SFP 2027 PIVOT Festival

Next year will begin with the annual PIVOT Festival presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP). This particular iteration will have a theme pervading the three concerts, all on successive evenings beginning at 7:30 p.m. That theme will be the celebration of the 90th birthday of composer and pianist Philip Glass. The first program will situate Glass’ music in a context spanning from the early nineteenth century to the immediate present. The other two will be devoted entirely to Glass compositions. All three of the offerings will take place in Herbst Theatre on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Specifics for each of the programs are as follows:

Wednesday, January 27: The Festival will begin with a solo recital by pianist Timo Andres. He will perform four selections from Glass’ Etudes. These will be preceded by the eleventh movement in Ann Southam’s Glass Houses collection. Andres will play his own Moving Etudes, separated from the Glass compositions by Jelly Roll Morton’s “Freakish.” The program will conclude with Franz Schubert’s D. 899 (Opus 90), the first of his two sets of four impromptus. This will be introduced by Impromptus II (after Schubert), composed by Samuel Carl Adams.

Thursday, January 28: Andres will return to accompany countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, who has established himself as a leading interpreter of Glass’ vocal music; program specifics have not yet been finalized.

Kronos Quartet members Paul Wiancko, David Harrington, Ayane Kozasa, and Gabriela Diaz (photograph by Lenny Diaz, courtesy of SFP)

Friday, January 29: The Kronos Quartet, whose members are violinists David Harrington and Gabriela Díaz, Ayane Kozasa on viola, and cellist Paul Wiancko, will devote their program entirely to the string quartets composed by Glass.

A Web page has been created for purchasing tickets for the entire series with options for the different areas in Herbst Theatre. The hyperlinks attached to the individual dates above can be used for purchasing single tickets. Tickets can also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545. In addition, single tickets will be available for purchase at the door with a 50% discount for student rush tickets and 20% off for seniors.

naïve Releases First Simone Dinnerstein Album

Cover of the album being discussed, showing members of the Baroklyn ensemble 

Unless my search engine is deceiving me, I have not written about the naïve album label since 2016, when its Douce France release of vocalist Anne Sofie Von Otter was a candidate for the Best Classical Solo Vocal Album in that year’s GRAMMY nominations. That said, I can now report that, early next month, the label will release its first album of performances by American pianist Simone Dinnerstein. She leads her own Baroklyn ensemble on an album entitled Hourglass.

The recording is divided roughly evenly by two compositions for piano and orchestra by Philip Glass. The first of these is based on music that Glass extracted from the film score he composed for Stephen Daldry’s film The Hours. Michael Riesman took that music and arranged it into a three-movement piano concerto with Dinnerstein as the soloist. She then takes the solo part in the second (and last) Glass composition on the album, the “Tirol Concerto,” scored for piano and orchestra.

Unless I am mistaken, I first became aware of Glass in 1970 when the Philip Glass Ensemble performed a full-length (three compositions … I think) recital at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. At that time the reactions tended to be on the negative side, some almost violently so; but I found relief in a listening experience that did not require some of the fundamentals of higher mathematics found in the so-called twelve-tone genre. Since that time, there have been any number of jokes about Glass’ approach to repetitive structures spanning significant durations; but, for the most part, I tended to come away from any Glass listening experience feeling refreshed.

That is the way I felt when I listened to Hourglass for the first time. Over the course of further listening, I have been particularly interested in the subtle approaches that Glass takes to instrumentation. The structures are as repetitive as ever, but the sonorities lead the attentive listener along a path of discoveries. The most interesting of those discoveries is the second composition on the album, “Tirol Concerto.” Glass composed it in 2000, by which time most listeners had cultivated an appreciation for his rhetoric. Nevertheless, it was not performed until November of 2023 with Dinnerstein as the concerto soloist; and I must confess that I have no idea why attentive listeners had to wait so long!

Perhaps I “adjusted” as quickly as I did because I began to accumulate a generous number of Glass piano albums; but the real reason may be that I quickly warmed up to listening to performances by Frank Zappa after I heard him say, “It’s all music!”

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.

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.

SFCO Beginning 2nd Half of Season Next Month

The San Francisco Chamber Orchestra (SFCO) concluded the first half of its season at the very end of last year. The title of that program was The Revolutionary Artist, and it would be fair to wonder if that “revolution” involved a departure from the usual holiday spirit of that time of the year. In any event I would say that the next concert, which will be performed at the end of next month, may be even more revolutionary, beginning with the program’s cryptic title Seeing Double!

