SF Philharmonic to Feature String Ensemble

Poster design for this month’s performance by the San Francisco Philharmonic Orchestra

This month’s performance by the San Francisco Philharmonic Orchestra will be hosted by the Saint Joseph’s Arts Society. The title of the program will be String Masterworks, and the entire program will be performed by the string section. The program will conclude with one of the major compositions for a string ensemble, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 48 in C major, given the title “Serenade for Strings.” This significant work for the string section will be complemented in the first half of the program with Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” The program will begin with “Palladio,” composed by Karl Jenkins in 1995. This will be followed by Joaquín Turina’s “La oración del torero,” originally composed for either four lutes or a string quartet. The remaining work on the program will be the strings-only version of the fifth “Hungarian Dance” composed by Johannes Brahms.

This concert will take place one week from today, beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 8. The venue will be Saint Joseph’s Arts Society San Francisco, which is located at 1401 Howard Street, on the southwest corner of 10th Street. Tickets may be purchased in advance through a City Box Office Web page for $35 or $40. Tickets will be sold at the door for $50. The duration of the program will be 90 minutes.

Calidore Shifts from Beethoven to Americana

The members of the Calidore String Quartet on the cover of their latest album

Having released their box set of the complete string quartets composed by Ludwig van Beethoven last year, the Calidore String Quartet has entered the new year with the release of an all-American album. The title of the new album is American Tapestry, and it will be released this coming Friday. However, as at least some readers probably already know, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

The press release for this new album describes the content as “a panoramic portrait of American musical expression across the 20th and 21st centuries.” The earlier century is represented by the “bookends” of the album. It begins with Samuel Barber’s Opus 11, his first string quartet, whose second movement was subsequently arranged for string orchestra under the title “Adagio for Strings.” The “program” concludes with Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Opus 34, his third string quartet in D major, composed in Los Angeles after the end of World War II. This is preceded by “With Malice Toward None,” composed by John Williams for the biographical film Lincoln. Barber’s quartet is followed by Wynton Marsalis’ three-movement suite, At the Octoroon Balls.

This is clearly an ambitious undertaking, but the Calidore players serve up a convincing performance, particularly for those inclined to listen to an album from start to finish. One reason may be that the ensemble has maintained its membership. Violinists Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan are still performing with Jeremy Berry on viola and cellist Estelle Choi. Having enjoyed their approaches to Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph Haydn, and Ludwig van Beethoven, I definitely appreciate their “great leap forward,” having already whetted my appetite when they performed the Korngold quartet in Herbst Theatre in March of last year.

A British Account of Recent American Music

Cover of the Orchid Classics album being discussed (from the Presto Music Web page)

Last month, after about a week’s delay from the original plan, Orchid Classics released Midsummer Light. Michael Poll conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, but what piqued my attention was that all three of the composers on the album were American. The most familiar of these was Samuel Barber, the only composer no longer living. Violinist Jack Liebeck was the soloist in a performance of Barber’s Opus 14, his only concerto for violin and orchestra. The “overture” for this “program” was “Midsummer Music” by Byron Adams, born in 1955. The concluding “symphony” was the “Sinfonietta for Classical Orchestra” by Adams’ contemporary, David Conte.

Many readers probably know that Conte is based here in San Francisco, teaching composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Sadly, I have had few opportunities to experience his music in performance in spite of that proximity. In fact, it has been almost exactly a year since I last encountered a performance of his music when the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus performed the second movement from his “Elegy for Matthew Shepard” at Davies Symphony Hall.

As might be guessed, the “Sinfonietta” is more abstract with less of an “agenda.” The middle movement has the title “Elegy;” but Conte’s notes for the program book do not indicate any connection to his choral elegy. Rather, they dwell in his approaches to interplay among the different instrumental sonorities. As a result, “Sinfonietta” serves as a companion to Barber’s concerto, which also explores different sonorities to provide “context” for the violin soloist.

It is also worth noting that the booklet included in the album provides its own explanation for how the overall program was organized:

Midsummer Light brings together three works that explore lyrical expression within American modernism. Rooted in a neo-romantic tradition that nonetheless embraces 20th‑century harmonic innovation, formal clarity, and lyricism, these pieces stand in deliberate opposition to the hyper‑rationalism of mid‑century serialism and the stark minimalism that followed. These composers cultivate rich tonal palettes, transparent orchestration, and emotional directness that assert a distinctly American voice.

Those that read my account of last night’s performance of “Rewilding” by Gabriella Smith by the San Francisco Symphony may wonder if I am more comfortable in the last century than I am in the present. Granted, the two living composers on this album are old enough to have been Smith’s teachers. Nevertheless, I feel I have had a healthy share of music from the last few decades; and those experiences have balanced perfectly well in the context of the past century. Personally, I am just glad to have the opportunity to experience several contrasting generations of living composers!

SF Phil to Conclude Season with Groupmuse

The final concert in the 2024–2025 season of the San Francisco Philharmonic (SF Phil) will be a Groupmuse Night Out program. That means that tickets will be available through a Groupmuse event page, where “Supermusers” will be entitled to the $12 admission rate, rather than the $18 charge for all others. The performance will take place in Herbst Theatre, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. It will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 26.

Ani Bukujian and Jessica Bejarano on the poster for the final SF Phil concert of the season (from the Groupmuse event page)

Music Director Jessica Bejarano will wrap up the season with one of the most familiar symphonies in the repertoire, Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 95 symphony in E minor given the title “From the New World,” now numbered as his ninth symphony. In the first half of the program Ani Bukujian will be the violin soloist in Samuel Barber’s violin concerto. Bejarano will get things off to a rousing start with the instrumental Bacchanale from Camille Saint-Saëns’ opera Samson and Delilah. The run time should be about 90 minutes.

Naama Liany’s Old First Concerts Recital

The cover of Naama Liany’s Daydream album, which includes most of the selections she performed (from The Origin Music Group Web page for the album)

Late this afternoon, mezzo Naama Liany finally (after a month’s delay) brought her Daydream program to Old First Presbyterian Church for the final Old First Concerts program of the month. She performed works by five twentieth-century composers setting texts in four languages. The program began with Francis Poulenc’s Banalités, drawing upon five poems by Guillaume Apollinaire. This was followed by “Heimlich zur Nacht,” taken from the radio opera The Piano Blue composed by Albena Petrovic-Vratchanska. The first half of the program then concluded with the first and last songs from the collection Combat del somni (dream combat) by Federico Mompou.

