SFS: A Promising Program that Did Not Deliver

Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya (from the Web page for this week’s SFS concert)

Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya made his San Francisco Symphony (SFS) debut in November of 2023 when he led the annual Día de los Muertos concert. Last night he returned to Davies Symphony Hall to give his first Orchestra Series performance. The program had a Hispanic theme with composers born on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. Three of the four selections were composed in the last century, but the other enjoyed a United States premiere performance.

The composer of that new work was Jimmy López, born in Lima (Peru) in 1978 and currently composer-in-residence for both the San Diego Symphony and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. His contribution to the program was “Shift,” a four-movement concerto for trombone and orchestra with Principal Trombone Timothy Higgins as soloist. The titles of the four movements suggest that the composer may have had an interest in synesthesia:

1. Sound
2. Water
3. Light
4. Sonoluminescence

Each of these movements had its own approach to sonorities. The first required a plethora of double-tonguing episodes. The second exploited the instrument’s most powerful capability: glissando passages! The “Light” movement was performed with mute, leading into a richly extended cadenza to introduce the final movement. Higgins brought a confident command to each of these movement, making it a pity that he is on leave this season.

The program began with the most recent of the twentieth-century selections. Alberto Ginastera composed music for his Opus 8 ballet “Estancia” and then extracted four of the movements for the Opus 8a suite. The suite has little relation to the narrative for the ballet. Nevertheless, the movements were engaging; and the third of them, “Los peones de hacienda” (the cattlemen) seem to offer more than a few nods to Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score, “Le sacre du printemps” (the rite of spring)!

The second half of the program was rooted in the early decades of the century. The better-known selection was the final one, Maurice Ravel’s four-movement “Rapsodie espagnole.” I am familiar enough with this music that I know the subtlety it demands, but Harth-Bedoya never seemed to invoke that spirit.

He seemed more “at home” with the preceding composition, Joaquín Turina’s three-movement “Danzas Fantásticas.” My encounters with this composer have been almost entirely through the guitar recitals I have attended and covered, so I was looking forward to listening to his command of the orchestral repertoire. Once again, however, it felt as if Harth-Bedoya was undermining the spirit that Turina had injected into his dances.

Fortunately, the impact of López’ capacity for invention made the evening worthwhile!

Sixth Station Trio to Visit Saint Joseph’s

Poster design for this week’s performance by the Sixth Station Trio

It was only a little more than 24 hours ago that I learned of the next performance to be given by the Sixth Station Trio. As some readers may recall, the members of this trio are pianist Katelyn Tan, Anju Goto on violin, and cellist Federico Strand Ramirez. The title of their latest program is Dreams of Distant Cities, which they describe as “a musical journey across real and imagined worlds.” There will be three selections performed, each associated with a different city and, as the advance material declares, a different dream.

The program will begin with a performance of one of Maurice Ravel’s best known piano compositions, the “Pavane pour une infante défunte.” The program will shift from Paris to Buenos Aires with the performance of Astor Piazzolla’s suite Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. In a more rural vein, “Genshin Impact,” composed by Yu-Peng Chen, was inspired by the Buddhist teachings of the Japanese monk Genshin, who spent the last years of his life at the secluded Eshin-in hermitage in Yokawa.

The performance will take place this coming Thursday, April 30, beginning at 7 p.m. The venue will be Saint Joseph’s Arts Society, which is at 1401 Howard Street in SoMa on the southwest corner of 10th Street. Reserved seating with be $50 with a $35 rate for Society members. There will also be standing room tickets for $35, which will be free for Society members.

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.

Another Disappointing Encounter with Hewitt

2017 photograph of Angela Hewitt in Toronto (photograph by Mykola Swarnyk, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

Once again Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF) scheduled pianist Angela Hewitt for a solo recital. Those that have followed this site for some time probably know my track record with her past performances. As in the past, I continue to be more than merely satisfied with the precision of her keyboard technique. However, also in the past, she never seems to add expression to that precision.

