San Francisco Performances: October, 2022

This coming Friday will mark the beginning of the 43rd season of concerts offered by San Francisco Performances (SFP). This site has already accounted for the programs as they are associated with different subscription series. However, since this season began with month-by-month accounts of program plans for other organizations, it seems appropriate to provide similar summaries of the SFP calendar.

All three of this month’s programs will take place in 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. Further specifics, which provide hyperlinks for purchasing tickets (and, when the event is the first concert in a series, subscriptions), will be found through the hyperlink attached to the date and time as follows:

Friday, October 7, 7:30 p.m.: The Shenson Piano Series will begin with the return of pianist Garrick Ohlsson. However, he will share the program with the Apollon Musagète Quartet, whose members are all Polish: violinists Paweł Zalejski and Bartosz Zachłod, violist Piotr Szumieł, and cellist Piotr Skweres. They will perform together in the second half of the program, which will be devoted entirely to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 57 piano quintet in G minor. Ohlsson will begin the program with three of the fugues in Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1080, The Art of Fugue:

• Contrapunctus 1: the “basic” four-voice fugue on the principal subject for the entire collection
• 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

The quartet will then conclude the first half of the program with Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 51 string quartet in E-flat major (sometimes known as the “Slavonic Quartet”).

Friday, October 14, 8 p.m.: Pianist András Schiff will be this year’s guest artist for the SFP 43rd Season Gala. In that capacity he will present a solo recital. Program specifics have not yet been announced. However, as of this writing, the plan will be to survey three of the First Viennese School composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert. As of this writing, single tickets are still available.

Wednesday, October 26, 7:30 p.m.: The final concert of the month will launch the Chamber Series with 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. Mozart will also figure in the program they have prepared, which will begin with his K. 138 divertimento in F major and his K. 428 quartet in E-flat major. These will be followed by the collection of three early pieces that Benjamin Britten called “divertimenti.” Each of those pieces has its own descriptive title: “March,” “Waltz,” and “Burlesque.” The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to the third (in the key of A major) of the three quartets that Robert Schumann collected as his Opus 41.

Note that, for all of this month, masks will be required for all attending the performances; further details are provided on the Health and Safety Factsheet for the 2022–23 Season.