2022 San Francisco International Piano Festival

Those that follow the announcement of programs presented by Old First Concerts (O1C) probably know that August is the month of the San Francisco International Piano Festival. This year marks the Festival’s sixth annual season, and all of the performances will be “live.” This year there will be one performance in Berkeley and two masterclasses supported in part by the Ross McKee Foundation. However, this article will focus only on the recitals that will take place within the San Francisco City Limits.

Those performances will involve partnerships with not only O1C but also LIEDER ALIVE!, Noontime Concerts, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM). Specifics for the venues are as follows:

• LIEDER ALIVE! performances take place at the Noe Valley Ministry, which is located at 1021 Sanchez Street, between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street.
• O1C events take place in the Old First Presbyterian Church at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue.
• Noontime Concerts events are hosted by Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral, which is located in Chinatown at 660 California Street, on the northeast corner of Grant Street.
• SFCM will host two performances, each at a different venue. The Barbro Osher Recital Hall is on the top floor of the Bowes Center, which is located at 200 Van Ness Avenue. The Caroline Hume Concert Hall is on the ground floor of the SFCM building at 50 Oak Street.

Tickets are being sold on a concert-by-concert basis. Each date below will be hyperlinked to the Web page that processes ticket orders. Those dates are as follows:

Thursday, August 18, 7:30 p.m., Noe Valley Ministry: The program will begin with a celebration of the first book of Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV 846–869). Rachel Breen and Parker Van Ostrand will alternate in performing selections from the collection with background insights provided by musicologist Sharon Mann. The intermission will be followed by the world premiere of Kurt Erickson’s “Seventeen Minutes and Twenty-Two Seconds.” The opening and closing movements of this piece are entitled “This Is Not A Prelude” and “This Is Not A Fugue,” responding, respectively, the the C major prelude and fugue of BWV 846. The middle movement is entitled “A Well-Tempered Improvisation,” which reflects the influence of Chick Corea. This premiere will be performed by Jeffrey LaDeur, who will then conclude the program with César Franck’s “Prélude, Choral and Fugue.”

Sunday, August 21, 4 p.m., Old First Presbyterian Church: Breen will then return to present a more diverse program for O1C. The second half of the program will offer a coupling of compositions by Robert Schumann (his Opus 18 “Arabeske”) and Ludwig van Beethoven (his final piano sonata, Opus 111 in C minor). The first half of the program will account for composers on either side of the nineteenth century: John Bull (“Fantasia on Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La”), Alexander Scriabin (selections from his Opus 11 and Opus 16 collections of preludes), and Nikolai Medtner (his Opus 22 sonata in G minor).

Tuesday, August 23, 12:30 p.m., Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Bobby Mitchell will be the recitalist presented by Noontime Concerts. Details have not yet been finalized. However, the title of the program will be Inner Voices; and it will couple Schumann’s music with that of Frederic Rzewski. The Schumann selections will preview the program that he will perform at O1C on August 27. There will be no charge for admission to Noontime Concerts, and tickets will not be required.

Wednesday, August 24, 3 p.m., SFCM Bowes Center: This program will be framed by music composed by Elinor Armer. The program will begin with “Where the Slope Grows Steep,” three settings of poems by Ursula le Guin from her So Far So Good collection. The vocalist will be mezzo Kindra Scharich, accompanied at the piano by Lois Brandwynne. The program will conclude with two Armer compositions for solo piano, “Promptu” and “Etude Quasi Cadenza,” both of which will be performed by LaDeur. “Promptu” will serve as a “response” to the “call” of one of the impromptus composed by Franz Schubert, the third in his Opus 90 set.

Friday, August 26, 8 p.m., Old First Presbyterian Church: Jan Bartoš will make his West Coast debut with a program of masterpieces by Czech composers. Each half of the program will begin with a composition by Leoš Janáček. The program will begin with his “1.X.1905” piano sonata; and the intermission will be followed by the In the Mists cycle of four compositions. Those relatively short pieces will be followed by Dreams, one of three substantial piano cycles composed by Bedřich Smetana during the last decade of his life. The Janáček sonata will be followed by a set of eight preludes by Miloslav Kabeláč, the only composer on the program to have been born in the twentieth century.

Saturday, August 27, 8 p.m., Old First Presbyterian Church: This will be the aforementioned all-Schumann recital that will be performed by Mitchell. The program will include the Opus 4 collection of intermezzi and the Opus 5 collection of impromptus. The program will conclude with the Opus 82 cycle entitled Waldszenen (forest scenes). It will begin with one of Schumann’s last compositions, the five-movement Opus 133 entitled “Gesänge der Frühe” (songs of the morning).

Sunday, August 28, 2 p.m., SFCM Caroline Hume Concert Hall: The final program will begin with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 27 quintet in G minor for piano and strings. Pianist LaDeur will be joined by the members of the Telegraph Quartet: violinists Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violist Pei-Ling Lin, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw. Parker Van Ostrand will then conclude the first half of the program with the fugue movement that concludes Beethoven’s Opus 106 (“Hammerklavier”) in B-flat major. The second half of the program will then reflect back on the program that launched the Festival. LaDeur will play four selections from Tom Sivak’s The Well-Tempered Lennon & McCarney, reconceived performances of “All My Lovin’,” “Penny Lane,” “Eleanor Rigby,” and “Hey Jude.” Tammy Lynn Hall will then conclude the Festival with her arrangements of a set of tunes by Nina Simone inspired by Bach.