The second half of the program was “all American.” It began with the five songs in Samuel Barber’s Opus 41 Despite and Still. This was followed by the wittier I Hate Music! by Leonard Bernstein. Liany then took two encores, neither of which were announced. I drew a blank on the first one, but she wrapped things up by going back to Bernstein with his operetta Candide. He wrote his own lyrics for the song “I Am Easily Assimilated,” given tango treatment.

Liany’s delivery was consistently solid. She knew just how to tune her disposition to the semantics behind each of her selections. She kept any talk to a minimum, allowing the full panoply of her selections to speak for themselves. Mind you, not all of her selections were my personal favorites. Nevertheless, for all of my misgivings about Bernstein, I was more than a little impressed by how she nailed her sense of pitch during the “I Hate Music!” song. I was also amused to hear the voice of her pianist Christopher Koelzer, covering for the chorus response (so to speak) in “I Am Easily Assimilated.”

Sundays have been consistently busy for me over the course of this new year, but I was glad to settle down in front of my television late this afternoon to view the Old First Concerts livestream.

SFS: Gaffigan Returns to Podium with Ray Chen

1944 portrait of Samuel Barber (photographed by Carl Van Vechten, from Wikimedia Commons, available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID van.5a51697)

The second half of the current San Francisco Symphony (SFS) season got under way last night in Davies Symphony Hall with guest conductor James Gaffigan on the podium. He has spent the better part of this century with SFS, beginning with his debut in December of 2006. He then went on to serve as Associate Conductor between 2006 and 2009. His last appearance was in May of 2021, when he concluded his program with Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” originally composed as the second movement of his Opus 11 string quartet.

For his latest appearance, he prepared a “standard” overture-concerto-symphony, using the concerto to provide another Barber selection. This was the Opus 14 violin concerto, composed in 1940. The soloist was Ray Chen, another returning artist. Chen made his debut in January of 2011 and performed as a Shenson Young Artists soloist in a performance of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 77 violin concerto in D major with returning visiting conductor Juraj Valčuha in May of 2018. Barber is, of course, a far cry from Brahms; and I can remember from my student days during the last half of the last century that he quickly fell from grace as trends tended (somewhat ironically) towards both atonality and the pre-Baroque repertoire. Even so, there were soulful qualities in Barber’s concerto that almost seemed to reflect back on Brahms, somewhat to the consternation of those more occupied with “the shock of the new.”

Neither Chen nor Gaffigan had any qualms about letting those soulful qualities run their course. Barber may well have been a friend of every instrument in a full orchestral ensemble, evoking a dazzling spectrum of sonic colors that reinforced the violin solo work, rather than overwhelming it. Yes, there are shadows of Hollywood film scores in many of the textures; but Barber’s expressiveness gave them depth, rather than trivialization. As a result, last night’s account emerged as a thoroughly engaging journey from start to finish (a finish, which, as might be expected, went out with a bang).

That bang then resonated into Chen’s encore selection. This was “Obsession,” the title that Eugène Ysaÿe gave to the first movement in the second of the six solo violin sonatas of his Opus 27. Anyone listening to this movement in the Sixties would have described it as Johann Sebastian Bach on a bad acid trip. Indeed, when the composer added the “Dies irae” sequence to the mix, one could begin to appreciate how the composer was poking fun of those two “obsessions” with music history. Chen gave this short piece a dynamite account, and the audience loved it.

The intermission was followed by the symphony offering: Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 100 (fifth) in B-flat major. This is probably his best-known “mature” symphony, the other popular one being the “classical” first in D major. This was composed in 1944 and was clearly influenced by World War II. There is an intense drive in the tempo for the two fast movements: Allegro marcato and Allegro giocoso. While I appreciate that these were the composer’s reflections on wartime conditions, I must confess that my own reactions have tended towards the prankish. Each movement chugs forward with the full force of a locomotive, and it is hard for me to resist thinking of the train charging towards its encounter with Anna Karenina!

The “overture” for the program was Missy Mazzoli’s “Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres),” composed in 2014. I have to confess that I found it a bit difficult to listen to this piece without  reflecting on the P. D. Q. Bach “classic” “Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds & Percussion” (S. 1000). Unfortunately, Mazzoli does not have Peter Schickele’s sense of humor; and, if her intention was to be serious, the result came across as little more than pretentious. If this music was not particularly engaging (or even sweet), it was at least (to the listener’s advantage) short.

SFS: Stella Chen Debuts as Concerto Soloist

It seems as if every time I write about Stella Chen involves some new form of debut experience. Her very first professional appearance in San Francisco took place in March of 2023, a little over a week after the release of her debut album Stella x Schubert. She was accompanied at the piano by Henry Kramer in a program prepared for Chamber Music San Francisco. She returned a little over a year later to make her debut in Davies Symphony Hall, this time with pianist George Li for the final recital in the Shenson Spotlight Series.

Last night Chen returned to Davies, this time making her debut as concerto soloist with the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). Her selection was Samuel Barber’s only violin concerto, his Opus 14 completed in 1939. The conductor for this occasion was Earl Lee.

This was the second of the two classical concerts prepared for this season’s Summer with the Symphony  programming. Lee followed the usual overture-concerto-symphony guidelines. The Barber concerto has been absent from Davies since Gil Shaham played it with SFS in March of 2017. During the second half of the twentieth century, Barber was regarded as a composer best forgotten; but now that we have emerged from the “new for the sake of new” conceits of that past half-century, there is much for the attentive listener to appreciate in this violin concerto.

Barber was never shy in summoning up rich orchestral resources. Fortunately, between Lee’s sense of balance and Chen’s fearless command of the composer’s virtuoso passages, this was very much an engaging account of the relationship between solo and ensemble. Indeed, the number of brief passages for ensemble soloists was a generous one. The violinist is thus situated in a vast landscape of diverse sonorities. Nevertheless, in Chen’s hands, the solo voice held its own, even when surrounded by the riches of Barber’s instrumental landscapes.

