2019 Sunset Music and Arts Season Opening

Once again Sunset Music and Arts has organized its season around the calendar year, meaning that the fifth season will get under away around the middle of this coming January. Similar to San Francisco Performances (SFP), programing will be organized around five different concert series, each based on a different genre of performance. Unlike SFP, however, tickets are sold only for individual concerts, rather than as discounted groups. Like 2018, 2019 will begin with the Chamber Music series, which will offer ten concerts, one of which will be a free recital by a young artist. The full schedule will be as follows:

Friday, January 11, 7:30 p.m.: The season will open with a performance by American cellist Ben Capps, currently based in New York. He will be accompanied by Russian pianist Vassily Primakov, and their program will have a decidedly Russian bias. The concluding work will be Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 40 sonata in D minor, which will be preceded by two short works by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The first of these will be the Opus 62 “Pezzo capriccioso” in B minor, originally scored for cello and orchestra. This will be followed by a cello-piano arrangement of the fourth of the six Opus 19 pieces originally written for solo piano, the nocturne in C-sharp minor. The program will open with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 69 sonata in A major.

Saturday, January 19, 7:30 p.m.: The recital will be given by the Liaison Ensemble, an early music group based in San Francisco. The performers are mezzo Melinda Becker, harpsichordist Susie Fong, cellist Hallie Pridham, and Tatiana Senderowicz on theorbo. Most of the program will be devoted to new compositions for old instruments created under the auspices of the Helia Music Collective, co-founded by composers Emma Logan and Julie Barwick. The program will feature four works by Helia-supported composers, one each by Logan and Barwick, respectively, and the other two pieces by Emily Koh and Lily Chen, respectively. The program will begin with songs by two seventeenth-century women, Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini.

Saturday, February 23, 7:30 p.m.: The San Francisco-Munich Trio, which divides its time between those two respective cities, will be in the Bay Area for the next recital in the series. The group consists of bassoonist Friedrich Edelmann and cellist Rebecca Rust. The pianist for the group has tended to vary over past recitals given in San Francisco. Neither the pianist nor the program content has been announced for the February recital.

Sunday, March 3, 7 p.m.: Trio 180 is the faculty piano trio-in-residence at the University of the Pacific’s Conservatory of Music. The group has experienced several personnel changes under its common name. Current members are violinist Ann Miller, cellist Vicky Wang, and pianist Sonia Leong. Their program will offer three piano trios, each from a different century and played in chronological order. They will begin with Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken XV/25 (“Gypsy”) trio in G major. This will be followed by Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 66 trio in C minor. The program will end in the twentieth century with Paul Schoenfield’s raucous “Café Music.”

Saturday, April 6, 7:30 p.m.: The Circadian String Quartet consists of violinists David Ryther and Sarah Wood, violist Omid Assadi, and cellist David Wishnia. They are probably best known for having created The Sound and the Fury: The Rite of Spring Re-imagined, Ryther’s transcription of Igor Stravinsky’s famous (notorious?) ballet score, which requires each of the quartet members to double on percussion instruments. They have not yet announced their program for April, so we can only guess what imaginative projects may be in the works.

Saturday, April 13, 7:30 p.m.: Ensemble Illume is another piano trio, all of whose members are women. However, it does not have the usual piano trio instrumentation, since the higher string voice is taken by Jessica Chang on viola. The other members are cellist Laura Gaynon and pianist Allegra Chapman. They will begin their program with Johannes Brahms’ Opus 114 trio in A minor, originally composed for clarinet, cello, and piano. (Given that both of Brahms’ clarinet sonatas also have versions for viola and piano, the arrangement of Opus 114 seems entirely consistent with the composer’s aesthetic.) There will be only one other work on the program, “Je sens un deuxième coeur” (I feel a second heart), composed by Kaija Saariaho in 2003.

Saturday, May 11, 7:30 p.m.: As if to complement Ensemble Illume’s approach to repertoire, Trio Terme is an ensemble that does consist of clarinet (Stacey McColley), cello (Nina Flyer), and piano (Geoffrey Burleson). [updated 12/2, 12:55 p.m.: This will provide an opportunity to listen to Brahms’ Opus 114 as the composer originally wrote it! The other composers to be represented on the program will be Alexander von Zemlinsky and Nino Rota.]

Saturday, June 8, 7:30 p.m.: Flyer will return, this time as a member of Trio Foss. This ensemble is the “standard” piano trio, whose other members are violinist Hrabba Atladottir and pianist Joseph Irrera. Once again, program details have not yet been announced.

Saturday, June 15, 5 p.m.: This will be the free concert showcasing the young violinist Ajay Mallya. Mallya’s program will include two solo compositions. He will play the first two movements of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1001 sonata in G minor and the second (in the key of A minor) of Eugène Ysaÿe's Opus 27 collection of six solo violin sonatas. With pianist Dmitriy Cogan as his accompanist, Mallya will play César Franck’s A major sonata, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 301 sonata in G major, and the “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso” by Camille Saint-Saëns. While there will be no charge for admission, registration through the hyperlink attached through the date is advised to guarantee admission.

[added 5/7, 4:30 p.m.:

Friday, June 28, 7:30 p.m.: Ensemble 1828 is the piano trio whose members are violinist Nicole Oswald, cellist Isaac Pastor-Chermak, and pianist Alison Lee. Those who know the music of Franz Schubert probably recognize 1828 as the year of his death. It is also well known that Schubert was almost super-humanly productive during the last twelve months of his life. The program will include solo piano music, duos for piano and both violin and cello, and the D. 898 piano trio in B-flat major.]

Saturday, October 5, 7:30 p.m.: The series will conclude with a performance by the Curium Piano Trio. Named after the 96th element of the periodic table, which, in turn, was named in honor of Marie Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to have won that award not only twice but also in two different sciences. Curium honors Curie as a symbol of the innovations of female minds, past and present; and, to that end, they have developed a repertoire around female composers, past and present. Thus, when they made their Old First Concerts debut this past June, they presented a throughly engaging program featuring both Clara Schumann and Saariaho. The members of the ensemble are violinist Agnieszka Peszko, cellist Natalie Raney, and pianist Rachel Kim. Program details for their Sunset debut have not yet been announced.

All performances will take place in the Sunset district at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, located at 1750 29th Avenue, about halfway between Moraga Street and Noriega Street. Ticket prices are $20 for general admission with a $15 rate for students and seniors. Because the demand tends to be high, advance purchase is highly advised. Tickets may be purchased online through Eventbrite. As observed above, subscriptions are not being sold; but each of the hyperlinks on the above dates leads to the event page for single ticket purchases. Further information may be obtained by calling 415-564-2324.