The fifth annual season of the San Francisco International Piano Festival is about to begin. Last year the fourth annual season consisted entirely of virtual performances, which were presented without any charge. This year most of the offerings will again be livestreams. However, there will also be ticketed events and a modest return to “live” performances. For the benefit of those living in San Francisco and concerned about traveling too far, only the offerings either virtual or within the city limits will be included in this article’s summary.
Once again, several of the programs will involve partnerships with other concert series. As was the case last year, there will again be partnerships with both Old First Concerts (O1C) and LIEDER ALIVE!, both of which have already been announced on this site. In addition two of the recitals will be presented in collaboration with the Ross McKee Foundation and presented as part of the Piano Break series, which was formed to support Bay Area pianists that have lost performance opportunities due to COVID-19. The schedule for concert performances, enhanced with the appropriate hyperlinks for streaming, is as follows:
Friday, August 20, 5 p.m.: The first Piano Break concert will be a recital by Nicholas Phillips consisting entirely of compositions by Charles Tomlinson Griffes. The program will begin with the three Opus 6 Fantasy Pieces. It will be followed by “The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan,” the composer’s Opus 8. The concluding selection will be the Opus 7 four-movement suite entitled Roman Sketches.
Saturday, August 21, 7:30 p.m.: This will be the first “live” event, for which there will be the choice of reserving a ticket for attendance or viewing a livestream. The performance will take place in the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, which is located at 50 Oak Street, a short walk to the northwest from the corner of Market Street and Van Ness Avenue; and ticket reservations will be arranged through a Brown Paper Tickets event page. The above date and time are hyperlinked to the Vimeo livestream.
The title of the program will be Le Voyage dans le Temps (the voyage through time); and the stage will be shared by two harpsichordists, Jory Vinikour and Philippe LeRoy, and pianist (and Festival founder and Artistic Director) Jeffrey LaDeur. LaDeur will play selections by César Franck and Claude Debussy, each of which will be preceded by harpsichord offerings. The Franck composition will be his Opus 23, titled simply “Prélude, Aria et Final.” It will be preceded by selections from the seventh ordre from François Couperin’s Pièces de Clavecin and Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 878, the prelude and fugue in E major from the second book of The Well-Tempered Clavier. The Debussy selections will be preceded by works by Jean-Philippe Rameau.
Sunday, August 22, 4 p.m.: As previously reported, the first partnership with O1C will be the second solo recital by Nicholas Phillips. The title of the program will be A Celebration of Contemporary Piano Music, and it will conclude with the world premiere performance of “Sonata ’21” by African American composer Quinn Mason. Other world premieres will include Mark Winges’ “Year End Nocturne” and three compositions by Mark Olivieri. These will be “Mieux vaut être seul que mail accompagné” (better to be alone than in bad company), “Hymn for Alaina,” and “Tyranny of Virtue,” the third piece in a collection entitled Music for a New Apocalypse. Other composers represented on the program will be Reena Esmail, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Carter Penn, Sahba Aminikia, and Gabriela Lena Frank.
Tuesday, August 24, 5 p.m.: Paul Sánchez will present a program of music by Graham Lynch, prepared in collaboration with the International Piano Series at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. The concert will begin with the world premiere of “Absolute Inwardness” and conclude with the world premiere of White Book III, a five-movement suite, which was composed for Sánchez. Between these two world premieres will be the United States premiere of “The Couperin Sketchbooks.”
Thursday, August 26, 7:30 p.m.: This will be the previously reported LIEDER ALIVE! concert entitled A Winter Journey. The title refers to the performance of the first twelve of the 24 songs in Franz Schubert’s D. 911 Winterreise (winter journey) song cycle by Artist-in-Residence mezzo Kindra Scharich, accompanied by LaDeur at the piano. LaDeur will then join Alexander String Quartet violinists Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz, violist Paul Yarbrough, and cellist Sandy Wilson to present selected movements from Johannes Brahms’ Opus 34 quintet for piano and strings in F minor.
Friday, August 27, 5 p.m.: The second Piano Break concert will be a recital by French-American pianist Julia Den Boer. The core of her program will be two compositions by contemporary avant-garde composers, Anthony Braxton’s “Composition No. 5” and “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,” composed in 1994 by Rebecca Saunders. The program will begin with “Oiseaux tristes” (sad birds), the second of the five compositions in Maurice Ravel’s suite Miroirs (mirrors). It will conclude with the four-movement cycle In the Mists by Leoš Janáček.
Friday, August 27, 7:30 p.m.: This will be the second “live” event of the Festival; and, as of this writing, no arrangements have been made for a video stream. The performance will take place at the Noe Valley Ministry, which is located at 1021 Sanchez Street, a short walk northwest from the bus and trolley stops at the corner of 24th Street and Church Street; and ticket reservations will be arranged through a Brown Paper Tickets event page. The program will be the Young Chamber Musicians showcase. LaDeur will accompany Davis You in a performance of the first of Ludwig van Beethoven’s two Opus 5 sonatas, composed in the key of F major. They will be followed by the Aveta Trio of pianist Sarah Yuan, violinist Eunseo Oh, and cellist Elliott Kim playing Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 66 (second) piano trio in C minor.
Sunday, August 29, 4 p.m.: As previously reported, the Festival will conclude with the second partnership with O1C. Harpsichordists Jory Vinikour and Philippe LeRoy will return, joined by LaDeur and Gwendolyn Mok at the piano. All the composers will be French with harpsichord performances of more Couperin selections. The piano offerings will include works by two of the Les Six (the six) composers, Francis Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre. The program will begin with Nadia Boulanger’s “Vers la vie nouvelle” (towards a new life) and conclude with Maurice Ravel’s solo piano arrangement of his “La Valse.”
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