Mind you, those landscapes were just as rich after the intermission, when Lee led the full ensemble in a performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 36 (fourth) symphony in F minor. This is Tchaikovsky at his most dramatic without setting a narrative for a ballet or an opera. The entire symphony is structure around the opening “Fate” motif, which winds its way in and out of all the other thematic material for the four movements. The most lyrical of these was the oboe solo at the beginning of the second (Andantino in modo de canzona) movement; and Lee was one of those conductors who knew how to restrain his baton while Russ de Luna provided a ravishing account of the theme.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s autograph of the sonata movement played by Chen for her encore (public domain, from a Wikimedia Commons Web page)

On the more modest side, Chen followed her concerto debut with an encore. As is so often the case with so many violin encores, she turned to the sonatas and partitas for solo violin by Johann Sebastian Bach. More specifically, she “began at the beginning,” so to speak, playing the Adagio movement that begins the BWV 1001 sonata in G minor. When approached with the right dispositions, this music reveals itself more as sinuously tempting than as mere abstraction; and Chen knew just how to capture and convey those dispositions. In many ways, that music had more to say in a few minutes than Tchaikovsky could deliver over the course of an hour!

Less convincing was the “overture” for the evening. “Fate Now Conquers” was composed by Carlos Simon for the Philadelphia Orchestra, which gave the premiere performance in October of 2020. (This was during the celebration of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th birthday.) The title, however, was taken from Homer’s Iliad. Apparently, Beethoven had entered into his journal a passage from Homer, whose first words were those that Simon selected for his title. Sadly, there was little in Simon’s meandering score to evoke either Homer or Beethoven; and the music’s greatest virtue was being limited to five minutes in duration.

Simon Rattle in Berlin: What Remains

Poster for Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (from Wikipedia, provided by DreamWorks Pictures, complies with Wikipedia non-free content policy and fair use under United States copyright law)

This final account of the anthology of recordings made by Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic may best be described as “odds and ends from the twentieth century.” That would account for all but one of the remaining CDs, since there is one “outlier,” which is the original soundtrack from the 2008 film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. I must confess that I did not know that this movie existed, even though its cast included Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman, and Ben Whishaw.

Not long before I began my freshman year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a friend loaned me a couple of soundtrack albums based on films by Federico Fellini. This was a whole new genre for me; and, during my freshman year, I spent many happy hours at the Brattle Theatre catching up on Fellini’s films. The composer for those films was Nino Rota, who would eventually establish a name for himself on his own, particularly in opera.

The score for Perfume, on the other hand, was a joint effort by Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, and Reinhold Heil, all performing on electronic gear. The Berlin Philharmonic is joined by the State Choir of Latvia along with three vocal soloists, sopranos Chen Reiss and Melanie Mitrano, and boy soprano Victor de Maizière. As is often the case for a product conceived by a committee, the music really does not hold up very well on its own (and, for that matter, the film did not do very well, particularly in the United States). Nevertheless, it was included in the anthology for the sake of completeness!

Where my own listening was concerned, the remaining selections all triggered different pangs of nostalgia. The most satisfying was Richard Strauss’ Opus 60, the suite of incidental music he composed for a performance of the Molière comédie-ballet, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Jean-Baptiste Lully composed the music for Molière, but Strauss composed music for Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s adaptation of the play. His version plays up many of the eccentricities of the title character, making for an engaging listening experience. Unfortunately, on this CD, Opus 60 is preceded by Opus 40, the “Ein Heldenleben” tone poem, whose “protagonist” is even more laughable than Molière’s creation!

To some extent the revival of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana cantata also comes across as more than a bit laughable, half a century after it was all the rage. (Actually, it was already a butt of jokes when it showed up on television in the soundtrack for a cigar commercial.) Nevertheless, I have to say that I enjoyed the personalities evoked in the vocal solos by baritone Christian Gerhaher, tenor Lawrence Brownlee, and soprano Sally Matthews.

An entire CD is devoted to Carl Nielsen with Rattle conducting two of his concertos. The first of these is the flute concerto with Emmanuel Pahud as soloist. This is followed by Sabine Meyer taking the solo part in the clarinet concerto. The remainder of the album is the wind quintet with Pahud and Meyer joined by bassoonist Stefan Schweigert, Jonathan Kelly alternating between oboe and cor anglais, and Radek Baborák on French horn. While Nielsen’s music is no longer the “great discovery” it was during the second half of the last century, I have to confess that revisiting all three of these compositions was an enjoyable experience.

On the other hand, I am not quite sure what to make of Rattle’s decision to add Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” following the last two movements of Gustav Mahler’s ninth symphony. I suppose the conductor decided that, in the interest of filling out the CD, one good Adagio deserves another. Where my own listening was concerned, however, there was just too much cognitive dissonance!

JIVE Off to a Good Start

Last night at The Century Club of California, JIVE, the new quartet whose name is the acronym for “Jewish Innovative Voices and Experiences,” presented its debut recital. The title of the program was Dayenu: Celebrating Passover; and plans are already in place for further holiday-based programs for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and for Hanukkah. Pianist Ronny Michael Greenberg is the de facto leader, since he was the only member on stage for the entire evening. He accompanied two vocalists, baritone Simon Barrad and countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, and his wife, violinist Elizabeth Castro Greenberg.

The repertoire was impressively diverse. Composers included Samuel Barber, Ernest Bloch, and Lise Weber (one of the Theresienstadt prisoners in the early Forties). The program also included Sephardic folk music, arrangements of traditional songs (one by Barrad), and both pop and show tunes. There was also an encore that amounted to a klezmer tango.

Taken as a whole, the program progressed at a smooth clip, with each selection bringing its own fresh take on the overall repertoire. One does not associate a countertenor with Jewish music, but Cohen’s deliveries were consistently solid and expressive. Barrad’s style was more traditional and familiar but just as consistently engaging. Violinist Greenberg provided an instrumental reflection on all of these vocal works by performing the “Nigun” movement from Bloch’s three-movement Baal Shem suite.

From my vantage point, it appeared that JIVE played to a full house; and the audience was certainly appreciative. I also got the impression that this performance drew more than just members of the Jewish community, since the performers were known to many that follow recital events. The ensemble definitely got off to a good start, and I am looking forward to seeing how they will maintain their momentum!

