This afternoon in Davies Symphony Hall, the Inside Music Talk by Laura Stanfield Prichard was followed by an announcement that the scheduled San Francisco Symphony (SFS) concert would be cancelled due to members of the ensemble testing positive for COVID-19. By way of compensation, the concerto soloist, pianist Jan Lisiecki, volunteered to give a short (roughly one hour) piano recital. That performance would have been familiar to those that attended Lisiecki’s program for the San Francisco Performances (SFP) 2021–2022 Piano Series, which took place this past October.
The October program was structured around Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 10 collection of twelve études, which were interleaved with a selection of Chopin nocturnes. This afternoon’s program was structured around the first six of the études and probably reproduced the first half of Lisiecki’s SFP recital. Once again, there was a strong sense of brutality in his interpretations. Nevertheless, for a “second encounter” there was more opportunity to speculate on how Lisiecki had selected the interleaving nocturnes. He concluded his performance with an encore selection of the posthumously published nocturne in C-sharp minor.
Style aside, this was a generous act of compensation for the need to cancel the orchestra performance. For the most part the audience seemed to welcome Lisiecki’s efforts. As of this writing, information about any further performances at Davies is forthcoming.
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