This season’s program accounted for a broad span of approaches to keyboard music extending from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth. Each half of the program began with a composer from the Baroque period. The opening selection was Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 829 keyboard partita (the fifth in a set of six), composed in the key of G major. The second half began with five relatively short pieces by François Couperin, all taken from the “Sixiême Ordre” in his second Livre de Piéces de clavecin. In the first half of the program, Bach’s partita was coupled with Robert Schumann’s Opus 22, his second piano sonata in G minor. The program concluded with music that nodded to the preceding performance, Maurice Ravel’s suite Le tombeau de Couperin.

As in the past, I found myself impressed with Hewitt’s attention to getting every note in its proper place; but there was little awareness of music emerging from those notes. Thus, there was no sense of dance forms in the music that Bach composed for so many of his keyboard works. Where Couperin was concerned, Hewitt spent too much time leaning on the damper pedal, which particularly muddled one of his most engaging pieces, “Les Baricades Mistérieuses.”

In reviewing the scribbles in my program book, I see that “blur” showed up in my annotations for the selections by Schumann and Ravel. Neither of those composers deserved that description in performance, and Hewitt’s account of Schumann’s scherzo movement was downright incoherent. Where Le tombeau de Couperin is concerned, Hewitt’s only virtue was providing information about how each of the movements was dedicated to the composer’s friends and relatives that died during World War I.

For her encore selection Hewitt shifted from Ravel to Claude Debussy, but her account of “Clair de lune” was no more convincing than any of the preceding selections on the program.

Tiffany Poon’s Third CMSF Recital in Herbst

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jennifer Koh Surveys Three French Composers

Jennifer Koh (photograph by Juergen Frank, from Wikimedia Commons Web page, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

Last night violinist Jennifer Koh returned to Herbst Theatre to give her fourteenth recital performance for San Francisco Performances. Accompanied at the piano by Thomas Sauer, her program was structured around three French composers from roughly a century ago. She began with the least familiar of those composers, Lili Boulanger, who lived only a quarter century but left a significant repertoire of music from the early twentieth century. The repertoire of the other two composers, Maurice Ravel and Gabriel Fauré (in “order of appearance” on the program) consisted of violin sonatas more familiar to chamber music lovers. Each half of the program also included a more recent composition. Tania León’s “Para Violin y Piano” was situated between Boulanger and Ravel, while Kaija Saariaho’s “Tocar” began the second half of the program.

As has been the case in my many previous recital encounters with Koh, her command of the repertoire was unquestionably solid. Nevertheless, as is often frequently the case, there were offerings that overstayed their welcome. I first became aware of León when I was living in Connecticut in 1981; and I have tried to follow her work since then, even as I moved from one coast to the other. That included keeping up with an album of her orchestral music released this past July. Nevertheless, last night’s selection went on longer than even sympathetic attention could sustain. To be fair, however, I felt the same way about the final movement of Ravel’s second violin sonata in G major, which concluded the first half of the program!

Far more interesting (for me at least) was my encounter with a performance of Kaija Saariaho’s “Tocar.” I became familiar with this piece when I made it a point to start collecting recordings of that composer’s music, during the first decade of the current century. Koh’s performance triggered fond memories of when I first came to know “Tocar” through that collection. The contrast with the Fauré sonata that followed it made the second half of the program the high point of the evening for me.

It is always good (if not healthy) to leave a recital with a sense of satisfaction!

“Something Completely Different” at Davies

Violinist Aleksey Igudesman and actor John Malkovich (courtesy of SFS)

Those old enough to remember Monty Python’s Flying Circus may be pleased to learn that the genre of off-beat comedy will be coming to Davies Symphony Hall. The San Francisco Symphony (SFS) will host violinist Aleksey Igudesman; but the ensemble will also have to contend with another guest artist seldom appearing in a concert hall, John Malkovich. I first encountered him when I was living in Stamford, Connecticut in 1982, making regular train rides into Grand Central Station.

While much of my time was spent in Lincoln Center, I also made regular visits to plays performed both on and off Broadway. It is probably fair to say that, even to this day, the most memorable of those plays was Sam Shepard’s True West. As the Wikipedia page puts it, the narrative involved a “volatile relationship between two brothers,” making for an uncanny mix of nostalgia and disaster. The role of one of those brothers was taken by Malkovich; and, after having seen him on the stage for the first time, I have done my best to keep track of every step in the advancement of his career.

