Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor will Return to SFP

Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor (from his San Francisco Performances event page)

In a little less than two weeks, this season’s Piano Series, being offered by San Francisco Performances (SFP), will present the return of British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor. Grosvenor made his SFP debut as the artist featured in the annual gift concert held in April of 2013. Grosvenor is a performer with a keen and disciplined approach to structure that never inhibits his capacity of expressiveness. He has prepared a program that will offer an excellent account of the diversity of his repertoire.

One of the major works he has prepared will be Franz Liszt’s “Réminiscences de Norma,” which fantasizes on themes from the opera by Vincenzo Bellini with a flamboyance that only Liszt can muster. However, the Liszt fireworks will be complemented by two technically demanding suites by Robert Schumann, the Opus 19 Blumenstück (flower pieces) and the Opus 16 Kreisleriana, inspired by Johannes Kreisler, the fictional Kapellmeister created by E. T. A. Hoffmann. These nineteenth-century “spectacles” will be complemented by two different approaches to twentieth-century expressiveness. One of these will be “1.X.1905,” the title that Leoš Janáček gave to a piano sonata intended as a tribute to a Czech worker bayoneted during a demonstration on October 1, 1905. The other will be the set of miniatures that Sergei Prokofiev collected under the title Visions Fugitives as his Opus 22.

This concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 13. The venue will be Herbst Theatre, which is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building, located on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and McAllister Street. Tickets are on sale for $75 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front of the Dress Circle, $60 for the remainder of the Orchestra, the remainder of the center Dress Circle, and the Boxes, and $45 for remaining seats in the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Tickets may be purchased online in advance through a City Box Office event page.