An “American Spring” from Trinity Alps Festival

Last night the musicians of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival, led by Founder and Director Ian Scarfe, took their work to San Francisco for the first of two performances of their latest program, American Spring. This was inspired by the decision to perform Aaron Copland’s music for Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring” using the original score for an ensemble of thirteen instruments. This involves only three winds, flute (Gina Gulyas), clarinet (Matthew Boyles), and bassoon (Dan MacNeill). The string section is basically a double quartet with two instruments for each “voice” as follows: first violin (Sam Weiser and Alicia Choi), second violin (Theo Espy and Stephanie Bibbo), viola (Stephen Fine and Ivo Bokulić), cello (Kendra Grittani and Joseph Howe). The remaining musician was Kody Thiessen on bass. Scarfe led from the piano.

Each of the performers had a separate stand. To the best of my ability to observe, there seemed to be passages in which each of the quartet “voices” was subdivided. The result is an elaborately woven texture, and there is much to be gained in approaching Copland’s score as “pure music” without giving much thought to Graham’s choreography. In fact, last night’s performance played the suite that Copland extracted from the full score. For the most part, the only significant excision is that of the preacher’s fire-and-brimstone sermon, originally danced by Merce Cunningham. Copland himself conducted the complete score with this original instrumentation for a Columbia album that is now included in the Sony Classical anthology released this past February.

Much as I enjoy that album, I have to say that there was a lot to be gained in being able to see who was playing what. Since the music was originally performed in an orchestra pit to allow Graham and her dancers full use of the stage, last night made for a somewhat special experience, enhanced by the intimacy of the Monument space in SoMa. (There will be a second performance at 3 p.m. this afternoon at the Century Club of California, which should have about the same intimacy.)

By way of an “overture,” Scarfe began the program by playing two of the movements from Samuel Barber’s Excursions suite, which was composed around the same time that Copland composed his score for Graham. Barber had a somewhat aristocratic upbringing on the Main Line outside of Philadelphia, but his music often served up engagingly rough edges. Scarfe began with the opening movement, an ostinato that warps traditional boogie-woogie. He then moved on to the third movement, a mind-bending complex of polyrhythms weaving around the tune for “Streets of Laredo.”

The second half of the program was devoted entirely to a six-movement suite by Sam Reider entitled Hyampom. This is the name of a town in the Trinity Alps, which the composer had known from his childhood. The music thus amounted to a memoir, capturing six different aspects of his memories. (These were all enumerated in the notes he provided for the program sheet.) Reider also joined the ensemble, playing the part for accordion that he had composed.

The recent Columbia release also recorded excerpts of the composer rehearsing his “Appalachian Spring” score. He cautions his musicians about being too sentimental. Reider followed that same caution in composing Hyampom. His memories are genuine, but his rhetoric is never mawkish. One could say that both of the selections on the program could be classified as “Americana;” but the perspective is established through clarity, rather than sentimentality.

Samantha Hankey’s Schwabacher Recital

Pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson accompanying mezzo Samantha Hankey (photograph by Matthew Washburn, courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

Last night in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theatre of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, the annual Schwabacher Recital series concluded with a recital by mezzo Samantha Hankey, accompanied at the piano by Carrie-Ann Matheson. The program was performed without an intermission, but there was more than enough in the content to engage the serious listener.

Where my own tastes were concerned, what interested me most about the program was the inclusion of music by Alexander Zemlinsky. This composer has fascinated me ever since I read Alma Mahler’s Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters. She had been a composition student of Zemlinsky, who (like many of the men of that time) fell in love with her. However, that relationship did not last. (She found him too ugly.) As well all know, Alma subsequently married Mahler.

Last night’s selection was composed after Zemlinsky had gotten over that relationship. The title (in English) is Six Songs to texts by Maurice Maeterlinck; and they set the texts in German between 1910 and 1913. (The texts were originally written in French, and the music was subsequently orchestrated in 1924.)

Hankey sang four of these songs:

• Die drei Schwestern (the three sisters)
• Die Mädchen mit den verbundenen Augen (the girl with bandaged eyes)
• Als ihr Geliebter schied (when her lover left)
• Und kehrt er einst heim (if he returns one day)

Her vocal delivery provided the perfect match to the darkness of the texts, while Matheson’s accompaniment enhanced the underlying rhetoric. To be fair, however, I know much of Zemlinsky’s music through cherished experiences of seeing several of his operas; and I can appreciate why he chose to orchestrate these settings. I have listened to them in that setting, and they are positively bone-chilling. Nevertheless, Hankey’s interpretations cut to the heart of each of her texts, leaving me on the edge of my seat as she advanced through her four selections.

The Zemlinsky offering was preceded by another set of selections. These were four of the seven canciones populares españolas (Spanish folksongs) composed by Manuel de Falla:

• El paño moruno (the Moorish cloth)
• Seguidilla murciana
• Asturiana
• Polo

I have encountered the full cycle in performance many times. (The most recent was almost exactly a year ago, when mezzo Sasha Cooke was accompanied by guitarist Jason Vieaux.) As was the case with all of the song texts, English translations were projected behind the performers; but Hankey’s body language was as expressive as the words she was delivering.

The program began with Claude Debussy’s settings of three of the poems from Pierre Louÿs’ collection of erotic poetry entitled (in English) The Songs of Bilitis:

• La flûte de Pan (Pan’s flute)
• La chevelure (the hair)
• Le tombeau des Naïades

Debussy worked with this music in a variety of instrumental settings. Matheson clearly appreciated the technique behind the composer’s keyboard music; but the focus was on Hankey’s interpretation which delivered the erotic qualities with just the right level of subtlety.

The program concluded with selections by Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, and Kurt Weill. Arlen was represented by what is probably his best-known tune, “Over the Rainbow,” composed for Judy Garland to sing in the movie The Wizard of Oz. This was followed by Cole Porter’s “So in Love,” composed for the musical Kiss Me, Kate. Finally, there were two Weill selections. “Youkali” was a tango sung in French; and it was followed by “Speak Low,” composed for the musical One Touch of Venus. Hankey then returned for a single encore, once again in English: Samuel Barber’s “Sure on this shining night,” setting a poem by James Agee.