Almost 45 years have elapsed; and, once again, I shall have the opportunity to see Malkovich on the stage. This time, however, the venue will be Davies. The title of his performance with Igudesman is The Music Critic. The violinist will perform works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Sergei Rachmaninoff with SFS. However, he will also share the stage with Malkovich assuming the “title role.” Once again, Malkovich will be performing a “volatile relationship,” this time unloading (in the words of the advance material) “a frivolous potpourri of musical insults” on Igudesman’s performance.

As most readers probably already know, this performance will take place in Davies Symphony Hall. It will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 6. The address is 201 Van Ness Avenue; but it occupies the entire block with Van Ness to the west, Franklin Street to the east, Hayes Street to the south, and Grove Street to the north. The entrance is on the Grove Street side, which is also where tickets may be purchased at the Box Office. Tickets are currently available at prices from $75 in the Second Tier to $275 in the Orchestra. Seats will not available in the Terraces above the stage. A Web page has been created for online purchases. Tickets may also be purchased by calling the SFS Box Office at 415-864-6000.

Trio Wanderer to Release New Album

Trio Wanderer is a French piano trio made up of Vincent Coq, piano, Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian, violin, and Raphaël Pidoux, cello, all graduates of the Conservatoire de Paris. They have been recording for Harmonia Mundi since 1999, and their latest album will be released this coming Friday. The full title of the album is Art nouveau: French chamber music around 1900; and, as many (most?) readers will expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

Similarly, most readers will probably (and correctly) associate this period with Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, the latter being a little more than a decade younger than the former. Those familiar with Debussy are likely to appreciate the performances of his L. 135 cello sonata in D minor, which was followed shortly thereafter by the L. 140 violin sonata in G minor. Less familiar will be one of his earliest compositions, the L. 5 piano trio in G major. Ravel is probably best known for his M. 67 piano trio in A minor, but the album also includes the M. 73 sonata for violin and cello.

Photograph of Mel Bonis taken around 1900, by which time both Debussy and Ravel had honed their skills as composers (photographer unidentified, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The earliest work in the collection is Édouard Lalo’s Opus 26, the last of his three piano trios, composed in 1880. This is the first work on the album and basically serves as a “threshold” for what is to come. There are also two short compositions by Mel Bonis: the Opus 76 “Soir - Matin” piano trio and the Opus 71 barcarolle for solo piano. Bonis is likely to be the least known to most listeners. However, her lifetime extended from 1858 to 1937, during which she composed over 300 original works.

Thus, while the selections by both Debussy and Ravel are likely to be familiar to many listeners (particularly those interested in chamber music), both Lalo and Bonis will contribute significantly to the selection and ordering of the tracks, serving up a thoroughly engaging journey of discovery.

SFP: Remainder of February, 2026

Having written about San Francisco Performances (SFP) events during the first half of February exactly one week ago, it is now time to account for the last two performances that will take place towards the end of that month. These will take place on the last two Fridays. As usual, both programs will begin at 7:30 p.m.; and each will be a different sub-genre of chamber music. Specific dates are as follows:

Jennifer Koh with her violin (photograph by Juergen Frank, from her SFP Web page)

February 20: Unless I am mistaken, violinist Jennifer Koh has not visited San Francisco since the SFP performance of Summer Music Sessions 2021, when she was part of a trio with Jay Campbell on cello and pianist Timo Andres. She will return next month for a violin recital performed with piano accompaniment provided by Thomas Sauer. She has structured her program around two violin sonatas by French composers. She will conclude the first half of the program with Maurice Ravel’s M. 77 second sonata in G major, and the second half will conclude with Gabriel Fauré’s first sonata, his Opus 13 in A major. Each of these sonatas will be preceded by a shorter work by a contemporary composer. Tania Léon’s “Para Violin y Piano” will precede Ravel, and the second half of the program will begin with Kaija Saariaho’s “Tocar.” The program will begin with a selection of compositions by Lili Boulanger.

