Leila Josefowicz will Return to SFP Next Month

courtesy of San Francisco Performances

At the beginning of next month, violinist Leila Josefowicz (shown above) will be the first of the outstanding performers to participate in the Virtuosi Series of four recitals organized by San Francisco Performances (SFP). She will be accompanied by pianist John Novacek, and this will be the fourth time that the two of them have performed for SFP, having made their debut together in 1996. Throughout her career Josefowicz has been a passionate advocate of contemporary music. This was experienced most recently in San Francisco this past February, when she performed “Scheherazade.2,” which John Adams composed for her in 2014 on a joint commission by the New York Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Here in San Francisco she performed with the San Francisco Symphony under the baton of Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas.

For next month’s recital Josefowicz has prepared a much earlier Adams composition, his 1995 “Road Movies,” scored for violin and piano. Adams will be the only American on the program, which will include two sonatas for violin and piano, the earlier by Sergei Prokofiev (Opus 80 in F minor), completed in 1946, and the later composed by Bernd Alois Zimmermann in 1950. Josefowicz will begin her program with “Valse triste,” the first of two pieces that Jean Sibelius originally composed as incidental music for the play Kuolema (death) and published as his Opus 44. Sibelius wrote this for full orchestra, but the piece was arranged for violin and piano by Friedrich Hermann.

This recital will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 7, in Herbst Theatre. The entrance to Herbst is the main entrance to the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel. Tickets prices are $65 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $55 for the Side Boxes, the center rear of the Dress Circle, and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $40 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through a City Box Office event page.

Because this is the first concert in the Virtuosi Series, subscriptions are still on sale. The respective prices for the four performances in a full subscription are $240, $200, and $140. Subscriptions may be purchased online in advance through a City Box Office event page. Orders may also be placed by calling the SFP subscriber hotline at 415-677-0325, which is open for receiving calls between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. For all other matters SFP may be contacted by calling 415-392-2545.