Jory Vinikour at the harpsichord

The fact is that the closest the program gets to the concept of “double” is the concerto for harpsichord and orchestra (a “duo of sorts”) by Philip Glass, which happens to be the second of the three works on the program! The harpsichordist will be Jory Vinikour; and, as usual, the ensemble will be led by Jory Fankuchen. The evening will begin with the world premiere performance of Jens Ibsen’s “Scene Symphony.” The program will conclude with the most familiar composer of the evening, Joseph Haydn. The selection will be the Hoboken I/49 symphony, given the title “La Passione.” Perhaps the “passionate” rhetoric of this symphony can be viewed as the more “revolutionary” side of Haydn’s approaches to composition.

As many readers probably know by now, the San Francisco performance will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, February 27. The venue will be the Taube Atrium Theater, which is located on the fourth (top) floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue. As always, there is no charge for admission; and all that is required is an RSVP, which is conveniently achieved on a concert-by-concert basis through the Eventbrite Web page for this performance.

“Spooky” SFP Program Deflated by Timo Andres

Last night San Francisco Performances (SFP) celebrated Halloween with a program entitled, appropriately enough, Spooky. The first half of the program was performed by the Kronos Quartet, which is still led by violinist David Harrington. All of the other members are recent “updates” to the ensemble: violinist Gabriela Díaz, Ayane Kozasa on viola, and cellist Paul Wiancko.

1904 photograph of Leoš Janáček (photographer unknown, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

The second half of the program began with a solo piano set by Timo Andres. The world premiere performance of Gabriel Kahane’s “A Gorey Nocturne” was followed by an interleaving of “Monk Nocturnes,” Andres’ arrangement of three Thelonious Monk standards (“Crepuscule with Nellie,” “Misterioso,” and “Round Midnight”) with three selected movements from Leoš Janáček’s solo piano cycle On an Overgrown Path. The evening then concluded with an “all hands” performance of Philip Glass’ Dracula Suite, which he composed for Kronos.

The overall experience was more than a little frustrating, since the program was not easy to follow. It began with six movements extracted from George Crumb’s “electric string quartet” Black Angels, beginning with the five movements of the opening “Departure” section, followed by “God-music,” the first movement of the third “Return” section. This was followed by John Oswald’s “Spectre,” Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of “Tashweesh” by Ramallah Underground, Krzysztof Penderecki’s first string quartet, and a piece by Nicole Lizée entitled “ZonelyHearts: PhoneTap + CCTV.” The first half of the program concluded with Kronos’ arrangement of the shower scene music that Bernard Herrmann composed for Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho. All this was too much to negotiate, but one could still just sit back and let the ride go where it chose.

Andres’ set did not fare much better. Kahane’s premiere was “too much of not very much” (which did not surprise me in the context of previous encounters with his music). If that were not enough, the “Monk-Janáček partnership” was hammered out so brutally that neither of the composers was even barely recognized. That left the Glass suite in 26 movements, which, in the setting of more of Andres’ hammering technique, could barely be negotiated by even the most attentive listener.

Taken as a whole, this was a Halloween without any treats!

SFP To Celebrate Halloween with Kronos Quartet

Kronos Quartet members Paul Wiancko, David Harrington, Ayone Kozasa, and Gabriela Diaz (photograph by Lenny Diaz, courtesy of SFP)

Unless I am mistaken, the last time that the Kronos Quartet came to Herbst Theatre for a San Francisco Performances (SFP) recital was in September of 2022 for the celebration of Philip Glass’ 85th Birthday. They will return at the end of this month to present a program conceived for the celebration of Halloween. The ensemble has been going strong for about half a century, and it is still led by violinist David Harrington. In its current “incarnation” he is joined by violinist Gabriela Díaz, Ayane Kozasa on viola, and cellist Paul Wiancko. They will share the program with pianist Timo Andres, who will also offer some solo performances. As might be guessed, the title of the program will be Spooky.

As might be guessed, the quartet will revisit their arrangement of Bernard Hermann’s music for the “Shower Scene” from the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho. (The first time they performed this was with appropriate costuming!) They will also perform the suite from the music that Philip Glass composed for Dracula. There will be other “spooky” selections on the program, as well as “unannounced improvisations.”

