New Faces Coming to Opening of NCCO Season

Daniel Hope front and center with the NCCO string players (from an NCCO Web page)

In almost exactly one month’s time, the New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO) will present the first performance in San Francisco for its 2019–2020 season. The title of the program is Fin de siècle, which will refer to the transitional period between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Music Director Daniel Hope will conduct and will also perform as soloist in the opening selection, Ernest Chausson’s Opus 21 concerto in D major. This was originally scored for violin, piano, and string quartet; but for this performance the accompaniment will be an arrangement for string ensemble. The pianist will be teenaged prodigy Maxim Landos, who will be making his NCCO debut. In addition, Greek violinist Simos Papanas, a longtime collaborator of Hope’s, will be making his debut as Guest Concertmaster.

In the “chamber spirit” of the Chausson concerto, the program will also include Edward Elgar’s Opus 47 coupling of an Introduction to an Allegro movement, scored for string quartet and string ensemble, and an arrangement for violin and strings of Richard Strauss’ song “Morgen” (the fourth in his Opus 27 collection). Strauss had prepared a version for voice and orchestra of this song, which included an extended violin solo. Other selections will be the second of Elgar’s Opus 15 short pieces, “Chanson de Matin,” the Adagio movement from Christian Sinding’s Opus 10 Suite im alten Stil, the “Méditation” intermezzo from Jules Massenet’s opera Thaïs, and an early nocturne that Arnold Schoenberg scored for strings and harp.

The San Francisco performance of this program will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 28. The venue will be Herbst Theatre, which is entered through the main entrance to the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Tickets are on sale for $67.50 for premium seating in both the Orchestra and the Side Boxes, $55 for the remainder of the Box seating, the very front and sides of the Orchestra, and the front of the Dress Circle, and $30 for all other seating. Tickets may be purchased online through a City Box Office event page, which shows availability based on the Herbst seating plan.

In addition, because this is the beginning of the season, subscriptions are still available. These will cover both the full five-concert season and “subset” subscriptions for three or four concerts. NCCO has created a single Web page for processing all of these alternatives.