February 27: The entire program will be the West Coast premiere performance of note to a friend by David Lang. Vocalist Theo Bleckman will be accompanied by the Attacca Quartet, whose members are violinists Amy Schroeder and Domenic Salerni, Nathan Schram on viola, and cellist Andrew Yee. The texts of the “note” are taken from works by the Japanese novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa, who is probably best known as the author of Rashomon.

Sarah Cahill: From O1C to SFCM

Hopefully, readers are already aware that Sarah Cahill will begin the New Year with her No Ordinary Light program, featuring seven composers from the present and previous centuries. Her performance on January 23 at Old First Presbyterian Church will be followed by a different program over two weeks later. The venue for that second performance will be the Barbro Osher Recital Hall on the eleventh floor of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) building at 200 Van Ness Avenue.

Sarah Cahill (from the Web page for her coming SFCM performance, photograph by Carlin Ma)

The title of the second program will be Music History and Literature. Like the January performance, the program will feature Maurice Ravel’s suite Le Tombeau de Couperin. There will also again be an “Hommage” composition by Robert Helps; but it is unclear whether or not the subject will again be Gabriel Fauré, as it was planned for No Ordinary Light. SFCM has prepared a Web page for that recital, promising that further details will be provided. That Web page has hyperlinks for both reserving seats in the Recital Hall and viewing the performing through a Vimeo livestream. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, February 9.

New SFS Chamber Music Series Begins at Davies

Yesterday afternoon the Chamber Music Series, performed almost entirely by members of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), presented the first program of the new season. Three composers were represented on the program, appearing in reverse chronological order. The first selection was also the least familiar, composed by Erwin Schulhoff and given the title “Concertino for Flute, Viola, and Double Bass.”

The music was composed in 1925, an encouraging time for a new generation of composers to venture into new territory. Schulhoff reveled in the diversity of that territory, which included Igor Stravinsky’s venture into Neo-classicism, Arnold Schoenberg’s journey from expressionism into atonality, and the enigmatic pursuits of Erik Satie. Schulhoff’s concertino was more interested in contrasting sonorities than in atonality. Those sonorities extended into the upper register when the flute doubled on piccolo. The second movement of the concertino, given the title “Furiant,” allows the piccolo player to evoke the free spirit of a canary escaped from its cage. Schulhoff was somewhat of an outlier in the program that continued with Maurice Ravel and Ludwig van Beethoven; but, given that the Nazis sent him to the Wülzburg prison camp, where he died in 1942, the imaginative scope of his composing deserves more attention that it tends to receive.  Flutist Yubeen Kim, Leonid Plashinov-Johnson on viola, and Bowen Ha on bass did well in choosing Schulhoff  to begin yesterday’s program.

The Schulhoff concertino was followed by the far more familiar piano trio composed by Maurice Ravel a little over a decade earlier in 1914. With the rise of the recording industry, this became a popular piece of chamber music, particular after RCA released its recording the of “powerhouse trio” of violinist Jascha Heifetz, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, and pianist Arthur Rubinstein! I suspect that the recording remains a “tough act to follow;” but performance always has an edge over any album! SFS musicians David Chernyavsky (violin) and Amos Yang (cello) performed with pianist Asya Gulua; and they had no trouble capturing the engaging diversity of dispositions encountered in Ravel’s score. Their attentiveness to that score and its connotations made for a listening experience far more engaging than any recording!

An engraving of Ludwig van Beethoven at the age of 26 (1796), executed for the publisher Artaria by Johann Josef Neidl (from Wikimedia Commons)

The second half of the program was devoted entirely to an early (1800) composition by Ludwig van Beethoven, his Opus 20 septet in E-flat major. This was performed by the coupling of three winds (Matthew Griffith on clarinet, Jessica Valeri on horn, and Joshua Elmore on bassoon) with four different string instruments: violin (Wyatt Underhill), viola (Katarzyna Bryla), cello (Anne Richardson), and bass (Daniel G. Smith). The six movements exceed the usual four-movement structure with the addition of a movement of variations and both Menuetto and Scherzo movements. Most interesting was a bass passage plucked by Smith, leaving me wondering if these were the “first steps” of the “walking bass!”

