Plans for ABS 31st Season

American Bach Soloists (ABS) is about to embark on both its fourth decade and the tenth season of its annual Festival & Academy. As a result this is a good time to take stock of the year’s worth of activities that will get under way at the end of next month. That means beginning with the two weeks of historically-informed concert programming (the Festival) interleaved with unique opportunities to study and perform Baroque music in a multi-disciplinary learning environment (the Academy). Unless I am mistaken, this will be the first summer during which all events, both Festival and Academy, will take place at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM). The program schedule for the Festival will be as follows:

Sunday, July 28, 4 p.m.: The title of the opening concert will be ’Tis Nature’s Voice. The program will explore the deep-rooted relationship between music and nature as expressed by three composers: Antonia Vivaldi, Georg Philipp Telemann, and Francesco Geminiani. As might be guessed, Vivaldi will be represented by the four concertos that begin his Opus 8 collection Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (the contest between harmony and invention), best known as The Four Seasons. This “programmatic” approach will then be reflected in the works of the other two composers. The two Telemann selections will evoke the sounds of crickets and tree frogs, respectively; and they will be followed by Geminiani’s depiction of an enchanted forest.

Friday, August 2, 8 p.m.: The title of this concert will be Treasures from Lyon. It will present two compositions, both of whose scores may be found in the library of the Académie du Concert de Lyon. The first of these will be Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s setting of the Stabat Mater hymn. Pergolesi died of tuberculosis at the young age of 26, but his music was so popular that new versions attributed to him circulated throughout Europe during the middle of the eighteenth century. The library of the Académie has an edition of the Stabat Mater setting that was only recently discovered, and that version will be given its premiere performance. The second half of the program will be devoted to another manuscript in the Académie library, the combination of George Frideric Handel’s HWV 278 setting of the Te Deum hymn with his HWV 279 setting of Psalm 100, Jubilate Deo. The vocal soloists for this concert will be soprano Mary Wilson and baritone William Sharp.

Saturday, August 3, 7 p.m.: During the eighteenth century there was a prevailing opinion that the perfection of music could be found in the unification of Italian and French styles. The program for Les Goûts Réunis (the combined tastes) will explore that belief, particularly through two if François Couperin’s “apotheosis” composition, the first dedicated to the music of Arcangelo Corelli and the second to Jean-Baptiste Lully. The program will also include chamber music by two Italian composers, Pietro Locatelli and Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani  and the French composer Joseph Bodin de Boismortier.

Sunday, August 4, and Sunday, August 11, 4 p.m.: As has become an annual tradition, there will be two performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 232 setting of the complete Ordinary of the Latin Mass, best known as the “Mass in B Minor.” Both vocal and instrumental solos are usually taken be Academy students, and there are usually different soloists for each of the two performances.

Tuesday, August 6, 7 p.m.: This summer there will be a new pair of concerts under the collective title Bach Explorations. These programs will explore the influence of Bach’s music beyond the period of his lifetime. The title of the first program will be Bach to Bluegrass & Beyond. It will explore how genres such as folk and jazz have repurposed Bach’s harmonic and melodic content for their own purposes.

Wednesday, August 7, 7 p.m.: The title of the second Bach Explorations program will be Bach Re-imagined, and it will explore the many diverse ways in which Bach’s music has been transcribed to serve other instrumental and vocal resources.

Thursday, August 8, and Friday, August 9, 8 p.m.: The remaining program for the Festival will also be given two performances. The opening selection will be Handel’s HWV 8b opera prologue, first performed as the opening for the HWV 8 opera Il pastor fido (the faithful shepherd). The title of HWV 8b is “Terpsicore;” and it is an opéra-ballet that mixes dance with solo and choral singing. This will be followed by a Mass setting by Antonio Lotti scored for more than twenty independent vocal and instrumental parts organized in as many as five different and separated groups. Lotti probably intended this music to be performed in St Mark’s Basilica in Venice. This music has been recorded under the title “Mass for three choirs;” but that identifier is not authentic and, on the basis of the above description, it is far from accurate!

In addition to the Festival concerts, the Academy will offer several events to the public, all of which are free of charge. Most important will be the two Baroque Marathon concerts at which the Festival students will perform the works they have prepared with coaching from the Academy faculty. These will take place on Monday, August 5, at 7 p.m. (chamber music) and on Saturday, August 10, at 2 p.m. (Bach arias). That evening there will be an “open mic coffee house” concert that will be held at the bottom of the SFCM atrium in front of Café Crème, which will be serving hot and cold beverages to go along with the spontaneous music-making.

There will also be a series of Master Classes, all taking place at 3 p.m., scheduled as follows:

• Monday, August 5: harpsichord
• Tuesday, August 6: upper strings
• Wednesday, August 7: lower strings
• Thursday, August 8: winds and brass
• Friday, August 9: voice

As was the case last summer, there will also be an all-afternoon public colloquium on the subject of taste (goût). The colloquium will be led jointly by musicologist Beverly Wilcox and ABS oboist Debra Nagy. It will begin at 2 p.m. on the afternoon of Saturday, August 3; and it will consist of three one-hour sessions:

1. How to Form a Concert Society: (Ten) Lessons from Lyon
2. Le Goût Italian: Performing Italian Music in France
3. A(nother) Tale of Two Cities: A Dickens of a Musical Surprise

Finally, during the week that follows, there will  be a series of lectures, all beginning at 5 p.m. Speakers and topics will be as follows:

• Monday, August 5: Jeffrey Thomas on “Explorations: Great Music Thrives (Modern Transformations of Works from the Baroque)”
• Tuesday, August 6: Debra Nagy on “Poetic Performance: Making the Most of Rhetoric and Musical Gestures”
• Wednesday, August 7: John Thiessen on “The Baroque Trumpet: Issues of Authenticity and Rhetoric”
• Thursday, August 8: Robert Mealy on “Handel’s Muse: Marie Sallé and the Premiere of Terpsicore”
• Friday, August 9: Kenneth Slowik on Cori spezzati: Antiphonal music from Gabriele to Lotti”

The address of SFCM is 50 Oak Street, which is a short walk from the Van Ness Muni Station. Prices of single tickets range between $35 and $125. The ABS Web site has a single Web page from which tickets for all concerts may be ordered individually. Tickets are accumulated in a Shopping Cart prior to payment. Those whose Shopping Cart includes all five of the above Festival productions will be entitled to a subscribers discount. In addition, tickets are available for the Festival Opening Night Dinner, which will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 28. The dinner will be held at Corridor Restaurant, located a short work from SFCM at 100 Van Ness Avenue; and the price for the full dinner will be $100.

The month following the Festival will see the annual gala, whose title will be Sparkle! An Enhancing Evening in Old Spain. Once again the evening will feature a concert, probably about an hour in duration, conducted by Artistic & Music Director Jeffrey Thomas. This year’s feature soloist will be soprano Hélène Brunet. The program will present works by two composers inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote. It will also include Francesco Geminiani’s concerto grosso arrangement of the violin sonata composed by Arcangelo Corelli based on the “Folia” theme.

Prior to the concert, cocktails will be served after check-in. The concert will be followed by a silent auction during which cocktails and hors d'oeuvres will be served. Dinner will then follow with a live auction to be held between courses. Details about the items to be auctioned may be found at the 2019 Auction Catalog Web page.

Sparkle will be held on Saturday, September 28, with check-in beginning at 5 p.m. The concert will take place at 5:30 p.m., followed by cocktails at 6:30 p.m. The dinner will begin at 7:30 p.m. The venue will be the James Leary Flood Mansion, located in Pacific Heights at 2222 Broadway. Valet parking will be provided, and shuttles from both Marin and the East Bay will be available.

A Web page has been created with all options for tickets, sponsorships, and donations. Basic admission is $350. It is also possible to register a table with seating for ten at levels of $3250, $5000, and $10,000. There will be no charge for the shuttles, but reservations are necessary and may be placed through the same Web page. The Marin shuttle will leave from Strawberry Village, and the East Bay Shuttle will leave from the Rockridge BART Station. Each shuttle will hold 150 riders. Registration will close on Friday, September 13. Further information may be obtained by calling 415-621-7900.

During the holiday season, there will once again be three performances of George Frideric Handel’s HWV 56 oratorio Messiah. Brunet will return to sing the soprano solos. The other vocal soloists will be mezzo Rebecca Powers, tenor Steven Brennfleck, and baritone Hadleigh Adams.

All performances will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 11, Thursday, December 12, and Friday, December 13, respectively. As usual, the venue will be Grace Cathedral, located at the top of Nob Hill at 1100 California Street, between Taylor Street and Jones Street. Ticket prices range between $38 and $125. Tickets for any of the performances may be purchased from that same single Web page on the ABS Web site. Each of the three performance dates has a hyperlink showing the different areas in the Grace sanctuary corresponding to the different price levels. Mousing over any of these areas shows which seats are available for sale.

In addition, there will again be a special concert to ring in the New Year. Entitled A Baroque New Year’s Eve at the Opera, it will feature vocal selections sung by Adams. This program will begin at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, December 31. The performance will take place in Herbst Theatre, which is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Ticket prices are $125 (Premium Orchestra), $90 (Orchestra and Boxes), $65 (side Orchestra and Dress Circle), $50 (rear seats in center Orchestra and Dress Circle and front seats in Balcony), and $25 (remaining seats in all sections). Tickets may be purchased online through a City Box Office event page, which includes a floor plan that shows the number of seats available in the different sections.

Finally, as has usually been the case, the annual Subscription Series will run from January through May in 2020. Now named the Connoisseur Series, each program will provide its own “deep dive” into some particular aspect of Baroque music. As in the past, all San Francisco performances will be held at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church beginning at 4 p.m. on Sunday afternoons. Programming for these concerts will be as follows:

January 26, Orphean Enchantments: Named after the legendary singer of Greek mythology, Orpheus, this program will present countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen in a program of soulful compositions by Dieterich Buxtehude, Melchior Hoffmann, and Vivaldi. The program will also include Bach’s BWV 1044 “triple” concerto and a concerto grosso by Georg Muffat.

March 29, Faire is the Heaven: Tenor James Reese will make his debut, joined by soprano Nola Richardson, and baritones Sharp and Jesse Blumberg. The program will consist of a variety of vocal invocations of Paradise, including Bach’s BWV 106 cantata, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (God's time is the very best time). The other composers on the program will be Heinrich Schütz, Matthias Weckmann, and Nicolaus Bruhns.

May 10, Sweet Harmony: The final program will celebrate the harmony of choral music performed by the American Bach Choir. They will be joined by soloists Aaron Sheehan (tenor), and Mischa Bouvier (baritone). The Bach selection will be the BWV 234 Mass setting in A major, and the remainder of the program will be devoted to Handel’s choral music.

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church is located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. There are a variety of options for purchasing tickets, all of which are available online through that same Tickets Web page on the ABS Web site. Subscriptions to the three concerts are being sold for $249, $189, $150, and $96. Single tickets are $98, $74, $56, and $38.