Old First Concerts: January, 2020

Old First Concerts (O1C) seems to be the second organization “out of the gate” when it comes to announcing monthly plans for the new year. (For those who may have forgotten, Sunset Music and Arts was the first; but, because they were presenting only two concerts in January, the schedule for that month was merged with the one for February.) O1C has planned for only four concerts next month; and, as is always the case, any additions or modifications will be handled by posts to the shadow page for this site on Facebook.

All O1C events take place at the Old First Presbyterian Church, located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. If purchased in advance online from an O1C event page, general admission will be $23 with a discounted rate of $18 for seniors aged 65 or older. Hyperlinks for online purchase through specific event pages will be attached to the date-and-time information given below. Tickets for full-time students showing valid identification will be $5; and children aged twelve and under will be admitted for free. There is also a discount available for those parking at the Old First Parking Garage at 1725 Sacramento Street, just up the street from the church. Here are the specifics for the month of January:

Sunday, January 12, 4 p.m.: The first concert in the new year will present the Ramey Piano Trio. This ensemble brings pianist Samantha Cho together with two members of the San Francisco Symphony, violinist Florin Parvulescu and cellist David Goldblatt. The program title could be Les Six Meets the First Viennese School, but the performers seem to have shied away from that approach to introduction. Les Six consisted of six French composers active at the beginning of the twentieth century, who were named as a group by the music critic Henri Collet. However, in writing about the group, one of its members, Darius Milhaud, claims that Collet named him and his five colleagues “simply because we knew each other and we were pals and appeared on the same musical programmes, no matter if our temperaments and personalities weren't at all the same!”

The Ramey program has decided to focus on the only female composer in the group, Germaine Tailleferre. She composed two piano trios. The first was written relatively early in her career in 1917 and consisted of a single movement with the tempo marking “Calme et sans lenteur” (calm and without slowness). Tailleferre began the other trio in 1916. However, it was interrupted by World War I; and Tailleferre did not complete it until 1978, a few years before her death. This will be the trio that Ramey will perform. It will be framed by Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken XV/27 trio in C major and Franz Schubert’s D. 898 piano trio in B-flat major, both representing the First Viennese School at its most inventive.

Friday, January 24, 8 p.m.: The Chordless duo of soprano Sara LeMesh and pianist Allegra Chapman was a high point of my sampling of performances at the Veterans Building on SF Music Day this past October. On that occasion their program presented vocal compositions by Grażyna Bacewicz, Andrzej Panufnik, Tadeusz Baird, and Igor Stravinsky, the last represented by the original version of his “Pastorale.” Their O1C debut will revisit Baird, Panufnik, and Stravinsky; but it will also present the world premiere of a new song cycle (not yet given a title) by Benjamin Pesetsky. There will also be selections from Aaron Copland’s collection of settings of twelve poems by Emily Dickinson and Olivier Messiaen’s cycle Poéms pour Mi. The other two composers on the program could not be more different, Barbara Strozzi from the seventeenth century and Charles Ives from the twentieth. There will also be a special guest appearance by soprano Kate McKinney.

Sunday, January 26, 4 p.m.: The Ives Collective, co-directed by violinist Susan Freier and cellist Stephen Harrison, will return to O1C. They will be joined by violinist Jay Zhong, violists Melissa Matson and Jessica Chang, and pianist Elizabeth Schumann. This will be O1C’s first offering of music by Ludwig van Beethoven in that composer’s 250th anniversary year, and the program will be devoted entirely to two Beethoven compositions. The five string players will begin with a performance of his Opus 29 quintet in C major. Schumann will then play the Opus 58 (fourth) piano concerto in G major, accompanied by the five string players.

Friday, January 31, 8 p.m.: Pianist Anyssa Neumann will present a recital of preludes and transcriptions. The program will explore the wide scope of approaches to counterpoint that can be found in music as early as the Baroque period (the BWV 933–938 keyboard preludes by Johann Sebastian Bach) to the present day. Indeed, the contributions by contemporary composers serve as “responses” to “calls” from the past. Thus, Ian Dicke’s “Postlude” is a “response” to Frédéric Chopin’s A minor prelude, the second in his Opus 28 collection. On the other hand Ferruccio Busoni’s transcriptions of Bach’s chorale preludes will be followed by Christopher Cerrone’s “Hoyt-Schermerhorn,” a chorale-like composition scored for piano and live electronics (and named after a subway station in Brooklyn).