For as long as I have been living in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) has arranged for recitals by visiting artists to take place in Davies Symphony Hall. These have been allocated their own subscription packages under the rubric of the Great Performers Series. Because these recitals enable visits from established performers from around the world, Esa-Pekka Salonen has widened the scope of these visits with a new Spotlight Series, which will consist entirely of debut performances in Davies. Specifics for the Great Performers Series programs, all of which will begin at 7:30 p.m., are as follows:
Sunday, October 24: Violinist Ray Chen will perform with accompanying pianist Julio Elizalde. They will begin the program with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 30 sonata (described on the original cover page as a sonata for piano and violin) in G major. This will be followed by the arrangement for violin and piano of the divertimento that Igor Stravinsky extracted from his score for the ballet “Le baiser de la fée” (the fairy’s kiss), whose thematic material was appropriated from early piano pieces and songs by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The program will continue with the “Devil’s Trill Sonata,” the eighteenth-century sonata in G minor composed for solo violin with figured bass accompaniment. There have been several published realizations of that figured bass for piano accompaniment, and Elizalde will play the one prepared by Léopold Charlier. Chen will then play arrangements of two of the Hungarian Dances by Johannes Brahms, the first of the seventh dance in A major by Joseph Joachim and the second of the seventeenth in F-sharp minor by Fritz Kreisler. The program will then conclude with Pablo de Sarasate’s Opus 20 “Zigeunerweisen” (gypsy airs). This was originally composed for violin and orchestra, and Sarasate prepared his own arrangement for violin and piano.
Sunday, January 9: Pianist Hélène Grimaud has prepared a recital program with a fascinating mix of the familiar and unfamiliar. The least familiar offerings will probably be the first two of the three bagatelles from Valentin Silvestrov’s Opus 1. There will also be an intriguing interleaving of music by Claude Debussy and Erik Satie. Debussy will be represented by his first “Arabesque” in E major, the “La plus que lente” waltz, “Rêverie,” and (as might be expected) the “Clair de lune” movement from Suite bergamasque. The Satie selections will be two of his “Gnossienne” compositions, the first and the fourth, and two of the pieces from his collection, which he called “pièces froides” (cold pieces): “En y regardant à deux foix” (looking at it twice) and “Passer” (pass). Those in need of a “nineteenth-century fix” will be offered three selections by Frédéric Chopin: the first, in E minor, of his Opus 72 set of nocturnes, the fourth, in A minor, of his Opus 17 set of mazurkas, and the second, in A minor, of the Opus 34 waltzes. The program will then conclude with Robert Schumann’s Opus 16 Kreisleriana.
Sunday, January 16: Violinist Itzhak Perlman has not yet announced the program he will perform; his accompanist will be pianist Rohan De Silva.
Sunday, January 30: Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke will present a program consisting entirely of world premieres written specifically for her during the pandemic. There will be seventeen of these pieces on the program. Cooke will be accompanied by Kirill Kuzmin at the piano.
Sunday, March 13: The Academy of St Martin in the Fields chamber orchestra will perform with its Principal Conductor Joshua Bell. Bell will also perform as violin soloist in the first half of the program, playing Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1052 violin concerto in D minor and Samuel Barber’s violin concerto. The second half of the program will consist entirely of Beethoven’s Opus 55 (“Eroica”) symphony in E-flat major.
Wednesday, March 30: One of the more surprising listening experiences that took place under lockdown conditions involved the Deutsche Grammophon “Deluxe Edition” album of Lang Lang performing Bach’s BWV 988 set of 30 variations on an aria theme, best known as the “Goldberg Variations,” which was released at the beginning of September, 2020. What made the recording “deluxe” was that it included two performances of the music, one in studio and the other in a church in Leipzig (Bach’s “home town”). Both recordings were made prior to the pandemic. Clearly, Lang Lang had planned a tour in conjunction with the release of this album; and that tour had to be postponed. He will visit Davies on March 30, and his program will consist entirely of BWV 988.
Sunday, April 3: Pianist Yuja Wang has not yet announced the program she will perform.