If the evening was shorter than usual, it could not have been more satisfying. I was glad to see that, in her credentials, Hankey has been making a name for herself in opera performances. Nevertheless, I was really drawn to her skills as a recitalist last night. I would be only too happy to have another encounter with one of her art song journeys.

Eric Ferring: Art Song with Piano and Strings

This Friday Delos will release the debut album of tenor Eric Ferring, entitled We have tomorrow. This departs from the usual vocal releases, because accompaniment is provided by not only pianist Madeline Slettedahl but also the member of the Paris-based Quatuor Agate. The members of this string quartet are violinists Adrien Jurkovic and Thomas Descamps, violist Raphaël Pagnon, and cellist Iachemet. As of this writing, Amazon.com has created a Web page for pre-ordering the album’s 26 tracks; but that page does not support pre-ordering the physical CD.

Recording session for La Bonne Chanson (screen shot from a YouTube video created by Delos Music)

The “program” of the album is an impressive one. The “familiar faces” on the album are American (Samuel Barber), German (Johannes Brahms), and French (Gabriel Fauré). The Brahms selection is the relatively familiar Opus 91, consisting of only two songs but score for accompaniment by both viola and piano. Less familiar may be Fauré’s Opus 61, the cycle of nine mélodies entitled La Bonne Chanson, which concludes the album. (The title refers to a set nine poems by Paul Verlaine given the same name.) At the “opposite end,” so to speak, the album begins with Mélodies passagères, Samuel Barber’s setting of five poems by Rainer Maria Rilke.

The one composition that requires all four members of Quatuor Agate is entitled, simply enough, Triptych for High Voice and String Quartet, composed by Arthur Shepherd. The texts are taken from Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali, but they are sung in English. I suspect that I am not the only one for which this composition provided a “first contact” listening experience. It was first published in 1927, about two decades after Arnold Schoenberg had added a soprano to his second string quartet. It goes without saying that there is no confusing Shepherd’s music with Schoenberg’s!

In the context of a rising interest in female composers, the remaining two composers on We have tomorrow are both American women. The Barber cycle is followed by two songs by Florence Price, “Hold Fast to Dreams” and (the title track) “We have tomorrow.” The account of Amy Beach is both longer and more extensive. It consists of two early works, the Opus 19 “Ecstasy” and the Opus 21 “Chanson d’amour.” The “set” then concludes with the two songs in her Opus 100, “A mirage” and “Stella viotoris.”

According to the background material I have received, Ferring has appeared at Santa Fe Opera but has not yet made it to the West Coast. Given his imaginative approach to repertoire, I suspect that I would not be the only one to welcome his coming here to give a recital in Herbst Theatre! Meanwhile, I shall probably make it a point to revisit this album sooner rather than later!

A Trinity Alps Chamber Players Groupmuse

Yesterday evening at Monument SF, Ian Scarfe, founder and Director of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival, presented his latest groupmuse concert. He was joined by violinist Sam Weiser and cellist Evan Kahn in a program whose “main event” was the performance of Robert Schumann’s Opus 80 (second) piano trio in F major. This served as the concluding “bookend” of the program, which began with another Schumann selection, three selected movements from the Opus 102 Five Pieces in Folk Style, a duo for cello and piano. Between these two pieces Scarfe gave a solo performance of the first and third movements from Samuel Barber’s Opus 20 Excursions, after which he was joined by Weiser for the first movement (entitled “Relaxed Grooves”) of John Adams 1995 suite Road Movies.

Scarfe provided remarks for each of these selections. Such commentary is often risky business, but Scarfe managed to find that “sweet spot” between saying too little and saying too much. It was clear that he had cultivated a strong personal attachment to each of the selections; but it was just as clear that, for the entire evening, the experience was all about the music taking priority over the musicians.

Both of the Schumann selections were composed during a particularly productive period in his life. (Just look at the difference between the opus numbers.) Where the trio was concerned, this was also a period of retrospective reflection. The first movement of the trio includes a quotation taken from a much earlier song cycle, the Opus 39 Liederkreis, appropriating the theme of the second song, “Intermezzo.”

Schumann composed three piano trios. The first of these, Opus 63 in D minor, was composed in the same year as Opus 80, 1847. The third trio, Opus 110 in G minor, came much later in 1851. Unless I am mistaken, my only previous encounters with any of them took place at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM). (All three of last night’s performers are SFCM alumni.) By the same account, I was glad to have an opportunity to listen to some of Barber’s piano music, since, these days, encounters with any of his music are few and far between. Adams has fared much better in garnering attention, but it was still a pleasure to experience the playfulness that Scarfe and Weiser brought to his music.

The entire program took place in a setting that was both casual and intimate, which is exactly what good chamber music listening requires.

Mitropoulos and American Composers

My journey through Sony Classical’s Dimitri Mitropoulos: The Complete RCA and Columbia Album Collection concludes with an account of his performances of music composed in the United States. Note that I did not write “music by American composers.” Thanks to Adolf Hitler, the United States saw a significant influx of European composers trying to escape the Nazi juggernaut. Many of them were particularly forward-looking, and I am one that believes that our country was very fortunate enough to have Arnold Schoenberg as one of them.

I might even go as far as to say that Schoenberg was as prolific after arriving in the United States as he was before leaving Europe. Indeed, one the best examples of how he applied his twelve-tone technique is his Opus 36 violin concerto. He dedicated this concerto to his former student Anton Webern (who did not make the “transatlantic move” and suffered the consequences).

The concerto was given its world premiere by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The soloist was Louis Krasner, who had worked closely with Alban Berg on the composition of his violin concerto. Mitropoulos recorded this concerto with the New York Philharmonic, and Columbia released it on an album that also included the Berg concerto. Krasner was the soloist for both concertos, but the Berg concerto was performed by the Cleveland Orchestra led by Artur Rodziński. This is definitely a must-listen album for those interested in the work of Schoenberg and his students (even if Mitropoulos occupies only half of the CD).

A related composer from Schoenberg’s time in Vienna, who also made the move to the United States, is Ernst Krenek. While Krenek was never part of the “Schoenberg school,” he had his own approaches to innovation. Mitropoulos recorded his “Symphonic Elegy,” which was composed in memory of Webern’s tragic death and was scored for string orchestra. Columbia coupled this with Schoenberg’s Opus 17 “Erwartung,” which had been previously performed in Europe. Mitropoulos recorded the performance with soprano soloist Dorothy Dow, making this CD another “must listen” album.