As usually seems to be the case, this was a program in which the familiar rubbed shoulders with the seldom-encountered; and the technical skills of all the contributing musicians made the afternoon my latest thoroughly satisfying journey of discovery.

An Evening of Excess with Marc-André Hamelin

Marc-André Hamelin (photograph by Sim Cannety-Clarke, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

French-Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin is no stranger to San Francisco. He was one of the recitalists to contribute to the 45th Season Favorites series presented by San Francisco Performances this past February. Last night he returned to Davies Symphony Hall to give his first Great Performers Series recital since March of 2019.

As I observed at the beginning of this season, Hamelin “does not shy away from ambitious undertakings.” Putting aside any need to “warm up” the audience, he launched last night’s recital immediately with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 106 piano sonata in B-flat major, known best by the title “Hammerklavier.” As might be guessed, this was the entire first half of the program. Things calmed down after the intermission with a straightforward account of the calmer rhetoric encountered in Robert Schumann’s Opus 82 suite, Waldszenen. Then it was “back to the races” with a “no holds barred” approach to the finger-busting demands of Maurice Ravel’s suite Gaspard de la nuit.

One would have thought that, after so much sound and fury, enough was enough. However, Hamelin returned to present five encores. The first of these was the C-sharp minor étude, the first of the three pieces collected in Alexander Scriabin’s Opus 2 set of three pieces. This was followed by Hamelin’s own composition “Music Box” and a jazzy tune given no introduction. He then (I think) moved on to one of the Claude Debussy preludes, leading up to the final encore, which I could document only as “something with a lot of notes!”

Hamelin’s performances tend to be like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: You never know what you are going to get! I suppose he chose to begin with Beethoven’s Opus 106 because he wanted listeners to approach it with fresh minds, rather than echoes of other pieces of music. However, selecting Ravel for the other “bookend” almost seemed like a you-ain’t-heard-nuthin-yet gesture. A Hamelin program always seems to come across as promising a hearty meal … until the listener has to deal with digesting it!

SFS: Music from the First Two Quarters of 20C

Léon Bakst’s set design for the first part of Michel Fokine’s “Daphnis et Chloé” ballet, which complements the rhetoric of Ravel’s music (Houghton Library at Harvard University, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Yesterday afternoon, the German conductor Jun Märkl made his debut leading the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). He was born in February of 1959 the son of a Japanese pianist mother and a German violinist father. He was a pupil of Sergiu Celibidache and also studied under Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa.

He prepared a program with music from the first two quarters of the twentieth century. He began with Béla Bartók’s second violin concerto, composed in 1938. The soloist for this performance was violinist Leonidas Kavakos. The second half slipped back about a quarter of a century for music Maurice Ravel provided for the ballet choreographed by Michel Fokine, “Daphnis et Chloé.” The rhetorical contrast of these two selections was significant; but, with the intervention of an intermission, one could easily appreciate (if not enjoy) the more-than-evident distances.

The latter composition tends to be better known for the two orchestral suites that Ravel extracted (particularly the second). However, between the notes in the program book and the titles for the episodes in each of the three score Parts, one could enjoy the spirit of the narrative, if not the “flesh” of how the ballet was performed. It would be fair to say that much of Ravel’s expressiveness had its roots in his keen sense of instrumentation. As a result, it may be possible that observing how the music unfolds could be just as interesting as the story that Fokine’s choreography conveyed.

Thus, while the performance of the ballet filled about one hour, that duration was just as well spent watching how Märkl elicited every rhetorical significance from all of the SFS musicians. Those acts of signification were just as evident in the abstractions of Bartók’s concerto. Those familiar with the composer would probably enjoy how his musicological studies of Hungarian folk music provided what might be called a “rhetorical context.” One might say that the spirit was lurking in the background, but the flesh had its own approaches to expressiveness!

Kavakos was clearly in his element in presenting that expressiveness to his audience. Mind you, Bartók’s approaches to instrumentation were as inventive as Ravel’s. As a result, the orchestral passages in the concerto basically provided the soloist with a rhetorical setting. Kavakos could then explore the dispositions of that setting, while, at the same time, negotiating more than a few technically tricky passages for good measure!