This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, October 31. 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. Ticket prices are $95 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $80 for the Side Boxes, the center rear of the Dress Circle, and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $65 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through an SFP event page.

Nostalgia for Robert Wilson

The Avignon debut performance of Einstein on the Beach (photograph by Philippe Gras, from Alamy Limited)

I just finished reading the obituary for Robert Wilson that Michael Coveney wrote for The Guardian. Coveney did not waste any time in citing Wilson’s two most memorable collaborators, the choreographer Lucinda Childs and composer Philip Glass. That partnership led to the production of Einstein on the Beach; and it has now been over seventeen years since I wrote my “Nostalgia for EINSTEIN” article on this site. That “opera in four acts,” as it was described by its creators, was first performed in November of 1976 in Avignon; but I did not see it until a revival performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1984.

Ironically, I have not written about Wilson since my Examiner.com days. That involved the release of the Adam’s Passion video at the end of October of 2015. For this production, Wilson shifted from Glass over to Arvo Pärt, setting his staging to four of Pärt’s compositions. At that time I observed that Adam’s Passion was not as “operatic” as Einstein; but my first exposure to Wilson, The King of Spain, performed in 1969 by “Byrd Hoffman and his School of Byrds,” was not particular operatic either! Sadly, my account of that performance for Dance Magazine seems to have eluded Google; so my aforementioned “Nostalgia” article seems to be the best that I can retrieve from the past!

I was glad to see that Coveney’s article provided the most thorough account in print of Wilson’s achievements that I have ever encountered. Wilson was American, but Europe provided him with more (and better) opportunities for him to cultivate his inventiveness. That included a world tour of Einstein in 2012. By that time, I was comfortably settled in the Bay Area, and was able to experience (and enjoy) that production when it came to the University of California at Berkeley for its West Coast premiere at the end of October of that year.

I would like to believe that the Wilson estate now manages a video archive of his productions, but I have no idea when (or even if) the general public will have access to that content!

String Quartet to Join Ian Scarfe at Monument

Poster design for the performance being discussed, with photographs of the five performers (from the Groupmuse event page)

For this year’s summer performance in San Francisco, pianist Ian Scarfe, Director of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival, will return to Monument SF. He will be joined by an ad hoc string quartet, whose members are his colleagues. The performers will be violinists Sam Weiser and Kevin Rogers, Julian Altmann on viola, and cellist Kendra Grittani. There will be six selections on the program, each by a different composer. Four of them will require the full quintet resources. One will be a movement from a piano quartet, and the other will be for string quartet, as well as the only work composed during the current century.

That quartet has become a familiar one for concert goers here in San Francisco. It is Jessie Montgomery’s “Strum,” an engaging study of the interplay between bowed and plucked passages. Those that follow performances in the Civic Center may recall that it was performed by the Calidore Quartet in Herbst Theatre this past March. Information is not currently available for which of the two violinists will contribute to the piano quartet, but the selection will be the third (Andante cantabile) movement from Robert Schumann’s Opus 47. The one multi-movement composition to be performed in its entirety will be Clara Schumann’s Opus 22, the set of three pieces given the title “Romances,” originally scored for violin and piano. The single-movement selections will be as follows:

• Ernst von Dohnányi: Piano Quintet, Opus 26, first movement
• Philip Glass: “Opening” from the Glassworks album
• Johannes Brahms: Piano Quintet, Opus 34, fourth movement (Finale)

Many readers probably know by now that the Monument event space is located in SoMa at 140 9th Street. This performance will begin at 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 22. As in the past, ticketing is being managed by Groupmuse, which has created a Web page for reservations.

Scarfe to Accompany Pole Dancing at Monument

Pole dancers to be accompanied by pianist Ian Scarfe (right) and cellist Kendra Grittani

Next month pianist Ian Scarfe, Director of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival, will return to Monument SF to present a program that will definitely be “something completely different.” He will be joined by cellist Kendra Grittani, but their performance will be a far cry from the usual chamber music recital. That is because their music will serve as accompaniment for pole dancers. Monument is an ideal venue for such an event, since the space has been used by both dancers and circus artists for training and performance.

