SFCM: January, 2020

Most of the plans for the major concerts to be presented at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) are now in place and may be summarized as follows:

Saturday, January 4, 5 p.m., Recital Hall: Pre-College staff pianist and chamber coach Yi-Fang Wu will give a duo piano recital with Miles Graber. The program will begin with Robert Schumann’s Opus 46 variations on an Andante theme in the two-piano version. (The music was originally composed for horn, two cellos, and two pianos.) This will be followed by Samuel Barber’s Opus 28 ballet suite Souvenirs, composed for four hands on one keyboard. The remainder of the program will be devoted to French composers, beginning with Gabriel Fauré’s Opus 56 Dolly suite, which will be followed by Darius Milhaud’s Opus 165b suite Scaramouche.

Friday, January 17, 8 p.m., Concert Hall: SFCM musicians will join forces with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players for the performance of their Kinetic Transformations, previously announced on this site with program and ticket information.

Saturday, January 18, 7:30 p.m., Concert Hall: Martin West will conduct the Berkeley Symphony in a program that will feature three SFCM competition winners. The program will begin with the second (of two) winning compositions in the 2019 SFCM Highsmith Competition. (The first was performed earlier this month.) The second winner was “Eclipse,” composed by Collin Whitfield (class of ’16). This will be followed by the winner of the Voice Concerto Competition, Bryana Marrero (class of ’19). She will sing the seven “early” songs that Alban Berg composed during his studies with Arnold Schoenberg. The program will conclude with the winner of the Viola Concerto Competition, Chuxuejie Zhang (undergraduate class of ’19 and graduate class of ’21), who will perform Béla Bartók’s viola concerto, one of his last compositions.

Monday, January 20, 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall: Mezzo Susanne Mentzer will give her Faculty Artist Series, for which program specifics have not yet been announced.

Friday, January 31, 7:30 pm., Concert Hall: The next performance by the SFCM Orchestra will be conducted by Lina Gonzalez-Granados. She will present Alan Holcomb (class of ’19) as guitar soloist in a performance of Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez.” Holcomb was the winner of the Guitar Concerto Competition. The program will also include Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 26 concert overture “The Hebrides” and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 68 (“Pastoral”) symphony in F major.

When any further details become available, they will be found on the Performance Calendar Web page at the SFCM Web site closer to the scheduled dates. The above hyperlinks will lead to concert-specific Web pages. The individual event pages will specify whether a concert is free and/or whether a reservation is required. If there will be a charge for admission, there will be a hyperlink to a Web page for purchasing tickets. (There will also be hyperlinks for making reservations for free concerts.) For those who do not already know, the SFCM building is located at 50 Oak Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni Station.