Voices of Music Announces 2021–2022 Season

A little over a week ago, Voices of Music announced its return to an “in-person” concert season. In the past this early music ensemble has presented a season of four concerts beginning in the fall. However, the 2021–2022 season will begin with the annual Holiday Celebration, followed by two concerts in 2022. As in the past, all San Francisco performances will take place on a weekend at 8 p.m. Voices of Music will return to St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street, for all three events.

Subscriptions for the entire season will be $145 with a reduced rate of $130 for seniors and members of SFEMS, EMA, or ARS. A Web page has been set up for processing subscription orders, and they also can be purchased by phone at 415-377-4444. Single tickets for each concert will go on sale two weeks in advance of the performance. Online purchase may be made through the respective Tickets hyperlinks on the season summary Web page or by calling the same telephone number. Dates and program plans for the three concerts are as follows:

1. Sunday, December 19: As in the past the Holiday Celebration is more about virtuoso concertos than about sacred music. The concerto soloists will both be violinists: Rachell Ellen Wong in Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1041 concerto in A minor and Elizabeth Blumenstock in Giuseppe Tartini’s concerto in A major, D 91 in the catalog compiled by Minos Dounias. Percussionist Peter Maund will join the full ensemble in a performance of Georg Philipp Telemann’s TWV 55:G10 Burlesque de Quichotte, a suite which may have drawn upon music from the TWV 21:32 score for the one-act comic serenata “Don Quichotte auf der Hochzeit des Comacho.” The program will also include virtuoso music by “usual suspects” such as Arcangelo Corelli, Francesco Geminiani, and Antonio Vivaldi.
2. Saturday, February 19: This will be a program of chamber music from Italy and England entitled Musica Transalpina. The origins of the violin as we now know it can be traced by to the early sixteenth century in northern Italy. Those origins will be celebrated with more music by Corelli, along with works by Nicola Matteis, Marco Uccellini, and Biago Marini, all “early adopters” of the instrument. On the other side of the Alps, so to speak, there will be violin music by Henry Purcell and George Frideric Handel. Blumenstock will again be one of the solo violinists, joined this time by Cynthia Miller Freivogel and Augusta McKay Lodge.
3. Saturday, March 26: Attention to the violin will continue, advancing into the eighteenth century with solo and ensemble concertos by Handel, Geminiani, and Vivaldi. The program has not yet been finalized. However, Lodge will return as soloist in Vivaldi’s RV 356 concerto in A minor; and Chloe Kim will take the solo part in the RV 277 concerto in E minor, given the title “Il Favorito.”