Both musicians will give solo performances in addition to their duo work. Grittani will play Jessie Montgomery’s solo cello rhapsody. Scarfe will open the program with a prelude-fugue coupling in F-sharp major by Johann Sebastian Bach. Presumably, this will be from The Well-Tempered Clavier; but the advance material for this show did not identify which book! He will also play a selection of the etudes that Philip Glass composed and published in two volumes, but the specifics have not yet been finalized. The duo performances will include Clara Schumann’s Opus 22, a set of three Romanze, as well as arrangements of works by Gabriel Fauré (his familiar Opus 50 “Pavane”) and Amy Beach (the less familiar Opus 15 “Dreaming”). As of this writing, the pole dancers have not yet been identified.

Many readers probably know by now that the Monument event space is located in SoMa at 140 9th Street. This performance will begin at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 15. As in the past, ticketing is being managed by Groupmuse, which has created a Web page for reservations.

SFP: Anthony Roth Costanzo’s Recital Debut

Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo (courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

My “first contact” with countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo could not have been more memorable. It dates back to the fall of 2014, when he sang the role of Armindo in the San Francisco Opera production of George Frideric Handel’s HWV 27 opera Partenope. The staging was by Christopher Alden, who was not afraid to inject slapstick comedy into the veins of baroque opera. Costanzo stole the show when Alden decided that Armindo would sing a full-length aria while depicting a drunk trying to contend with getting up a staircase.

As a recitalist, Costanzo was not quite as raucous, but there were no shortage of high spirits. He was accompanied at the piano by Bryan Wagorn, who may have been a bit too heavy-handed for the opening Handel selections. These were arias from Amadigi di Gaula (HWV 11) and Arminio (HWV 36), both of which displayed an abundance of coloratura embellishments. They were a good way to seize audience attention; but the virtues of the evening had more to do with the breadth of expressiveness, rather than mere showboating.

Mind you, it was not particularly easy to keep up with the full extent of that breadth. Ultimately, I was drawn to the unexpected. This was particularly the case when Costanzo chose to conclude the first half of his program with four songs by Franz Liszt. These may have fallen short of the peak of the art song repertoire, but it was still interesting to encounter Liszt occupied with something other than excessive keyboard embellishments!

More interesting were the three selections of songs by Philip Glass. Readers may recall my writing about the Great Performances at the Met telecast of Akhnaten, whose title role was sung by Costanzo. While I was not particularly impressed with that experience, I have to confess that Costanzo’s account of those individual songs was far more engaging. He knew exactly how to wind his voice around Glass’ repetitive structures, while Glass knew how to capture just the right amount of expressiveness in just the right amount of time. On the other hand, when the program closed out with two familiar songs by George Gershwin, neither of the accounts left much of a memorable impression.

However, if the conclusion was not at its strongest, Costanzo bounced back with a delightful encore. He sang the roles of both Almaviva and Susanna in the duet “Crudel! perchè finora” at the beginning of the third act of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 492 opera The Marriage of Figaro. This is a mini-drama of conflicting schemes. Costanzo knew just how to honor the narrative while having a bit of fun with it at the same time.

Ian Scarfe to Kick Off New Groupmuse Series

Ian Scarfe at the keyboard (from the Groupmuse Web page for this month’s Centuries of Sound recital)

Readers may recall that, this past April, the Century Club of California hosted a Groupmuse performance by pianist Ian Scarfe and his colleagues from the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival that featured the suite that Aaron Copland extracted from the music he composed for Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring.” This marked the end of a series of Groupmuse concerts for the season, and the new season will begin towards the end of this month. The title of the series will be Centuries of Sound, and the first performance will be a solo recital by Scarfe.

The first half of the program will be structured around Robert Schumann, his wife Clara, and their close friend Johannes Brahms. Scarfe will begin with Schumann’s Opus 18 “Arabeske” in C major. This will be followed by the F major “Notturno” from Clara’s Soirées musicales collection. The first half of the program will conclude with two movements from Brahms’ Opus 116 collection of seven Fantasies. These will be the fourth and fifth pieces, both entitled “Intermezzo” in the keys of E major and E minor, respectively.

