Ohlsson and Quartet to Launch SFP Season

San Francisco Performances (SFP) will launch its 43rd season at the beginning of this coming October. The first concert will also be the opening recital of the 2022–23 Shenson Piano Series, and the featured pianist will be Garrick Ohlsson. Based in San Francisco, Ohlsson has been serving as a faculty member of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic; and, now the that pandemic is subsiding, he is returning to a busy touring schedule.

Ohlsson will begin the program with three selections from Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1080, The Art of Fugue. In its entirety this work consists of fourteen fugues and four canons, all based on the same principal subject in D minor. Ohlsson will play three of the fugues:

• Contrapunctus 1: the “basic” four-voice fugue on that principal subject
• Contrapunctus 4: a four-voice fugue on the inversion of the principal subject with added counter-subjects
• Contrapunctus 9: a double fugue (two subjects) with inverted counterpoint at the interval of a twelfth

Garrick Ohlsson and the members of the Apollon Musagète Quartet (from the SFP Web page for their recital program)

In addition, Ohlsson will share the stage with the Apollon Musagète Quartet. The members of this ensemble are all Polish: violinists Paweł Zalejski and Bartosz Zachłod, violist Piotr Szumieł, and cellist Piotr Skweres. The quartet was one of the last to perform in San Francisco prior to the pandemic, having launched the Chamber Music San Francisco season in February of 2020. They will join Ohlsson in a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 57 piano quintet in G minor (the same selection that was performed yesterday afternoon at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music). In addition, they will play Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 51 string quartet in E-flat major (sometimes known as the “Slavonic Quartet”) following Ohlsson’s Bach performance.

This program will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, October 7. The venue will be Herbst Theatre, whose entrance 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.

Ticket prices are $75 (premium Orchestra and front and center Dress Circle), $60 (remainder of Orchestra, all Side Boxes, and center rear Dress Circle), and $50 (remaining Dress Circle and Balcony); and they may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. In addition, since this is the first concert of the series, subscriptions are still available to cover all five concerts. The respective prices are $330, $265, and $215.

Single tickets can also be purchased at the door as available with a 50% discount for students and a 20% discount for seniors. Subscription orders may be placed through another SFP secure Web page or 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 may be purchased by calling 415-392-2545.