Following up on next month’s three recitals in the Old First Concerts (O1C) series at Old First Presbyterian Church (1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue) will be a very busy August. This will be due to the San Francisco International Piano Festival concerts taking place at the venue, which will be preceded by the next round of three O1C programs. Given the abundance of activity, it seemed prudent to alert readers to this embarrassment of riches sooner, rather than later! (Note also that the Festival will “spill over” into the first day of September.) Hyperlinks to the event pages, which include information about ticket prices and hyperlinks for purchases, including live stream viewing, continue to be attached to the date and time of the performances in the following specifics:
Friday, August 2, 8 p.m.: This will be a debut performance by Duo Penseur, whose members are violinist Chantel Charis and pianist Alex Fang. They met as Master’s students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Both of them are now doctoral candidates, Charis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Fang at the University of Washington. Nevertheless, they will both return to San Francisco to prepare a program entitled Minding the Gap, which probably refers to their geographical challenges. The “chronological frame” for that program has Ludwig van Beethoven on one side with the second of his Opus 30 duo sonatas and Jessie Montgomery in the “immediate present” with “Peace.” Between these extremes is Clara Schumann from the early nineteenth century with three duo compositions identified as “Romances” and, from the twentieth century, William Grant Still’s suite for violin and piano.
Friday, August 16, 8 p.m.: The Zēlos Saxophone Quartet is based in the Bay Area. Each member plays an instrument of a different size: Jonah Cabral (soprano), David Baker (alto), Robin Lacey (tenor), Johnny Selmer (baritone). Their repertoire ranges from underrepresented contemporary works to transcriptions from the baroque, classical, and romantic eras. Program details have not yet been provided.
Simple Excesses Quartet members Matt Small, Jordan Glenn, Motoko Honda, and Cory Wright (from the O1C Web page)
Saturday, August 17, 8 p.m.: Pianist Motoko Honda leads the Simple Excesses Quartet, providing both original compositions and arrangements. The other performers are Cory Wright on woodwinds, bassist Matt Small, and Jordan Glenn on drums. The title of the program will be Uncharted Sonic Adventures: Jazz, Chamber, Avant-garde, and Beyond. It will consist (almost?) entirely of works composed and/or rearranged by Honda over the course of this year:
- Fragmented Redolence
- Murkwood
- Simpler Matters
- Serpentine Skips
- Ransom
- Jumping Moops
Friday, August 23, 8 p.m.: The remaining performances of the month will be presented by the seventh annual San Francisco International Piano Festival. The theme of this year’s Festival will be a celebration of French keyboard music across the centuries. Opening night will honor the centennial of the death of Gabriel Fauré. This will include his Opus 13 sonata for violin and piano in A major, for which the violinst has not yet been identified. There will also be a four-hand performance of movements from his Opus 56 Dolly suite, performed by Sarah Yuan and Munan Cheng. The program will also include the first of the three nocturnes, which Fauré collected as his Opus 33. This will be followed, appropriately enough, by his Opus 34, which is the third of his six impromptu compositions. The other work on the program will be the Opus 73 set of variations on a theme. The contributing solo pianists will be Gwendolyn Mok and Artistic Director Jeffrey LaDeur.
Sunday, August 25, 4 p.m.: The second Festival program will be a solo recital by Asiya Korepanova. The title of her program is Transformations, because all of the selections will be her own transcriptions. She appears to have an affinity with music for cello and piano. She will begin with Fauré’s Opus 24 “Élégie” and conclude with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 19 sonata for those same instruments. (Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 3, “Introduction et Polonaise brillante” also has that instrumentation.) There will also be arrangements of vocal compositions, including Modest Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death cycle.
Friday, August 30, 8 p.m.: The final weekend of the Festival will begin on Friday. Pianist Stephen Prutsman will perform with the members of the Telegraph String Quartet: violinists Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, Pei-Ling Lin on viola, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw. The first half of the program will be devoted entirely to Robert Schumann’s Opus 44 piano quintet. The only other work on the program will be Prutsman’s original score to accompany Buster Keaton’s film, Sherlock Jr.
Sunday, September 1, 4 p.m.: The Festival extends beyond the end of August to conclude with a collaboration with LIEDER ALIVE! Mezzo Kindra Scharich will be the vocalist in a performance of Fauré’s Opus 61 song cycle, La Bonne Chanson. Mok and LaDeur will join forces for the selections on either side of this vocal offering. They will begin the program with the Épigraphe antiques cycle by Claude Debussy. I have had at least one encounter with this composition in which each movement was introduced with narrated text, so it is possible that Scharich will also serve as narrator. The Festival will conclude with a two-piano composition by Florent Schmitt, his Opus 53 collection of three rhapsodies.
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