The second half of the program will explore a variety of approaches to virtuosity by five different composers. Scarfe will begin with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G-sharp minor, the penultimate selection in the Opus 32 collection of thirteen preludes. This will be followed by Alexander Scriabin’s prelude in G-flat major, presumably from his Opus 11 collection of 24 preludes in all major and minor keys. (He later wrote another prelude in the same key for his shorter Opus 16 collection.) The next selection will be the “Notturno” from Ottorino Respighi’s Sei pezzi per pianoforte (six pieces for piano) collection. Somewhat more familiar, at least to some, will be Franz Liszt’s “Un Sospiro,” the last in his three Concert Études collection. Scarfe will then conclude the program with a selection of études by Philip Glass.

The Century Club of California 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. Doors will open at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, October 27; and the performance should begin around 2:15 p.m. Drinks will be provided (both with and without alcohol); and this is being presented as a “kid-friendly event.” However, the club itself is not wheelchair accessible.

The Zēlos Saxophone Quartet at Old First Concerts

Last night at the Old First Presbyterian Church, Old First Concerts presented its latest recital, a performance by the Zēlos Saxophone Quartet, which is based in the Bay Area. Each of the four members plays an instrument of different size. They are, in increasing order of size, Jonah Cabral  on soprano, Johnny Selmer on alto, Alessia Garcia on tenor, and Barry Galbreath on baritone.

Two of the works on the program were explicitly composed for this configuration of resources. Indeed, Jean Baptiste Singelee’s Opus 52, completed in 1857, was very likely the first work to be created for such a quartet. The second was written almost a century and a half later, completed by Philip Glass in 1995. Both of these four-movement pieces explored different approaches to both sonority and rhetoric. Nevertheless, the overall impact was not particularly compelling and verging on the bland.

Jonah Cabral, Alessia Garcia, Barry Galbreath, and Johnny Selmer taking their bow after their Bach performance (screen shot from the YouTube video of last night’s performance)

More interesting was how the distinctive variations in timbre across the four sizes of the instruments allowed for a particularly engaging perspective on a fugue composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. This was “Contrapunctus 4” from the BWV 1080 collection The Art of Fugue. The composer never specified instrumentation for this music, and there are those that claim it was created strictly as a pedagogical tool for would-be composers. Nevertheless, I have encountered any number of different approaches to instrumentation; and last night’s version, arranged by John McCoy, was particularly effective in guiding the attentive listener through the interplay of the four fugal voices.

The other arrangement was by Claude Voirpy, taking on Ástor Piazzolla’s four-movement Histoire du Tango suite. Many readers probably know that those movements trace the “maturing” of the tango genre from its bordello origins in 1900 to its recent emergence in concert hall performances. Voirpy’s arrangements deftly captured the changes of mood across the suite’s movements. The overall impact made this the most engaging encounter of the evening.

Taken as a whole, there was a fair amount of variety in the program. Nevertheless, the blend of sonorities led to a fair amount of sameness in spite of difference in structure and rhetoric across the four compositions. One way or another, it seems as if the expressiveness of the saxophone is better served by a free-wheeling jazz jam than by any of the efforts of composers across the generations.

Yuja Wang in Vienna on Deutsche Grammophon

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Crossover Media)

Many readers probably know by now that I have been following the work of pianist Yuja Wang for pretty much as long as I have been pursuing my current writing gig. Indeed, I filed my most recent article about her yesterday morning following her Great Performers Series recital in Davies Symphony Hall. While I continue to be impressed by the dexterity she can bring to massive quantities of notes, I have not always been convincingly satisfied by some of her approaches to interpretation. Indeed, my balance scales took a serious tip to the negative side about two years ago, when I cited her “slam-bang approach to Franz Liszt’s first piano concerto in E-flat major,” going as far as to described her as being a “partner in crime” with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas!

Things were not much better this week, when I realized that I had to turn to her encores to begin my article on a positive note! This morning, in hopes of a shift in context, I set aside time to listen to her latest Deutsche Grammophon album, The Vienna Recital. This provides a complete account of the music she performed at the Konzerthaus, Vienna on April 26, 2022.

The program was structured around two four-movement sonatas. The first of these was Alexander Scriabin’s Opus 23 (third) sonata in F-sharp minor. The other was the third of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 31 sonatas, composed in the key of E-flat major. As usual, most (if not all) of the notes were in the right place. Nevertheless, it was hard to get beyond what amounted to a sense of aimless wandering in her approach to Scriabin. The Beethoven account was delivered with more certainty but not much personality.

