A Tchaikovsky-Schoenberg CMSSF House Concert

An image that suggests an appropriate setting for “Verklärte Nacht” (from the Facebook Event page for this concert)

Tomorrow night the Chamber Music Society of San Francisco (CMSSF) will be giving a house concert with particularly interesting programming. The CMSSF string quartet founded by violinists Natasha Makhijani and Jory Fankuchen, violist Clio Tilton, and cellist Samsun van Loon will be joined by guest artists Joy Fellow on viola and Jean-Michel Fonteneau on cello. This group will perform Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 7 “Verklärte Nacht” (transfigured night) in its original scoring for string sextet.

The title comes from an intensely passionate poem by Richard Dehmel; and the five sections of Schoenberg’s composition correspond to the five sections of Dehmel’s poem (whose text in both German and English can be found on the Wikipedia page for Schoenberg’s piece). Schoenberg completed this work in 1899; but, in the interest of getting more performances, he prepared an arrangement for string orchestra in 1917, which he then revised in 1943. Nevertheless, the transparency of the original score affords the best possible opportunity to appreciate Schoenberg’s rich approach to chromaticism, which probably shows signs of the influence of Richard Wagner. As an “overture” to this major chamber music composition, CMSSF will begin its program with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 11 (first) string quartet in D major.

This concert will begin tomorrow evening, Friday, January 31, at 7:30 p.m. The venue will be a personal residence near the corner of Funston Street and Fulton Street. Ticketing is being handled by Eventbrite. General admission will be $35, and students will be admitted for $15. Tickets may be purchased through an Eventbrite event page. The address of the performance will be sent with ticket purchase confirmation.