There is also an opportunity to listen to the work of one of Schoenberg’s finest American pupils. Leon Kirchner studied with Schoenberg at the University of California in Los Angeles. After his graduate studies at the Berkeley campus, he pursued both composing and an academic career. He composed his piano concerto on a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation, and he completed it in 1953. The recording was made with support from the Naumburg Foundation. Kirchner himself performed the solo piano part with Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic.

Curiously, there is only one other American-born composer that seems to have attracted much of Mitropoulos’ attention. That is Morton Gould, who composed the music for Agnes de Mille’s ballet about Lizzie Borden, which was entitled “Fall River Legend” and was first performed by American Ballet Theatre in April of 1948. Gould extracted a suite from his score, which Mitropoulos recorded with the New York Philharmonic. Mitropoulos also recorded two “singles” of Gould’s music. “Philharmonic Waltzes,” which (obviously) was performed by the New York Philharmonic, was also composed in 1948. (The CD couples this with Roger Sessions’ second symphony and Elie Siegmeister’s suite Ozark Set.) However, there is also an earlier (1946) Gould composition entitled “Minstrel Show,” which Mitropoulos recorded during his tenure in Minneapolis.

The other American-born composer of significance is Samuel Barber. Mitropoulos conducted the premiere of Barber’s Opus 32 four-act opera Vanessa, which was performed by the Metropolitan Opera. This opera has enjoyed several revivals, one of which I remember seeing on television. Still, this “original cast” recording remains refreshing with Eleanor Steber in the title role and Nicolai Gedda as Anatol.

Finally, it is worth noting that Mitropoulos shared an album with Gunther Schuller entitled Music for Brass. The selections on this album were performed by The Brass Ensemble of the Jazz and Classical Music Society, reflecting Schuller’s interest in a synthesis of the two genres. Mitropoulos contributed to the album by conducted Schuller’s “Symphony for Brass and Percussion.” The result was not particularly jazzy, but the production of the album provided a platform for forward-looking jazz players such as Miles Davis and J. J. Johnson.

Emerson Quartet Ends SFP Chamber Series

Emerson String Quartet players Paul Watkins, Eugene Drucker, Philip Setzer, and Lawrence Dutton (photograph by Jürgen Frank, courtesy of SFP)

Last night in Herbst Theatre, San Francisco Performances (SFP) concluded its Shenson Chamber Series with the return of the Emerson String Quartet for its seventh appearance under SFP auspices. Violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer and violist Lawrence Dutton have been with the quartet since it was first formed in 1976. Cellist Paul Watkins replaced cellist David Finckel in 2013.

The program prepared for last night could be called “the other three B’s.” Since Johann Sebastian Bach predated the string quartet as we now know it (often credited to Joseph Haydn), Emerson offered an entirely different set of composers whose last names began with a B. In “order of appearance” these were Alexander Borodin, Samuel Barber, and Béla Bartók. (It may be worth noting in passing that, while the original three B’s spanned two centuries, eighteenth and nineteenth, last night’s set linked the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth in a much narrower window. Nevertheless, each of the offerings on last night’s program had its own unique voice.)

Sadly, performance technique tended to be uneven over the course of the program. The most satisfying of the offerings was the final selection, Bartók’s first quartet. This was the only offering of the evening led by Drucker. Under his leadership one could appreciate the long-time familiarity that the ensemble had with the six Bartók quartets. More importantly, one could relish the rich contributions of all four instruments, none of which are allowed very much time for “mere accompaniment.” Writing as one who internalized the Bartók quartets as an undergraduate, I have to say that Drucker’s leadership elicited a freshness of interpretation strong enough to register with me as a “first contact” experience.

Unfortunately, Setzer’s leadership of the first two offerings, Borodin’s second quartet in D major and Barber’s Opus 11 quartet in B minor, was disappointingly weaker. There was often something unsteady about his intonation that disoriented the entire ensemble. Furthermore, the interplay of the individual voices lacked the certainty that made the Bartók performance so satisfying.

Ironically, both of these quartets have “islands of familiarity” that would register with those that do not spend much time with the chamber music genre. Most importantly, the second movement of Barber’s quartet was subsequently repurposed for a string ensemble. In that form it became the “Adagio for Strings,” which now enjoys popular appeal (with a little help from Tinseltown).

However, long before Barber’s Adagio became an “overnight success,” Broadway turned Borodin’s music into a smash hit with a musical entitled Kismet. Two of the songs took their tunes from the Borodin quartet. “Baubles, Bangles and Beads” used the trio portion of the Scherzo (second) movement, while the primary theme of the Noctturno (third) movement became “And This is My Beloved.” Mind you, this show has probably faded into oblivion (the author of the program notes may never have heard of it), allowing the music as Borodin originally wrote it to thrive under more conducive circumstances!

The ensemble returned for an encore that turned out to be rather a surprise. Perhaps, having recognized that they had presented “three alternative B’s,” they saw it fitting to give Bach his due. As a result, they performed a piece of four-voice counterpoint that appeared in the first printed edition of The Art of Fugue but is identified on the music’s Wikipedia page as one of “three pieces of ostensibly spurious inclusion.”

The selection was “spurious” because it was not a fugue. Rather, it was a four-voice setting of an organ chorale prelude on "Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit" (“herewith I come before Thy throne"), a chorale prelude based on the BWV 668a setting for organ. Thus, while Bach pre-dated the very idea of a string quartet, Emerson was kind enough to give him the last word in their own “three B’s” program!

Joshua Bell Disappoints on Both Fronts

Violinist-conductor Joshua Bell (photograph by Phillip Knott, courtesy of SFS)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) presented the latest installment in its Great Performers Series. The “performers” were the members of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields chamber orchestra, led by its Music Director, the violinist Joshua Bell. Bell prepared a program whose first half featured him as soloist in concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 1041 in A minor) and Samuel Barber. The second half of the program consisted entirely of Beethoven’s Opus 55 (“Eroica”) symphony in E-flat major, led from the Concertmaster’s chair by Bell.

