SFCM: Historical Performance Concerto Winners

This afternoon the Barbro Osher Recital Hall provided the venue for a concert presenting the Baroque Ensemble Concerto Competition winners. This involved six Historical Performance students: three cellists, two violinists, and a harpsichordist, who spent the better part of the afternoon leading continuo performances. Whether or not the space was conducive to the performance of music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most of the solo performances were disconcertingly weak, particularly where intonation was involved.

Hasan Abualhaj performing his Vivaldi concerto selection (screen shot from this afternoon’s streamed performance)

The one student who seemed to be consistently secure in his solo work was Hasan Abualhaj playing a baroque-period cello. His selection was Antonio Vivaldi’s RV 407 cello concerto in D minor. Of all the string instrumentalists, Abualhaj displayed the most secure command of pitch intervals, combined with a keen sense of phrasing. His interpretation of the score made it clear that virtuoso performance could be just as compelling (as well as enjoyable) as any selection from the nineteenth-century repertoire.

Harpsichordist Yunyi Ji should also be credited with providing the solid accompaniment of a a well-considered continuo. Unfortunately, as a concerto soloist, she had to contend with problems of audibility. Her solo skills would have been more convincingly audible had the accompanying strings been fewer by about half. Even then, the cavernous Recital Hall in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) Bowes Center was clearly not intended for seventeenth-century Baroque intimacy. She also had to spend about half the duration of her concerto selection (Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1052 concerto for harpsichord in D minor) contending with the sun on her face.

Perhaps it is about time to acknowledge that 50 Oak Street provides performance venues that are more suitable for both performers and their attentive listeners.