Piano Break: the Fall Schedule

This past Saturday I reported on the Piano Break series, presented under the auspices of the Ross McKee Foundation. At that time the Piano Break home page only announced the solo recital by pianist Dale Tsang at 5 p.m. tomorrow, October 2; and that announcement included the hyperlink to the YouTube Web page through which the concert would be live-streamed. That home page has now been updated to include the eleven remaining performers that will give solo live-streamed recital during the fall season. Prior to each performance, the home page will be updated to provide the necessary hyperlink to the YouTube Web page for streaming. All performances will take place on a Friday at 5 p.m.

The remainder of the current schedule is as follows:

• October 9: Pianist Tin Yi Chelsea Wong will begin her solo recital with Johannes Brahms’ left-hand-alone arrangement of the D minor chaconne that concludes Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1004 partita for solo violin. This will be followed by the six movements of the solo piano version of Maurice Ravel’s suite Le Tombeau de Couperin. The program will then conclude with the “Hymn to Freedom” composed by jazz pianist Oscar Peterson.
• October 16: Pianist Paul Schrage will present a program that he developed with a guest artist, the violinist Robin Hansen. The two of them will perform an F minor adagio movement, probably taken from the Opus 1a collection of sonatas for keyboard with violin composed by the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. These will be complemented Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Opus 58, his collection of four African Dances, also scored for violin and piano. The program will begin with two rags by Scott Joplin, “Euphonic Sounds” and “Solace: A Mexican Serenade,” which will presumably be given as a solo piano performance.
• October 23: Calvin Hu will give a solo recital that will also include music by Coleridge-Taylor, his Opus 71 Valse Suite in three movements. This will be paired with the six-movement suite Memories of Home, the Opus 49 by Tyzen Hsiao. The entire program will be framed by more familiar selections by Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin. Hu will begin with the first four movements of Schumann’s Opus 12 Fantasiestücke collection and will conclude with the three mazurkas that Chopin published as his Opus 59.
• October 30: Regular readers by now are probably familiar with Bach’s four Clavier-Übung (keyboard exercise) publications, his most significant effort in publishing the music he composed. Derek Tam will present a solo harpsichord recital devoted entirely to the second of these two volumes. This volume consists of two multi-movement compositions, the BWV 971 (“Italian” concerto) and the BWV 831 “Overture in the French style.”
• November 6: Anne Rainwater has prepared a solo piano recital that will have, as “bookends,” Bach’s keyboard music and a composition by George Walker, who died in 2018. The Bach selection will be the BWV 826 (second) partita in C minor; and Walker will be represented by a set of six variations based on a theme from his first piano sonata. The program will begin with Chopin’s posthumously published nocturne in E minor.
• November 13: Edward Simon, known for his work with both SFJAZZ and San Francisco Performances, will offer a solo evening whose program has not yet been finalized.
• November 20: Pianist Lisa Spector lost the use of her right hand after taking a fall in 2017 that caused seven fractures in that hand. Over the last three years she has undergone four surgeries. As her right hand has recovered, she has gradually used it for performance; but, for the most part, she has focused on music for the left hand alone. As a result, there will be a second opportunity to listen to Brahms’ left-hand arrangement of Bach’s D minor chaconne. She will also play Alexander Scriabin’s Opus 9 left-hand compositions, a prelude and a nocturne, as well as Leopold Godowsky’s left-hand arrangement of the first of Chopin’s Opus 25 études. Her program will also present a nocturne written for her by Zach Gulaboff Davis, whose execution requires eight fingers. She will conclude with two études played as Chopin composed them, the second of the Opus 25 set in the key of F minor and the twelfth (and last) of the Opus 10 set, known as the “Revolutionary” étude in C minor.
• November 27: Alison Lee has prepared a diverse recital with a variety of different challenges for expressive execution. Her program will begin with a “second opinion” performance of Joplin’s “Solace” rag. This will be followed by two highly-contrasting sonatas, Scriabin’s Opus 19 (second) sonata in G-sharp minor, which he called “Sonata-Fantasie,” and the third of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 10 sonatas in the key of D major. The program will also include the Opus 41 set of variations by Nikolai Kapustin and William F. Strong’s “Quarantine Polka.”
• December 4: Sarah Cahill, one of our most adventurous pianists, has not yet announced the program for her recital. [added 10/2, 2:30 p.m.: Cahill’s program will include two compositions that she commissioned. She will begin with the premiere performance of Piano Poems by Regina Harris Baoicchi, musical reflections on poems by Gwendolyn Brooks and Richard Wright. The other commissioned composition, “Summer Days” by Mary Watkins will be premiered when Cahill presents her Old First Concerts recital on October 11. Other works on the program will be Aida Shirazi’s “Albumblatt,” “Rang de Basant” by Reena Esmail, and George Lewis’ “Endless Shout.”]
• December 11: Pianist William Wellborn has prepared a “three threes” program. He will begin with three of Domenico Scarlatti’s three keyboard sonatas: K. 239 in F minor, K. 9 in D minor, and K. 280 in G major. This will be followed by the three waltzes in Chopin’s Opus 64 collection in the keys of D-flat major, C-sharp minor, and A-flat major. He will then conclude with three impromptus by two composers that share the same year of birth (1791) and year of death (1826). The first selection will be the second piece in the Opus 7 of Jan Hugo Vorisek, an impromptu in A major. This will be followed by the second impromptu in Franz Schubert’s two collections of four, the second D. 935 impromptu in A-flat major, followed by the second D. 899 impromptu in E-flat major.
• December 18: The fall series will conclude with a program of recent compositions performed by pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi. The major work on the program will be George Crumb’s A Little Suite for Christmas, A.D. 1979. The program will begin with a chaconne by Robert Evett, followed by Dai Fujikara’s “Spring and Asura.” The Crumb suite will be followed by Karen Tanaka’s Techno Etudes collection and conclude with Adolphus Hailstork’s set of eight variations on the Hebrew song “Shalom Chaverim.”