This year the Great Artists and Ensembles Series presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP) will get under way at the very beginning of January. One of the “great artists,” Midori, will present two programs; and the remaining three concerts will cover the “ensembles” side of the series title. As in the past, most of the programs will explore and present new and/or unfamiliar repertoire.
As usual, all of the concerts will be held 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:
Thursday, December 1, 7:30 p.m.: The members of the Junction Trio are violinist Stefan Jackiw, cellist Jay Campbell, and pianist Conrad Tao. Campbell is most likely to be familiar to SFP audiences. During last year’s Summer Music Sessions 2021, his SFP performance shared the stage with violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist Timo Andres. However, that program presented only one trio, while Koh and Campbell also performed solo pieces. The Junction program will present three trios, beginning with Tao’s own composition, entitled “Eventide.” This will be followed by the only trio composed by Charles Ives. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Maurice Ravel’s trio in A minor.
Thursday, February 2, 7:30 p.m.: This will be the first of two solo recitals presented by violinist Midori. Over the course of two programs, she will present the full set of six sonatas and partitas for solo violin composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. On this program she will perform the first and third of the sonatas, BWV 1001 in G minor and BWV 1003 in C major, and the second partita, BWV 1004 in D minor. These will be coupled with two recent compositions, “Königliches Thema” (royal theme) by Isang Yun and “Passagen” by John Zorn.
Sunday, February 5, 2 p.m.: Midori will conclude her Bach cycle beginning with the BWV 1003 sonata in A minor. She will then wrap up the set with the two remaining partitas, BWV 1002 in B minor and BWV 1006 in E major. There will again be two much more recent compositions. The first of these will be Clara Iannotta’s, “dead wasps in the jam-jar,” completed in 2018, and “Nun komm,” composed by Thierry Escaich in 2001.
Wednesday, March 22, 7:30 p.m.: Violinist Nicola Benedetti was last seen in San Francisco in March of 2017, when she performed Max Bruch’s Opus 26 (first) violin concerto in G minor with the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas. She will make her SFP debut performing in a trio with cellist Leonard Elschenbroich and pianist Alexei Grynyuk. They will perform two major trios from opposite ends of the nineteenth century. The first of these will be Franz Schubert’s D. 929 (second) trio in E-flat major. The intermission will be followed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s only piano trio, his Opus 50 in A minor.
Wednesday, April 26, 7:30 p.m.: Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor was last seen in San Francisco when he presented a solo recital for the SFP Piano Series in March of 2019. For his return visit he will be joined by the members of the Doric String Quartet, violinists Alex Redington and Ying Xue, violist Hélène Clément, and cellist John Myerscough. The quartet will play two selections from the First Viennese School: Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 95 (Serioso) quartet in F minor and Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken III/49, the last of the six Opus 50 compositions, known as the “Prussian” quartets. Grosvenor will join the Doric players for the second half of the program, devoted entirely to a quintet by Frank Bridge (who is still probably best known as Benjamin Britten’s teacher).
Subscriptions are now on sale for $325 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $275 for the Side Boxes, the center rear of the Dress Circle, and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $225 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. Single tickets are also now on sale for $70, $60, and $50, respectively. They may be purchased by visiting the specific event pages. The above dates provide hyperlinks to the appropriate Web pages.
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