Sunday, April 24: Sheku Kanneh-Mason will present a recital of four cello sonatas. He will be accompanied at the piano by his sister Isata. The composers of the sonatas will be, in “order of appearance,” Karen Khachaturian, Benjamin Britten, Frank Bridge (Britten’s teacher), and Dmitri Shostakovich.
Monday, May 2: The final recitalist in this series will be pianist Evgeny Kissin. He will begin his program with a performance of Carl Tausig’s arrangement of Bach’s BWV 565 toccata and fugue in D minor, originally composed for organ. The Classical portion of the program will couple Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 540 Adagio movement in B minor with Beethoven’s Opus 110 piano sonata in A-flat major. The remainder of the program will be devoted to Chopin. His “Andante spianato et grande polonaise brillante” will be preceded by a selection of mazurkas.
The Web page for the Great Performers Series also includes a “To Be Announced” event for Sunday, March 6, at 7:30 p.m. However, this event has not appeared in the Season Calendar, which provides more details about the programs to be performed than can be found through that Web page. Additional information will be added to this article as is appropriate.
That Web page also provides hyperlinks for three subscription options. These include an “A Package” and a “B Package,” each consisting of five concerts (including the “To Be Announced” performance in the “A Package”). In addition there is a “Z Package” which consists of both of the two five-concert packages.
The Spotlight Series will consist of only four concerts. These will all take place on Wednesdays during the spring. Specifics are as follows:
March 23, 7 p.m.: Pianist Drew Petersen will present a program of decidedly challenging piano compositions. He will begin with a selection of Chopin études taken from his Opus 10 and Opus 25 and, possibly, from the unpublished “nouvelles études.” This will be followed by the finger-busting Gaspard de la nuit suite by Maurice Ravel. The program will then conclude with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 36 (second) piano sonata in B-flat minor.
April 13, 7:30 p.m.: As previously reported on this site, a little over a week ago Decca released the debut album of violinist Randall Goosby. For his Davies debut, Goosby will play two of the selections from that album, a three-movement suite by William Grant Still and the sonatina in G major by Antonín Dvořák. He will conclude the program with Edvard Grieg’s Opus 45 (third) violin sonata. As on his recording, Goosby will be accompanied at the piano by Zhu Wang.
April 20, 7:30 p.m.: Violinist Noa Wildschut will be accompanied at the piano by Elizabeth Brauss. Her program will be distinguished by a work that was composed for her by Joey Roukens entitled “Sarasvati.” The more familiar works on her program will be Mozart’s K. 304 violin sonata in E minor and Ravel’s second violin sonata. The program will conclude with the four pieces that Paul Schoenfield calls “Souvenirs.”
[updated 1/26, 4:20 p.m.: Ali-Landing has had to withdraw from the final recital in the series. Program details for Jun 1 at 7 p.m. are now as follows:
The series will conclude with a recital by classical saxophonist Steven Banks, accompanied by pianist Xaj Bjerken. Banks will conclude the program with his own composition: “Come As You Are.” This will be preceded by two sonatas. The first of these will be a sonata for alto saxophone and piano by Paul Creston. This will be followed by a saxophone arrangement of the first of the two Opus 120 sonatas composed by Johannes Brahms in the key of F minor. This was originally composed for clarinet and piano.]
June 1, 7 p.m.: The series will conclude with a recital by cellist Ifetayo Ali-Landing with Minhye Choi at the piano. This program will also feature Still’s music with two compositions, “Summerland” and “Mother and Child.” Ali-Landing will begin with a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 58 (second) cello sonata in D major. This sonata will be followed by a collection of five relatively brief pieces, each based on a folk theme, by the Georgian composer Sulkhan Tsintsadze. Many listeners may recognize the third of these pieces, “Sachidao,” as a favorite encore selection of cellists (at least the local ones). Others may recall that, when San Francisco Performances presented the San Francisco debut of Armenian cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan in February of 2018, he played this collection in its entirety.
There is only a single Web page for purchasing tickets for all of this series. As is the case for the SFS Chamber Music Series, only a limited number of sections of Davies will be open. The price of a subscription in any of those sections will be $200. Single tickets will be available beginning on August 31.
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