This past February Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF) launched its 2020 season in Herbst Theatre with a consistently satisfying performance by the Apollon Musagète Quartet. However, as a result of the cancellation of all public performances, events, and gatherings at the San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center, announced by Mayor London N. Breed on the evening of Friday, March 6, the March 14 visit by Quatuor Danel had to be cancelled. It subsequently ensued that the five following CMSF concerts would suffer the same fate.
As in the past Director Daniel Levenstein used the launch of the 2020 season to announce plans for the following year. Just recently Levenstein informed his subscribers that all of the performances planned for 2021 would have to be cancelled. Fortunately, by virtue of the most viable alternative, there will be an “online season” consisting of videos made by five of the soloists and chamber ensembles that have been favorite CMSF performers. Furthermore, thanks to the “universality” of the Internet, all of these programs will be available to subscribers that, in the past, have attended concerts in San Francisco, Walnut Creek, and Palo Alto. Each program will launch on a Saturday evening at 7 p.m. and remain available for viewing through the end of the season on June 1. Subscribers may view these videos as many times as they wish during that period. Program specifics and launch dates are as follows:
February 13: Calefax is the Amsterdam-based “non-standard” wind quintet of Oliver Boekhoorn (oboe), Ivar Berix (clarinet), Raaf Hekkema (alto saxophone), Jelte Althuis (bass clarinet), and Alban Wesly (bassoon). Their programs consist of recent works composed for their instrumentation and arrangements by the members of the ensemble. This program will feature the world premiere performance of “Invocation,” written by local composer Richard Festinger in 2019. They will also play “Terugblik,” which Hekkema composed for the group in 2020. He also prepared arrangements of two vocal a cappella compositions by Johannes Ockeghem. The program will begin with Wesly’s arrangements of four of the movements from Leoš Janáček’s On an Overgrown Path cycle. The final selection will be Althuis’ arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 542 organ fantasia and fugue in G minor.
March 6: Japanese violinist Mayuko Kamio will present a program of chamber music by two French composers. Maurice Ravel will be represented by his “Tzigane” and his second sonata for violin and piano. The program will begin with Ernest Chausson’s Opus 25 “Poème.” Kamio’s accompanist at the piano has not yet been announced.
March 20: CMSF favorite Olga Kern will present a broad-based solo piano recital of music from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most notably, she will feature works by a woman composer from each of those centuries, the first, in the key of F major, of Clara Schumann’s Opus 15 Flüchtige Stücke, and the second, the first of the pieces collected by Amy Beach in her Opus 128, a “scherzino” entitled “A Peterborough Chipmunk.” She will use the second half of her program to survey Russian composers Anatoly Lyadov, Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff (including an arrangement of music by Modest Mussorgsky), and Sergei Prokofiev.
April 10: The members of Quatuor Arod are violinists Jordan Victoria and Alexander Vu, violist Tanguy Parisot, and cellist Samy Rachid. I first became aware of them in 2019 after Erato released their recording The Mathilde album, named after Mathilde Zemlinsky, who married Arnold Schoenberg in October of 1901. Their CMSF program, however, will be based on the early nineteenth century. The primary offering will be the second of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 59 (“Razumovsky”) quartets in the key of E minor. This will be preceded by the second movement of Franz Schubert’s D. 810 quartet in D minor, the set of variations on his “Death and the Maiden” song after which the quartet was named.
April 24: The final concert will mark the return of cellist Mischa Maisky. Program details have not yet been announced. However, he plans to perform with his daughter Lily on piano and his son Sascha on violin. It would be reasonable to expect that the program will include at least one piano trio!
As of this writing, admission to these performances will be only by subscription. The single-person rate will be $100 for all five concerts. There is also a “household” rate, for two or more viewers, of $150. Hyperlinks for subscription purchases are provided on the CMSF home page, which also includes a hyperlink for tax-deductible contributions. There is also a hyperlink to the full details (as known to date) for all of the concerts. Subscriptions and donations are being processed by PayPal and will require providing an electronic mail address. That address will be used to send user-friendly instructions for accessing the videos.
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