Both of these selections were probably familiar to those that have been attending SFS performances for some time. Mind you, my wife and I have been making regular visits to Davies Symphony Hall ever since we moved from Singapore back to the United States in 1995. By the time we had arrived, we had already committed ourselves to ticket for both SFS and San Francisco Opera. I suppose one of the things that makes such commitment rewarding is the opportunity to experience how a given piece of music can be interpreted in a variety of different ways.

Märkl took on two different rhetorical settings and knew exactly how to elicit convincing interpretations, and that approach to conducting is what makes for a satisfying listening experience.

SFIPF: A Hispanic Finale

Late yesterday afternoon the San Francisco International Piano Festival concluded with a program entitled Maurizio – Ravel’s Basque & Spanish Masterpieces. The title of the program refers to Maurice Ravel’s origins. He was born on March 7, 1875 in the Basque region, specifically in the French town of Ciboure, near the better-known Biarritz. His father was born in Versoix, near the border with Switzerland; but his mother, born Marie Delouart, was Basque.

The first half of yesterday’s program (which, due to other circumstances, was all I was able to view through my livestream source), featured three Spanish composers (in order of appearance): Manuel de Falla, Enrique Granados, and Joaquín Rodrigo. Paul Sánchez and Asiya Korepanova gave a two-piano account of Rodrigo’s five short pieces collected under the title Piezas infantiles. In the absence of any introduction, it was unclear whether this was music to be played by the young or whether it evoked youthful behavior.

Indeed, no background material was provided regarding any of the compositions or the performers. If the music was familiar, such as the two-piano version of Emanuel Chabrier’s “España” (performed by the same duo), one could appreciate the familiar rhetorical context. On the other hand, the Rodrigo set was a journey of discovery (and may have been my first encounter with one of his compositions that did not involve the guitar). Ironically, in spite of its brevity, I came away recalling the classic phrase from the play Amadeus about “too many notes!”

Paul Sanchez accompanying Esther Rayo in her performance of Maurice Ravel’s “Vocalise” (screen shot from the YouTube video of the performance)

The program began with a survey of vocal works by Falla, Ravel, and Debussy sung by soprano Esther Rayo. In this set Ravel was represented by his “Vocalise en forme d’étude,” which has been a personal favorite for some time. Sadly, Rayo took a forceful approach which undermined the cloying subtlety of Ravel’s rhetoric. This was followed by a selection from the first book on the Goyescas collection by Enrique Granados, which Sánchez delivered with excessive affectation. Taken as a whole, the first half of the program did little to meet the expectations promised by the program’s title.

The Last Straw?

Over the past week I have done my best to overlook the defective audio signals provided by Old First Church for the substandard livestream account of the San Francisco International Piano Festival. Microphone placement for the piano itself has been consistently faultless, but any remarks to the audience are virtually inaudible to those attending the performance through the YouTube feed. Sadly, last night the need for the spoken word was more critical than usual.

Jeffrey LaDeur’s inaudible introduction to last night’s Old First Concerts program (screen shot from the YouTube video of the performance)

This began with an extended introduction by Jeffrey LaDeur to introduce two solo piano compositions by Maurice Ravel composed in 1913 and 1911 (order of appearance on the program). While waiting to listen to the music, I hadn’t the foggiest idea of what LaDeur had to say about either of these pieces, let alone Ravel himself. This was more than a little aggravating, since the 1913 “Prélude” is hardly ever performed.

This was followed by a a series of compositions by Bill Evans performed by Stephen Prutsman. Since the titles were not listed in the program, he introduced each one by name. That was where the inaudibility of the livestream virtually demolished the program. Evans was one of the most prolific jazz composers in the twentieth century, and I cannot begin to enumerate the diversity of his creations that I have in my two box sets of his recordings. Attaching a name to a tune that was inaudibly introduced was out of the question.

Readers that followed this site through the pandemic know that, when probably engineered, streamed video can be a great asset. However, when the engineering quality becomes a liability, one would be better off without the resource at all. On the basis of some of the camera shots, it appears that Old First Concerts is drawing audiences again. Perhaps current resources applied to their livestream efforts could be used elsewhere more fruitfully.

