with SFS at Davies

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted the only performance of the second of four programs highlighting the piano. However, the high point of the evening was the instrumental selection that followed the intermission, Jean Sibelius’ Opus 82 (fifth) symphony in E-flat major. This composition task did not come easy. The original version was completed in 1915, but Sibelius radically revised the score the following year. Even then, he was dissatisfied; and the symphony did not see its final version until 1919.

That final version now stands as one of the composer’s most provocative ventures into ambiguity. The attentive listener will have no trouble recognizing the thematic building blocks, but they come and go almost as if they had been conceived through stream of consciousness. While the original version provided at least some recognition of the conventional four-movement symphony, the final version amounts to a flow of episodes that have been grouped into three movements, possibly only for the sake of allowing the ensemble two brief pauses.

One of the reasons Sibelius kept reworking his score may have been because he was trying to get beyond the usual conventions of structuring a modest collection of themes. By the time he had completed the final version, he seemed to have found a rhetoric that amounted to a flow of episodic gestures. Any resemblances to traditional symphonic structures and rhetoric were little more than coincidental. Those departures from tradition come to a mind-bending head in the “cadence” (scare quotes intentional) of the entire symphony:

from the Wikipedia page for the Sibelius fifth symphony

Note that the spaces between the chords are deliberately never the same. The listener has no idea where Sibelius is going until the simple B-flat/E-flat cadence in octaves in the last two measures. This is a mind-bending experience, and last night Salonen knew just how to deliver it.

Considering the disappointment of the first half of the program, attentive listeners definitely deserved the provocative imagination behind Sibelius’ symphony. That first half accounted for “highlighting the piano.” The selection was Edvard Grieg’s familiar Opus 16 concerto in A minor. However, because the soloist was Lang Lang, the experience had less to do with highlighting the piano, preferring instead to highlight the pianist.

Mind you, there is no questioning the skill behind Lang’s command of the piano repertoire. However, he has a well-earned reputation for seeking out unexpected approaches to phrasing that tend to take any score by any composer and warp it beyond recognition. The result was that, with Salonen on the podium, the orchestral ensemble gave an engaging account of the full breadth of Grieg’s thematic vocabulary; and Lang Lang devoted his attention to delivering the most unconventional interpretations of each of the themes themselves. Ultimately, however, his performance was all about the cadenzas, which at least allowed him the liberty to be even more unconventional. Given the rousing applause from the audience, it would be fair to say that Lang Lang knew how to work that liberty to his advantage.

As expected, he took an encore. As was the case during his last Davies appearance, his diction and projection gave a poor account of his announcement of the selection. My own mind may have been wandering into weird places; but I came away thinking that he had played his own interpretation of the song “Feed the Bird (Tuppence a Bag),” composed by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman for the film Mary Poppins. I suppose that was the “Spoonful of Sugar” I needed to consume Lang Lang’s “medicine.”

An Exciting Quartet Opens CMSF Season

Aris Quartet members Anna Katharina Wildermuth, Noémi Zipperling, Caspar Vinzens, and Lukas Sieber (photograph by Sophie Wolter, from the ensemble’s Web site)

Last night in Herbst Theatre Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF) launched its 2023 season with a debut performance by the Aris Quartet. The members are violinists Anna Katharina Wildermuth and Noémi Zipperling, violist Caspar Vinzens, and cellist Lukas Sieber. They first came together in 2009 when they were students at the University of Music in Frankfurt, and they have performed as an ensemble ever since then. Last night’s performance was part of their first visit to the United States. Only cellist Sieber is seated during a performance, while the other three quartet members play while standing.

Ironically, last night’s program provided regular concert-goers with an opportunity to compare one of the selections with its performance by Quatour Van Kuijk on the previous evening. That ensemble began the program with Felix Mendelssohn’s final string quartet in F minor, published posthumously as his Opus 80. Last night that quartet was the second work on the program to be performed.

While the Van Kuijk ensemble used this selection to make sure that the audience was attentive at the very beginning of the evening, the Aris Quartet was confident enough to believe that they had already established audience attention with their performance of the opening selection, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 465 (“Dissonance”) quartet in C major. The dissonance of the opening measures definitely seizes audience attention; but, once C major is definitely established, K. 465 emerges as one of Mozart’s sunniest quartets. Having found the audience’s “comfort zone,” the Aris players turned to Mendelssohn to revive the disquiet of Mozart’s first minutes of performance.

My own impression was that Aris took a “deeper dive” into the darkness that Mendelssohn evoked through his minor-key writing. As a result, listening was not just a matter of attention but also one of exploring the many dark corners of a domain that was clearly ruled by the Shadow of Death. Indeed, the quartet can be approached in terms of the composer’s reaction to the recent death of his sister, if not to the more personal sense that his own relatively young body did not have much longer to live.

