The third (and last) of the San Francisco Performances (SFP) subscription series to get under way in October will be the Piano Series. As had planned to be the case during the 2019–2020 Series, there will be five concerts. This time the Series will consist entirely of solo recitals, featuring both returning artists and debut performances. All of these events will take place at 7:30 p.m. on different days of the week.
As usual, all of the concerts will take place in Herbst Theatre. The entrance to Herbst is the main entrance to the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel. The specific dates and their related performers are as follows:
Wednesday, October 27: Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki gave his first performance in San Francisco under the auspices of the former SFP Young Master Series in December of 2013. His program was distinguished by the performance of the complete set of Opus 10 études by Frédéric Chopin. For this return appearance, Lisiecki will present an all-Chopin program entitled Night Music. Presumably, one should expect a “Nocturnes++” program.
Tuesday, November 30: Joyce Yang was last seen performing for SFP in Herbst in February of 2019. This was her second SFP appearance; and, on this occasion, she shared the stage with the Alexander String Quartet of violinists Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz, violist Paul Yarbrough, and cellist Sandy Wilson. They had gathered together to present the West Coast Premiere of “Quintet with Pillars,” recently completed by Samuel Adams and scored for string quartet and piano with digital resonance. This season Yang will make her solo debut with a more traditional program. She will begin with Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 816 (“French”) suite in G major. She will then complete the first half of her program with the ten preludes in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 23 collection. She will begin the second half with the “June” movement from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 37a suite The Seasons. She will then conclude with Franz Liszt’s B minor piano sonata.
Saturday, December 11: Jonathan Biss is one of those pianists that maintained his career in cyberspace while under lockdown conditions. He contributed to the SFP Front Row Premium Series with a streamed performance of three piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven. For his return to a “physical” performance in Herbst, his program will be entirely “post-Beethoven.” The program will be framed by Franz Schubert’s D. 958 sonata in C minor at the beginning and Robert Schumann’s Opus 6 Davidsbündlertänze at the conclusion. Between these “Germanic monuments,” he will perform selected excerpts from collections compiled by two Eastern European composers. The first of these will be Leoš Janáček’s On an Overgrown Path. The other will be the ten volumes compiled under the title Játékok (games) by György Kurtág.
Monday, March 7: Unless I am mistaken, pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason made her Bay Area debut in December of 2019 in a duo performance with her brother, cellist Sheku, in a Cal Performances recital in Berkeley. As has already been announced, the duo will make their San Francisco debut in Davies Symphony Hall this coming season on Sunday, April 24. Before that, however, she will make her solo debut in Herbst. Her program will be one of tradition and novelty. Tradition will be presented in the first half with selections by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (the K. 457 sonata in C minor) and Beethoven (the first of the Opus 2 sonatas in the key of F minor). The second half will conclude with five of the pieces collected in Rachmaninoff’s Opus 39 Études-Tableaux, followed by Chopin’s Opus 38 ballade in F major. Between these “bookends” will be much more recent selections. The Beethoven sonata will be followed by Sofia Gubaidulina’s 1963 chaconne. Most likely this was inspired by Ferruccio Busoni’s transcription of the Ciaccona movement that concludes Bach’s BWV 1004 partita for solo violin in D minor, and one may say with at least moderate certainty that Gubaidulina has done unto Busoni what Busoni did unto Bach. The other new work will be by Jamaican composer Eleanor Alberga, and the piece has not yet been given a title.
Saturday, May 7: The Series will conclude with a recital by a favorite visitor to SFP, Richard Goode. The first half of his program will be devoted to Schubert: the D. 780 set of six Moments Musicaux followed by the D. 845 sonata in A minor. The second half will begin with Robert Schumann’s Opus 2 Papillons, followed by Béla Bartók’s collection of fifteen Hungarian peasant songs.
Subscriptions are now on sale for $340 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $265 for the Side Boxes, the center rear of the Dress Circle, and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $205 for the remainder of the Dress Circle and the Balcony. Subscriptions may be purchased online in advance through an SFP Web page. Orders may also be placed by calling the SFP subscriber hotline at 415-677-0325, which is open for receiving calls between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. When single tickets go on sale, they may be purchased by visiting the specific event pages. The above dates provide hyperlinks to the appropriate Web pages.
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