Bell’s greatest asset is his popularity, and Davies came close to being totally filled with his admirers. From a musical point of view, however, he has often missed the mark in his solo engagements in SFS subscription concerts; but his winning personality always seems to rise above his disconcertingly frequent performance flaws. Last night none of the three selections on the program emerged unscathed, with the account of Bach being the closest to tolerable.

This was probably because Bell’s high spirits would have easily fit right in with those of both performers and customers at Gottfried Zimmermann’s coffee house in Leipzig. Nevertheless, the size of the Academy’s string ensemble was probably too large to fit into Zimmermann’s space (assuming that customers matter more than musicians); and that magnitude rendered the harpsichord continuo work of John Constable pretty much inaudible. That said, the relationship between soloist and ensemble was consistently tolerable; and Bell’s spirited personality fit comfortably into that setting.

The Barber concerto, on the other hand, did not fare as well. While Bell’s account of the solo work was, for the most part, satisfactory, his duties as conductor were sorely neglected. Barber had a keen ear for instrumentation, and almost every measure of the concerto reveals a sonorous gem of its own. As a result, a performance of the concerto demands a conductor that does not overlook any of those gems while consistently keeping the orchestral resources balanced against those of the soloist. Sadly, “balance” does not appear to be in Bell’s vocabulary, let alone his toolbox. All those many colors that Barber had evoked were washed away by Bell’s intense account of the solo part, thus missing the point of why Barber composed a concerto in the first place.

Fortunately, Bell had no opportunity to strut his solo stuff during Beethoven’s Opus 55. However, his attempt to conduct frequently seemed to be following the flow of instrumentation, rather than leading it. For the most part, the members of the ensemble knew how to take care of themselves. (The three horn players deserve special credit for their role in the Scherzo.) As we know from the performances of One Found Sound, a moderately-sized ensemble in which everyone is aware of everyone else can manage even a Beethoven symphony without a conductor. Most likely the Academy musicians have that same skill and probably would have delivered as convincing a performance of Opus 55 in Bell’s absence as they managed in his presence.

BARS to Present Second In-Person Concert

According to my available data, the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS) resumed presenting “in-person” concerts this past November. They prepared a program in memory of Michael Morgan, which was performed in the Taube Atrium Theater on the top floor of the War Memorial Veterans Building on November 20. Sadly, I never received the details of this event.

The good news is that the second “in-person” concert has been announced. Unfortunately, it will take place in a little more than 24 hours, which will be unfortunate for those that have already made other plans (like myself). The ensemble will be led by Guest Conductor Cyrus Ginwala. The “core” of the program will be Franz Schubert’s D. 200 (third) symphony in the key of D major, composed in 1815. It will be preceded by the second work that Samuel Barber entitled “Essay for Orchestra.” The program will have a rousing conclusion with the “Bacchanale” music from Camille Saint-Saëns’ opera Samson and Delilah.

The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m., tomorrow evening, Saturday, March 12. The performance will take place at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, located at 1111 O’Farrell Street. Tix has created an event page for purchasing tickets. General admission will be $25 with a $20 rate for seniors and $15 for students.

All those aged twelve or older planning to attend must show proof of a “boosted” vaccination. Those between the ages of five and eleven must be fully vaccinated. Anyone younger must show a negative result from a test that took place within 72 hours of the event.

Masks will be required in the building and during the performance. Seats will not be assigned, meaning that members of the audience can take their own approach to distancing. There will be no intermission, only short pauses between the selections. There will be no food or drink, and socializing will not be allowed within the space following the concert.

Dover Quartet’s Brahms-and-Beyond Program

Last night in Herbst Theatre the Dover Quartet launched the first of the six programs to be performed in the Shenson Chamber Series presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP). This was the third visit to SFP made by violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, and cellist Camden Shaw. The group had made its SFP debut on October 30, 2016. It then launched the 2018–2019 season, also by presenting the first concert in the Shenson Chamber Series. Last night’s program also featured bass-baritone Davóne Tines as guest artist. The program was framed by string quartets at beginning and end, with Tines contributing to two sections in the middle of the program.

One can probably make a case for the program following a “trajectory of influences;” but the path was not a straight one. The oldest work on the program was the conclusion, the second, in the key of A minor, of the two string quartets that Johannes Brahms published as his Opus 51. Brahms took his time in composing and publishing the Opus 51 quartets. He began work in 1865 but did not complete the quartets until 1873. He had twenty previous efforts, of which eighteen were destroyed and the other two never published in his lifetime. 1865 was also the year of his Opus 40 horn trio in E-flat major, which was preceded by the F minor piano quintet (Opus 34) and the first two piano quartets, Opus 25 in G minor and Opus 26 in A major. Brahms was clearly building a solid portfolio in the chamber music genre.

Of the two Opus 51 quartets, the A minor gives the sense of having been composed by a surer hand, which probably explains why it is performed more often than its predecessor in C minor. The textures tend to be thick; but, when given an effective performance, the attentive listener can appreciate the elaborately embellished intertwining of the instrumental voices. The Dover players could not have been more effective in doing justice to not only those technical details but also the overall tone of expressiveness emerging from those details.

While leaving Herbst I found myself reflecting on how seldom I had encountered any of the Brahms quartets prior to my move to the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of those encounters have taken place in Herbst under SFP auspices. I just hope that New York City has been catching up on all those efforts I have encountered to give those quartets their proper due!

The A minor quartet concluded a program which began in A major with Alexander Zemlinsky’s Opus 4 (first) quartet. The rhetorical intensity of this music contrasted sharply with the Brahms quartet, which seems to have scrupulously avoided overstatement. Nevertheless, there is no shortage of moments when the attentive listener can identify the composer’s awareness of the influences of both Brahms and Antonín Dvořák. Zemlinsky completed this quartet in 1895. Brahms was still alive and seems to have appreciated the young composer’s efforts. (Zemlinsky was 24 at the time.) Indeed, through Brahms’ influence, Zemlinsky’s quartet was was published by N. Simrock, which was also Brahms’ publisher.