Woven among the sonatas were shorter compositions represented by three composers. The first of these was Isaac Albéniz with two of the movements from his Iberia collection. She returned to Nikolai Kapustin (whose music has interested her for the better part of her career) with two selections from his Opus 53, 24 Jazz Preludes. Those were complemented by two of the solo piano études by György Ligeti.

The remaining four tracks on the album accounted for the encores (a rather modest number when compared with Wednesday evening’s encounter). She continued the étude theme with the sixth in Philip Glass’ collection. She then turned to “Danzón No. 2,” which is probably the best known orchestral composition by Arturo Márquez. (This might be familiar to those that followed Mozart in the Jungle.) Her transcription was prepared by Leticia Gómez-Tagle. She then reverted to “old school” selections, an intermezzo by Johannes Brahms (the third in the Opus 117 set) and Giovanni Sgambati’s piano arrangement of music from Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice.

Taken as a whole, I would have to say that I was neither more nor less impressed with this recording than I had been with Wednesday evening’s recital.

Dennis Russell Davies to Return to Other Minds

Dennis Russell Davies performing for Other Minds in 2022 (photograph by David Magnusson, courtesy of Other Minds)

Next month Other Minds will host a benefit recital to celebrate the 80th birthday of pianist Dennis Russell Davies. Davies will be joined by his wife, Maki Namekawa, to present a recital of solo and four-hand piano music. This will be their fifth appearance in San Francisco hosted by Other Minds.

The highlight of the program will be a four-hand arrangement of selected movements from the six-episode tone poem Má vlast (my fatherland). (The best known of those movements is frequently performed on its own: “Vitava,” the Czech name of the river Moldau.) The rest of the program will be focused primarily on the twentieth century, with compositions by Maurice Ravel, John Cage, Philip Glass, and Laurie Anderson.

Only 80 tickets will be available for this event. As of this writing, tickets may be purchased for either $70 or $100. They may be purchased through an Eventbrite Web page. The performance will begin at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 22, preceded by a dessert reception at 7 p.m. The venue will be the McCarthy Art Studio in the Mission, and the address will be provided once ticket purchase has been confirmed.

Philip Glass Plays … Philip Glass

This coming Friday Orange Mountain Music will release Philip Glass Solo, a seven-track album of composer Philip Glass playing seven of his compositions for solo piano at the age of 84. Glass recorded these performances at his home in 2020. It would be fair to say that this collection contributes to the composer’s reflections on his past achievements. As many probably expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

Some readers may recall by now that my experiences of listening to performances of Glass’ compositions go all the way back to January of 1970, when the Philip Glass Ensemble gave its first major performance in the downstairs recital hall of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. I wrote about that occasion back in April of 2019, when Orange Mountain released its two-CD set 50 Years of the Philip Glass Ensemble. As might be guessed from the title, none of Glass’ solo piano compositions were included on that release.

My first encounter with his piano music came when Edition Peters published Waltzes by 25 Contemporary Composers. Glass was one of those composers (the contents were alphabetically ordered by last name); and his contribution was “Modern Love Waltz.” True to the spirit of the title, I fell in love with the piece the first time I played it (possibly because it was so compatible with my own limited dexterity). As a result, my own collection of recordings includes a generous supply of his compositions for solo piano.

The new album has seven tracks and a duration of somewhat less than an hour. It includes four of the five “Metamorphosis” compositions. It begins with “Opening,” the first track on the Glassworks album. This is followed by “Mad Rush;” and the final track is “Truman Sleeps,” composed for the soundtrack of The Truman Show. I am not sure why Glass omitted “Metamorphosis 4;” but I am happy enough to have recordings of it by Nicolas Horvath and Valentina Lisitsa. My writing about both of those recordings took place during my tenure with Examiner.com, which did not take the trouble to archive them!

I would not venture to claim that any of the tracks on Philip Glass Solo rise above versions previously recorded by Glass or anyone else. Rather, I take some comfort in the idea that, by the time you are in your eighties, you can do anything within the scope of your capabilities that you damned well please. I suspect that many that follow his work figured that his etudes would be his “last hurrah” as both composer and performer. I guess those etudes have been keeping him in shape well enough for him to revisit seven of his earlier efforts. My own eighties are still a few years in the future, but I sure hope that my writing chops at those advanced years will be as fruitful as Glass’ keyboard technique!

