Wednesday, July 6, 2022

The SFP 2022–2023 Chamber Series

In the 2022–2023 season, the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Chamber Series will again be devoted entirely to string quartets. However, while there were six performances during the 2021–2022 season, there will be only four, one in October and three in April. All of these events will take place at 7:30 p.m. on different days of the week.

As usual, all of the concerts will take place 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:

Wednesday, October 26: The fall program will see the return of the Danish String Quartet, whose members are violinists Frederik Øland and Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, who share the leadership chair, violist Asbjørn Nørgaard, and cellist Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin. They have prepared a “three centuries” program, which will begin with two compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, his K. 138 divertimento in F major and his K. 428 quartet in E-flat major. At the other end the program will conclude with the first (in the key of A major) of the three quartets that Robert Schumann collected as his Opus 41. Between these two compositions will be the twentieth-century offering, a collection of three early pieces that Benjamin Britten called “divertimenti.” Each of those pieces has its own descriptive title: “March,” “Waltz,” and “Burlesque.”

Saturday, April 1: The Chiaroscuro Quartet is led by violinist Alina Ibragimova, who has previously presented solo recitals to SFP audiences. The other members of the quartet are Pablo Hernán Benedí, violist Emilie Hörnlund, and cellist Claire Thirion. The program will feature two of the First Viennese School composers, Ludwig van Beethoven (the Opus 95 quartet in F minor) and Franz Schubert (the D. 703 Quartettsatz). The second half of the program will be devoted to Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 13 quartet in A minor.

Wednesday, April 5: The Modigliani Quartet is based in France. The violinists are Amaury Coeytaux and Loic Rio, joined by violist Laurent Marfaing and cellist François Kieffer. They have also organized their program around Beethoven and Schubert. In this case, however, the Beethoven selection will be an early one, the third (in the key of D major) of the six Opus 18 quartets. The Schubert quartet will be the familiar D. 810 in D minor, best known for the set of variations based on Schubert’s “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (Death and the maiden) song (D. 531).  The program will begin with the single-movement “I Crisantemi” (the chrysanthemums) composed by Giacomo Puccini in memory of Amadeo I of Spain.

Friday, April 14: This will be the season in which the Emerson String Quartet makes its final tour. Readers may recall that they concluded last season’s Chamber Series on May 6. The members are violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violist Lawrence Dutton, and cellist Paul Watkins. They will take their leave with another First Viennese School program. They will begin with Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken III/41 in G major (the fifth of the quartets published as Opus 33). This will be followed by Mozart’s K. 421 quartet in D minor. Finally, to cap off a season that included both early and late quartets by Beethoven, they will conclude with the second (in the key of E minor) of the three Opus 59 “Razumovsky” quartets from the middle period.

Subscriptions are now on sale for $260 for premium seating in the Orchestra and the front and center of the Dress Circle, $210 for the Side Boxes, the center rear of the Dress Circle, and the remainder of the Orchestra, and $170 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 now on sale for $75, $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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