Zemlinsky would only begin to find his own unique voice during the twentieth century with influences from both Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg. In the opera world he is probably best known for two one-acts, both based on works by Oscar Wilde. San Francisco Opera had planned to present one of them, “Der Zwerg” (the dwarf), in the summer of 2020; but that event had to be cancelled due to COVID-19. Over the course of his life, Zemlinsky composed four quartets, each with the capacity to reward the attentive listener. Given the compelling expressiveness that Dover brought to the Opus 4 quartet, I found myself wondering if they were planning to undertake the entire cycle. Having enjoyed that cycle through recordings, I would be more that delighted to experience it through a series of concerts.

On this program, however, the twentieth century was represented by Samuel Barber. Tines’ first performance as guest artist was an account of that composer’s Opus 3 “Dover Beach,” a setting of the poem of the same name by Matthew Arnold. Barber composed his setting for medium voice and string quartet in 1931, when he was still only twenty. The poem itself is a tough nut to crack, but it is clear that Barber had a strong appreciation of English literature. There is a clear sense that he established a firm command of reading Arnold’s text before beginning to set it to music. The result is an impressively clear-eyed view of text passages that seem puzzling, if not hopelessly opaque, when first encountered.

The clarity of Barber’s score was perfectly matched by Tines’ expressive delivery and its intertwining with the quartet textures. Mind you, there are times that the music threatens to go overboard. However, Tines kept a sure hand on his own expressiveness, providing at least the sense of a convincing account while negotiating both syntax and semantics that run the risk of being little more than cryptic. Barber himself was a baritone. and there is a 1935 recording of him singing with the Curtis String Quartet, which was released on the Victor label. It was through that recording that I first became aware of this music; and, in that context, I could not have been more satisfied with the immediacy of Tines’ grasp of the many tricky details in Arnold’s text.

Tines was equally convincing in his account of By and By, four traditional gospel songs given decidedly unique arrangements for voice and string quartet by Caroline Shaw. Tines’ vocal delivery provided just the right blend of gospel tradition with art song technique. Shaw’s writing for the quartet, on the other hand, tended to walk the line between playful and provocative. She seemed to be interested in how many different things could be done with the instruments of the string family without drawing the bow across the strings. Some of the results, such as the sound of rhythmic knocking, seemed to align with the text that Tines was singing. Others seemed to be superfluous, if not on the brink of fatuous. One almost came away with the impression that Tines was a passionately devout preacher ministering to a restless audience.

To be fair, most of my first-encounter experiences with Shaw’s music have left me perplexed. Sometimes things begin to get clearer with further listening. Sometimes they get more opaque. Where By and By is concerned, the jury is still out on just what is taking place between a passionate vocalist and obstreperous instrumentalists.

Dover Quartet to Launch SFP Chamber Series

Dover Quartet members Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, Camden Shaw, Bryan Lee, and Joel Link with bass-baritone Davóne Tines

Next month San Francisco Performances (SFP) programming will begin with the launch of this season’s Shenson Chamber Series. The program will be a recital by the Dover Quartet, whose members are violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, and cellist Camden Shaw. The ensemble made its SFP debut on October 30, 2016; and it launched the SFP 2018–2019 season following the opening gala festivities.

For this season’s program, they will appear with a guest artist. Bass-baritone Davóne Tines will be the vocal soloist in a performance of Samuel Barber’s “Dover Beach.” This will be preceded by a performance of Alexander Zemlinsky’s Opus 4 (first) quartet in A major. Tines will then return after the intermission as the vocalist in a performance of Caroline Shaw’s “By and By.” The program will then conclude with the second of Johannes Brahms’ three string quartets, Opus 51, Number 2, in A minor.

This concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 9. It will take place in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. This venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel.

Ticket prices are $70 (premium Orchestra and front and center Dress Circle), $55 (remainder of Orchestra, all Side Boxes, and center rear Dress Circle), and $45 (remaining Dress Circle and Balcony); and they may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. As available, single tickets will be sold at the door with a 50% discount for students and a 20% discount for seniors. Single tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545.

Finally, because this is the first program of the series, subscriptions are still on sale for $405 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $315 for the Side Boxes, the center rear of the Dress Circle, and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $245 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Subscriptions may also be purchased online in advance through a different SFP Web page. Orders may also be placed by calling the SFP subscriber hotline at 415-677-0325 (also different from the number for single tickets).

Fall Concert Series to Begin at SFCM

This month classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) will resume on campus. The fall concert series will get under way this coming week with a combination of in-person and live-streamed events. As always, the most up-to-date information will be found on the Performance Calendar Web page. While this site tried to give a thorough month-by-month account of events this past spring, the focus for the coming season will be key highlights; and those seeking more thorough information can consult the Web.

From that perspective the major event of this month will be the first concert to be given by the SFCM Orchestra. The program will be conducted by Edwin Outwater, and it will highlight a “Soul Symphony” by interdisciplinary artist PaviElle French. “A Requiem for Zula” was written to honor the composer’s mother, Zula Young, as will as the Rondo neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minneapolis, where she grew up. French will join the SFCM Orchestra as vocal soloist.

This selection will be preceded by another composition evoking an American city. Born in 1973, Sarah Kirkland Snider is about a decade younger than French. Her tone poem “Something for the Dark” was inspired by the city of Detroit and its resilience in overcoming economic hardships.

The remainder of the program will feature two major twentieth-century American composers. David Baker (Class of ’23) will conduct Samuel Barber’s Opus 12 “Essay for Orchestra.” Outwater will then conclude the program conducting the suite for large orchestra that Aaron Copland prepared based on the music he had composed for Martha Graham’s dance “Appalachian Spring.” The original score required only thirteen players to accommodate the space limitations for both music and dancers in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress, where Graham’s choreography was first performed.

The scenario evokes the pioneers days of Americans settling in new regions of the North American continent. Four characters are situated in a rural setting: Wife, Husbandman, Pioneer Woman, and Preacher. There is also a “mini-chorus” of three young women that are part of the Preacher’s “flock.” When Copland created his suite, the one episode that he cut from the original score involved the Preacher delivering a hell-and-brimstone sermon. For those interested in dance history, that role was first performed by Merce Cunningham.

This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 25. The Orchestra will perform in the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, on the ground floor of the SFCM building at 50 Oak Street. Tickets for attending this concert are available through a hyperlink on the event page. There will be no charge for admission, and individual seats will not be reserved. The event page also has a hyperlink for live-stream viewing.