In many respects Mendelssohn’s Opus 80 couples well with K. 465, since Mozart’s life was also shorter than one might have wished. However, where Opus 80 is driven by its sinister qualities, the darkness at the opening of K. 465 is so brief that one has pretty much forgotten it by the time the first movement has concluded. More important were the sparkling qualities of Mozart’s C major rhetoric that Aris mined from the marks on paper, thus making the opening offering for their first visit to San Francisco an experience that would win over the hearts of their audience. The reception they received at the conclusion of K. 465 made it clear that they had made their case.

Having explored the extremes of two relatively well-known quartets, Aris followed the intermission with a venture into a less familiar domain. The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Edvard Grieg’s Opus 27 quartet in G minor. We tend to associate Grieg primarily with solo piano music and orchestral works, the latter often composed as incidental music for dramatic performances. If his chamber music selections are few, Grieg’s Opus 27 invoked a rhetorical landscape that differed significantly from those of both Mozart and Mendelssohn. This allowed Aris to present an entirely new toolbox of expressiveness, leaving at least this listener to wonder why this music is performed so seldom.

The encore selection also involved music that is seldom encountered. However, those that have been following both this site and Examiner.com for some time will probably be more familiar with the choice that Aris made. The offering was “Nature Lies Peaceful in Slumber and Dreaming,” the eleventh of the twelve short pieces that Antonín Dvořák collected under the title Cypresses. These were originally composed as a song cycle, but Dvořák rearranged them for string quartet. Back in the days of the Cypress String Quartet, that ensemble would often draw upon movements from Cypresses for their encore selections; and they recorded the string quartet version in its entirety. As a result, the Aris musicians left (at least) this listener reflecting on many past encounters with the string quartet repertoire that still have vivid memories.

Dalene Anticipates a Major Anniversary

Violinist Johan Dalene (photograph by Mats Bäcker, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Last night Davies Symphony Hall hosted the second program in the Shenson Spotlight Series. Many readers probably know by now that the title refers to the fact that the series consists entirely of debut performances, providing emerging talents with “a place in the spotlight.” Last night the spotlight was directed at Swedish-Norwegian violinist Johan Dalene, accompanied at the piano by Sahun Sam Hong.

Dalene is only 22 years old. So he can probably be forgiven if he was unaware that his program anticipated a significant 40th anniversary this year. In October of 1983, violinist Gidon Kremer and pianist Keith Jarrett walked into a recording studio in Basel, Switzerland. Their session was devoted to making a recording of the version of Arvo Pärt’s “Fratres” for violin and piano. That recording became the first track of an ECM New Series album, released in 1984, devoted entirely to Pärt’s music, and entitled Tabula Rasa.

The rest, as they say, is history. The album was a great success, marking the beginning of a major commitment by producer Manfred Eicher to present the largest release of recordings devoted to the many dimensions of Pärt’s approaches to composition. Last night’s recital marked Dalene’s first concert tour in the United States, extending through the spring of this year. Whether or not he realized that he would be marking a significant twentieth-century event can be speculated by the reader. Whatever the case, last night’s performance sent a chill down my spine, not only for the perceptive interpretation being presented but also as a reminder of my having purchased the Tabula Rasa CD.

Dalene began the program with a reflection on his own Scandinavian roots. He performed Edvard Grieg’s Opus 45 (third) violin sonata in C minor. I went through the better part of my life totally ignorant of this sonata. More recently it has came to receive what I now feel is well-deserved attention. Indeed, it was performed during the second concert of last year’s Spotlight Series, the violin recital given by Randall Goosby, who happened to be the soloist on the very first program of the current San Francisco Symphony subscription series. As a result, my familiarity with this music has now come up to speed; and last night’s account by Dalene and Hong was definitely an engaging one.

More familiar in my memory was the final selection on the program, Maurice Ravel’s second violin sonata in G major. This has become best known for its middle “Blues” movement, which may well have been a reflection on the friendship he formed with George Gershwin. Indeed, Ravel performed this music during his visit to New York in 1928, accompanying violinist Joseph Szigeti. Gershwin was in the audience, along with Fritz Kreisler, Edgard Varèse, and Béla Bartók! Dalene may not have had such a “high grade” audience last night, but he definitely had an appreciative one. The music may have been familiar, but his account was freshly energetic.

Interestingly enough, he decided to maintain his “French connection” for his encore. Unless I am mistaken, he selected a short nocturne for violin and piano, which was one of the few instrumental compositions by Lili Boulanger. This concluded the evening with a sustained episode of quietude, leaving all of us in the audience to dwell on the many delights of the program we had just experienced.