Dublin Guitar Quartet Finally Comes to SF

Last night in Herbst Theatre the Dublin Guitar Quartet of Brian Bolger, Pat Brunnock, Chien Buggle, and Tomas O’Durcain finally made its San Francisco Debut. The group had originally been scheduled to perform for both San Francisco Performances and the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts in February of 2022. However, this was a time when the world was beginning to recover from the COVID pandemic and several years of plans had to be rescheduled.

Unless I am mistaken, all of the works on the program required arrangements, primarily of keyboard music and string quartets. Most impressive was the amount of attention given to Philip Glass. As might be expected, this included two of the string quartets, the second (“Company”) and the third (“Mishima”); but the ensemble also took on four of the piano études (2, 9, 16, and 20). These were judicious selections of compositions intended for keyboard technique that could be recast as exercises in fingering technique.

As might be expected, the results differed significantly from the original keyboard sonorities; but the Dubliners knew how to endow each of the phrases in the original scores with their own unique character, which still honored the spirit of Glass’ music. The reworking of the quartets was somewhat more straightforward, but the ensemble knew how to capture the spirit behind the music through its own unique sonorities. The same could be said of the group’s transcription of Arvo Pärt’s “Summa.”

The program included two other works that involved reconceiving string quartet music. The first of these began the performance, Bryce Dessner’s “Aheym,” which was composed for the Kronos Quartet. The second was a selection of movements from Marc Mellits’ Titan, which added a bass clarinet to the string quartet instrumentation.

Personally, I found this to be one of the weaker offerings. Mellits’ instrumentation suggested an interest in contrasting sonorities, which clearly could not be realized by an ensemble of four guitars. More satisfying were the movements selected from Book of Leaves by Kentucky-based Rachel Grimes. This music was originally written for piano; but the thematic content translated to the guitars with little difficulty, particularly when reflecting on such traditional folk tunes as “The Wayfaring Stranger.”

My one difficulty involved the relatively narrow spectrum of sonorities that the Dubliners brought to their performance. I have listened to enough guitar recitals by now to appreciate the diversity of those sonorities based on a wide variety of technical foundations. Last night there was more uniformity than I would have anticipated. However, if transcription took priority over sonorous stylization, one could still appreciate the expressiveness of the transcribed content.

Chamber Music Tuesday Begins New Season

Last night in the Barbro Osher Recital Hall, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) presented the first installment of Chamber Music Tuesday for the new academic year. As is often (always?) the case, the program included a guest artist, pianist Inon Barnatan. His performance was part of a week-long residence, which also included presiding over a master class for piano students.

Violinist Shintaro Taneda, pianist Inon Barnatan, and cellist Ayoun Alexandra Kim at the beginning of last night’s first Chamber Music Tuesday program of the season (screen shot from the live video stream)

Barnatan joined SFCM students in the opening and concluding selections on the program. The first was the first of Ludwig van Beethoven’s three Opus 1 piano trios, for which Barnatan was joined by Shintaro Taneda on violin and Ayoun Alexandra Kim on cello. The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Amy Beach’s Opus 67 piano quintet. The string quartet for this performance consisted of violinists Daniel Dastoor and Yip Wai Chow, violist Isabel Tannenbaum, and cellist Constantine Janello. Following the trio, Barnatan performed three solo selections: Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 14 Rondo capriccioso in E major, Philip Glass’ seventeenth étude, and the fourth piece in the six Moments musicaux, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 16.

The Beethoven trio was the most satisfying event on the program. Most important was the recognition by the players that, early in his career, Beethoven could have an engaging sense of humor, which could often turn positively raucous. That trait surfaces in all four movements of the trio, and Barnatan was not shy in engaging his body language to capture every one of the composer’s humorous gestures. Fortunately, his enthusiasm was contagious, encouraging both of the SFCM students to make it clear that they were having fun with their performance.

The Beach quintet was far more serious (F-sharp minor). My first encounter with this composition took place in my early days of covering performances at SFCM; and I have always been impressed with the expressiveness of score, whose intensity tended to suggest an interest in Gustav Mahler. Sadly, that intensity was lacking last night. It was as if the many dark clouds that Beach had conceived were lost in a thick fog. Beach was living in Alamo Square when this quintet was first performed in San Francisco, but last night did little to reflect on either her past “local presence” or the many imaginative turns in her quintet.

