Thursday, July 8, 2021

The SFP 2021–2022 Shenson Chamber Series

In the 2021–2022 season the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Chamber Series is again the Shenson Chamber Series. While the plan for the 2019–2020 season had been to present four events, there will be six offerings in the new season, each of which will involve a different string quartet. The first of those recitals will also include a “special guest artist.” 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:

Tuesday, November 9: The Dover Quartet, whose members are violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violist Milena Pajaro-Van de Stadt, and cellist Camden Shaw, last performed for SFP when the group launched the 2018–2019 season with the first concert in that season’s Shenson Chamber Series. They will return this coming season with guest artist bass-baritone Davóne Tines, who will join them in a performance of (appropriately enough) Samuel Barber’s “Dover Beach.” The program will also include Caroline Shaw’s “By and By,” which will be followed by the second of Johannes Brahms’ two Opus 51 quartets, this one in the key of A minor. The program will begin with Alexander Zemlinsky’s Opus 4 (first) quartet in A major.

Wednesday, November 17: Based in the United Kingdom, the Castalian Quartet was founded about a decade ago. The members are violinists Sini Simonen and Daniel Roberts, violist Charlotte Bonneton, and cellist Christopher Graves. Their program will consist of three quartets from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They will begin with Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 80 in F minor. This will be followed by György Ligeti’s first quartet, given the title “Métamorphoses nocturnes.” The final quartet also has a title, “Voces Intimae,” Jean Sibelius’ Opus 56 in D minor.

Friday, March 18: The Pavel Haas Quartet has been a favorite with SFP audiences. The ensemble has a new violist, Luosha Fang, who won the Tokyo International Viola Competition in 2019. The other members are violinists Veronika Jarůšková and Marek Zwiebel and cellist Peter Jarůšek. Their program will be framed by adventurous works from the Classical tradition. The opening selection will be Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken III/75 in G major, the first of his six Opus 76 quartets. The program will then conclude in G major with Franz Schubert’s D. 887 quartet. Between these two selections the group will play Bohuslav Martinů’s seventh quartet, known as his “Concerto da Camera.”

Tuesday, April 5: Another favorite ensemble is the Ébène Quartet, which has managed to balance its repertoire with both classical and jazz offerings. The group consists of violinists Pierre Colombet and Gabriel Le Magadur, violist Marie Chilemme, and cellist Raphaël Merlin. The second half of their program will be devoted to their own arrangements of jazz standards. Like Pavel Haas, the group will begin with a Haydn quartet, this time Hoboken III/34, the fourth in the adventurous Opus 20 collection. This will be followed by Leoš Janáček’s first quartet, based on Leo Tolstoy novella The Kreutzer Sonata.

Thursday, May 5: The Jerusalem Quartet consists of violinists Alexander Pavlovsky and Sergei Bresler, violist Ori Kam, and cellist Kyril Zlotnikov. They specialize in “Romantic” rhetoric; and their program will be framed by Mendelssohn (the second of the three Opus 44 quartet in the key of E minor) and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s first (Opus 11 in D major) quartet. However, between these selections they will present Anton Webern’s 1905 “Langsamer Satz,” which marks the beginning of his departure from Romanticism.

Friday, May 6: The series will conclude the following evening with the return of the Emerson String Quartet. The members are violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violist Lawrence Dutton, and cellist Paul Watkins. They will conclude their program with the most familiar selection, Béla Bartók’s first quartet. This will be preceded by music that deserves more attention by Alexander Borodin (first quartet in A major based on a theme of Beethoven) and William Walton (second quartet in A minor).

Subscriptions are now on sale for $405 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $315 for the Side Boxes, the center rear of the Dress Circle, and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $245 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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