Rachel Barton Pine to Join PBO for “Pivotal” Event

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine (from the PBO event page for this concert)

The second half of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (PBO) & Chorale will begin with a program entitled Viennese Pivot. Music Director Nicholas McGegan has prepared a program that will explore the transitions of music-making practices that emerged at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. The “pivot point” of the program, so to speak, will be the violin concerto in D major by Franz Clement, who first performed the solo part at the Theater an der Wien on April 7, 1805. This concert also featured the first performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 55 (“Eroica”) symphony in E-flat major; and the following year Beethoven would dedicate his own violin concerto (Opus 61 in D major) to Clement. The violin soloist will be Rachel Barton Pine, who made the first recording of Clement’s concerto, for which she wrote her own cadenzas.

[added 2/2, 11:45 a.m.:

Sadly, Pine has had to cancel all of her appearances with PBO due to health issues. She is currently recovering from an unscheduled medical procedure on her knee. McGegan has chosen to replace Pine with rising star violinist Alana Youssefian, who made her PBO debut this past November, when she was paired with Elizabeth Blumenstock as part of a program of concertos by Antonio Vivaldi featuring “reigning and rising stars.” Since then she has become a member of Voices of Music, performing in that group’s December and January concerts. In the absence of time to prepare the Clement concerto, McGegan has decided to replace it with another “pivotal” composition, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 61 violin concerto in D major.]

Clement’s “pivotal” composition will be “balanced” on either side by earlier and later compositions. Following the usual overture-concerto-symphony format, the program will begin with the overture that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed in 1786 for his K. 492 opera The Marriage of Figaro. Based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, Mozart’s score constituted a significant departure from traditional conceptions of what made for a “comic opera” while drawing upon a scenario that many saw as foreshadowing the French Revolution. On “the other side of the balance,” the program will conclude with Franz Schubert’s D. 589 symphony in C major, often called the “Little C major” symphony to distinguish it from the D. 944 (“Great”) symphony in the same key. Schubert composed this symphony between October of 1817 and February of 1818, making it likely that, before beginning this undertaking, he had been exposed to all but the last of Beethoven’s nine symphonies.

The San Francisco performance of this concert will take place on Friday, February 8, beginning at 8 p.m. The venue will be Herbst Theatre, which is located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Ticket prices will range from $32 to $120 for premium seating. Tickets are currently available for advance purchase through a City Box Office event page, which displays a color-coded seating plan that shows which areas correspond to which price levels.