Barnatan’s solo work provided a useful scope of his repertoire interests. For the most part, his emphasis was on dexterity. Nevertheless, he made it clear that dexterity could present itself in a wide variety of different colors, and the juxtaposition of three decidedly different periods in music history provided just the right scope to present all of that variety. Nevertheless, over the course of the entire program, it was definitely Beethoven that stole the show.

DG to Release Daniel Hope’s First NCCO Album

One week from today Deutsche Grammophon will release the first album that New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO) has recorded with its latest Music Director, Daniel Hope. To provide some personal context, my very first CD of this ensemble was recorded when Krista Bennion Feeney was Music Director; and I have at least a few of the albums made with Music Director Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. When it comes to attending performances, Salerno-Sonnenberg is still at the head of my list.

The title of the new album is Music for a New Century; and, as is usually the case, Amazon.com is currently accepting pre-orders for both the CD and MP3 download, which can be processed on the same Web page. When it comes to “truth in advertising,” all four of the compositions on the new release were composed during the current century. The earliest of these is Philip Glass’ third piano concerto, which he completed in 2017. The most recent composition was completed this year, a piece that Jake Heggie entitled simply “Overture.” The other two works are Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Lament,” scored for solo violin and string orchestra, which was completed in 2019, and Tan Dun’s double concerto for violin, piano, and string orchestra, composed in 2021. NCCO had “skin in the game” of commissioning all four of these compositions; and Heggie’s overture was composed to celebrate the ensemble’s 30th anniversary season.

I have to confess that I have never quite warmed up to that “new” adjective. Both Feeney and Salerno-Sonnenberg were imaginatively eclectic in the programs they prepared, and I was particularly taken with the latter’s decision to begin her tenure by appointing Clarice Assad to serve as featured composer for her first season. On the other hand I was impressed with how Salerno-Sonnenberg was comfortable with being both retrospective and prospective in preparing her programs. On the other hand all four of the Music for a New Century compositions strike me as exuding some degree of nostalgia for the past century with little sense of “new” in the current one.

To be fair, however, the current century is no longer “new.” One hundred years ago from today, the population had experienced all the horrors of its First World War; and, in the United States, people turned to the “Roaring Twenties” to get those horrors out of their collective system. These days pessimism seems to be prevailing more than it ever had in the past, and it is not difficult to find people worrying about whether or not this century will see its Thirties decade. Perhaps novelty is no longer as significant as it used to be!

SF Girls Chorus and Chanticleer Join Forces

Those that have been following the season plans for the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) and/or Chanticleer probably know by now that these two ensembles will be joining forces next month. They have agreed on a program structured into three segments, one for each of the groups and one for joint performance. The title of the program will be Neighbor Tones, which is not merely metaphorical, because both of the organizations are based in the Kanbar Performing Arts Center at 44 Page Street.

The SFGC portion of the program will begin with another preview of excerpts from Tomorrow’s Memories: A Little Manila Diary, which SFGC commissioned Matthew Welch to compose in 2020. This will be followed by “Baba Afzal Kashan,” one of the movements in Richard Danielpour’s Three Parables, which SFGC commissioned in 2019. The other two compositions in this segment will be “Wanting Memories” by Ysaye M. Barnwell and “Father Death Blues” by Philip Glass.

Composer Ayanna Woods (provided by the composer, courtesy of SFGC)

The Chanticleer segment will also begin with a recent commission. The ensemble commissioned Ayanna Woods in 2021, and the result was her composition of “close[r], now.” The remainder of the segment will be more traditional. The first selection will be “Civitas sancti tui,” a five-voice motet in William Byrd’s collection entitled Liber primus sacrarum cantionum (the first book of sacred canticles). This will be followed by Jonathan Woody’s arrangement of the spiritual “God’s Gonna Trouble,” better known as “Wade in the Water.”

The program will begin with combined forces, so to speak. The opening selection will be a world premiere excerpt commissioned for both ensembles. The commission was awarded to composer Ayanna Woods, whose composition is entitled “Years of Light.” This will be followed by Erin Bentlage’s arrangement of “Desert Song, composed by säje. The remaining selections will be “O Daedalus, Fly Away Home” by Trevor Weston and Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria” setting.

This program will be given its San Francisco performance beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 17. Ticket prices range from $21 to $63. Tickets may be purchased online through a City Box Office Web page or by calling 415-392-4400. The venue will be Herbst Theater, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street and Van Ness Avenue.