SFIPF: Korepanova Disappoints Again

Last night the eighth annual San Francisco International Piano Festival (SFIPF) presented a program entitled The World of Ravel with Asiya Korepanova. When Korepanova gave her debut recital last season, she presented a program of seven transcriptions, all of her own design. Sadly, this was not the Festival’s finest hour, due, as I put it at that time, to “ Korepanova’s overly aggressive keyboard technique,” which “tended to undermine any suggestion of expressiveness in either the music itself or its realization through transcription.”

Asiya Korepanova playing Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau” at SFIPF (screen shot from the YouTube video of the performance)

Expressiveness took it on the chin again last night to such an extent that I decided to limit myself to the first half of the program. The program was a promising one, beginning with the entirety of Claude Debussy’s L. 75 Suite bergamasque, accounting for all four movements, rather than just the third (“Clair de lune”). Debussy’s suite was paired with Maurice Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau.” These two twentieth-century composers were coupled with one of the major French keyboard works of the nineteenth century, the “Prélude, Choral et Fugue” by César Franck. While Korepanova could not be faulted for failing to account for each of the notes in these compositions assuming its proper place with the appropriate delivery of dynamics, there was little in her approaches to interpretation that would guide the attentive listener from one rhetorical outpost to another.

With the arrival of the intermission, I decided that I had had enough of “Korepanova’s Way!”

SFIPF Couples Ravel with Contemporary Séverac

Jeffrey LaDeur performing Déodat de Séverac’s Cerdaña (screenshot from yesterday afternoon’s live YouTube video)

Yesterday afternoon the eighth annual San Francisco International Piano Festival (SFIPF) presented its second recital at Old First Presbyterian Church. Each half of the program was taken by a single pianist, Gwendolyn Mok followed by Jeffrey LaDeur; and each of them played a multi-movement suite. Mok began the recital with a performance of Maurice Ravel’s five-movement suite Miroirs. The intermission was followed by a second five-movement suite, Cerdaña, composed by Déodat de Séverac about six years after Ravel completed Miroirs.

Miroirs is probably less known as a piano suite and more for two of the movements that Ravel subsequently orchestrated: “Une barque sur l’océan” (a boat on the ocean) and “Alborada del gracioso” (morning song of the jester). These are preceded by “Noctuelles” (night moths) and “Oiseaux tristes” (sad  birds); and “La vallée des cloches” (the valley of bells) concludes the suite. These are all descriptive titles, but I felt that Mok’s verbal account of the descriptions went on longer than necessary. I have become familiar with all of these pieces through recordings, and my own humble opinion is that the music speaks perfectly well for itself! Once Mok took her place at the keyboard, she evoked, for the most part, a far richer experience than her verbal introduction provided. The only weak spots were “Une barque sur l’océan,” which came across as all notes and no expressiveness, and “Alborada del gracioso,” whose climax was hammered out too aggressively.

According to my records, I have not listened to Séverac’s music for about five years. That was when I encountered a video of a performance of four of his songs sung by Ellen Leslie, accompanied at the piano by Eric Choate. LaDeur’s account was thus my first encounter with the composer’s keyboard music. Each of the five movements was dedicated to one of his contemporaries: Yves Nat, Laura Albéniz, Carlos de Castéra, Frank Haviland, and Marguerite Long. Sadly, while I appreciated the spirit behind Séverac’s intentions, there was little in his rhetoric to hold my attention.

SFIPF Celebrates Maurice Ravel’s 150th Birthday

Last night the eighth annual San Francisco International Piano Festival (SFIPF) got under way at Old First Presbyterian Church. Readers may recall that last year’s Festival focused on French keyboard music with particular attention to the centennial of the death of Gabriel Fauré. This year’s Festival will continue the “French influence,” this time celebrating the 150th birthday of Maurice Ravel.

Kindra Scharich performing Ravel’s Histoires naturelles song cycle, accompanied by Jeffrey LaDeur (screenshot from last night’s live YouTube video)

For Opening Night the pianists were Festival Director Jeffrey LaDeur and Gwendolyn Mok. The violin sonata was performed by Chili Ekman, a Young Chamber Musicians Alumnus. The vocalists were mezzo Kindra Scharich and soprano Heidi Moss Erickson. The entire program recreated a recital that Ravel himself performed on a tour that took him to San Francisco in 1928. This included three song cycles, the violin sonata (which may have been Ravel’s reflection on his friendship with George Gershwin), selections from the solo piano suite Le Tombeau de Couperin, and three solo piano compositions, “Pavane pour une infante défunte,” “La vallée des cloches,” and “Habanera,” all played by Mok.

I have to confess that I tend to approach performances of Ravel’s piano music with trepidation. My most recent disappointment came from the solo piano recital by Martin Janes Bartlett for the Shenson Spotlight Series performed in Davies Symphony Hall this past April. On the other hand, the all-Ravel program prepared by Louis Lortie for his San Francisco Performances recital this past March could not have been a better tribute to the composer. That said, both LaDeur and Mok did justice to Ravel’s compositions in both letter and spirit. It did not take long for trepidation to yield to satisfaction, which then sustained for the entire program!

Omni Video of Mēla Guitar Quartet at St. Mark’s

Mēla guitarists Matthew Robinson, George Tarlton, Michael Butten, and Zahrah Hutton (screenshot of the video being discussed)

Late this morning the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts released its latest Live form St. Mark’s video. This captured the entirely of the Dynamite Guitars program performed at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church this past March 8. The performers were the members of the Mēla Guitar Quartet: Matthew Robinson, George Tarlton, Zahrah Hutton, and Michael Butten.

Some readers may recall that they had previously appeared in an OMNI on-location video release at 10 a.m. this past March 3, serving somewhat as a preview for the performance taking place the following Saturday. The “preview video” was of the overture to Mikhail Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila, which happened to be the final work before the intermission on the March 8 program. Glinka took five years to compose this opera, completing it in 1842; and these days it tends to be known for little more than that overture. Mind you, when it came to instrumentation, Glinka knew how to pull out all the stops, so to speak. Clearly, the Mēla sonorities were somewhat more limited; but they allowed for better appreciation of the thematic content!

Indeed, in the overall course of their St. Mark’s performance, Mēla never shied away from composers that were all too eager to show off rich instrumentation. The program included two further opera selections by Camille Saint-Saëns (the Opus 47 Samson and Delilah) and Englebert Humperdinck (Hansel and Gretel). The guitarists were just as deft in taking on French keyboard music by both Claude Debussy (the two “Arabesques” compositions) and Maurice Ravel (two movements from Ma mère l’Oye, the “Mother Goose” piano duet).

The fact is that only two of the composers in the program were guitarists creating music for their instrument. The first of these was Laura Snowden, whose “My Clock is Broken!” included percussive effects deftly provided by Hutton. The other was Phillip Houghton, whose Opals was a suite of three movements, each involving a different color of the mineral: black, water, and white.

The duration of the entire video was about 90 minutes. There were only a few moments of reflection on the audience in St. Mark’s for which Mēla was performing. Sadly, I was at another event in the Civic Center when this concert took place; so I am glad that Omni recruited Matthew Washburn to proved a “video capture” of the entire performance.

Sunset Music and Arts: August, 2025

Mezzo Nicole Takesono and guitarist Sharon Wayne (from the Eventbrite Web page for their Sunset recital)

Having recently accounted for the only performance to be presented by Sunset Music and Arts next month, I am afraid that the month of August will also be limited to only one offering. This will be a vocal recital by mezzo Nicole Takesono accompanied by guitarist Sharon Wayne. The title of the program is Places We Want To Visit; and it will provide a “tour” of five geographical locations, four in Europe and one in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Only the first two selections will involve composers. The first will be a set of Norwegian songs by Halfdan Kjerful. This will be followed by Maurice Ravel’s Cinq mélodies populaires grecques (five Greek folk songs). The remainder of the program will be devoted to traditional songs in three different languages: Ladino, Portuguese, and Hawaiian.

This concert will performed next month at 3 p.m. on Saturday, August 2. There will be no charge for admission, and free tickets may be reserved through an Eventbrite Web page. For those not familiar with this concert series, it takes place at the Incarnation Episcopal Church, which is located in the Sunset at 1750 29th Avenue.