As was the case last season, the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) will present a series of six chamber music recitals in Davies Symphony Hall. The programs have been prepared for each of these performances; and each has its own Web page, which includes the selections for that particular date. As in the past, seating is limited in the interest of proximity to the performers. The Web page for purchasing a full subscription for $240 allows selection of the preferred area in Davies. All performances begin at 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. The programs for each of the dates are as follows:
September 29: There will be four selections, each from a different century. Taken in reverse chronological order (which will not be the order of performance), the most contemporary offering will be “Café Damas,” a trio for violin, viola, and bass by Kinan Azmeh. The twentieth-century selection will also be a trio, this time for flute, clarinet, and piano, composed by Florent Schmitt. The nineteenth-century composer will be Robert Schumann, represented by his Opus 47 piano quartet in E-flat major. The earliest work on the program will be the K. 452 quintet for piano and winds by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
November 10: This program will be devoted to a variety of imaginative arrangements. The only work to be performed as the composer wrote it will be the “Introduction and Allegro,” which Maurice Ravel scored for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet. The program will begin with a string trio arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 988, best known as the “Goldberg Variations.” (Whether or not all 30 variations will be played has not been specified.) Similarly, there will be a viola quartet performance of selections from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker (an early whiff of Christmas); but the selections themselves have not yet been identified. The remaining work on the program will be “Till Eulenspiegel einmal anders!” (Till Eulenspiegel once again), in which composer Franz Hasenöhrl rethinks Richard Strauss’ tone poem, “Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks.”
SFS Principal Harp Katherine Siochi, who will perform in two chamber music programs (from the Web page gallery of SFS musicians)
January 26: Only one wind instrument will contribute to this program. Oboist Russ de Luna will be featured in a quintet by Arnold Bax. He will perform with the quartet of violinists Dan Carlson and Florin Parvulescu, violist Leonid Plashinov-Johnson, and cellist Davis You. Harpist Katherine Siochi will be featured in Camille Saint-Saëns’ Opus 124 “Fantasie” for violin and harp. Pianist Marc Shapiro will contribute to a 1929 composition by Benjamin Britten scored for violin, viola, and piano. Entitled simply “Two Pieces,” this work was not performed until 2003. The program will conclude with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Opus 10 clarinet quintet featuring clarinetist Yuhsin Galaxy Su. The quartet for this performance will consist of violinists Polina Sedukh and Olivia Chen, Katarzyna Bryla on viola, and cellist Sébastien Gingras.
March 16: Siochi will return with her harp, this time to perform a duo for harp and percussion composed by her brother Jeremiah Siochi (who is also a harpist). She will be joined by SFS Principal Percussion Jacob Nissly. The remainder of the program will account for opposite ends of the nineteenth century. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Franz Schubert’s D. 887 string quartet in G major, which was not published until after his death. The “late Schubert” will be complemented by “early Mahler,” the A minor piano quartet, which was first performed in Gustav Mahler’s mid-teens.
April 27: Back in December of 2019, there was a Chamber Music Series program that featured the “Gran Duo Concertante” by Giovanni Bottesini, who was promoted as “the Paganini of the Double Bass.” Bass players Charles Chandler, Bowen Ha, Orion Miller, and Daniel G. Smith will “double down” on that duo with a performance of “Passione Amorosa,” which Bottesini composed for four basses. Bottesini was not shy about high spirits, and his quartet will be complemented by the raucous rhetoric encountered in Paul Schoenfield’s “Café Music.” One can probably expect the same spirits in Bohuslav Martinů’s H 374 nonet for wind quintet, string trio, and bass, one of his last compositions. The program will conclude with an early work by Sergei Prokofiev, his first string quartet.
June 15: The SFS season will conclude with the last of the Chamber Music recitals. High spirits will continue with a performance of music by Aleksey Igudesman, known to many as half of the comedy-musical duo Igudesman & Joo. His contribution to the program will be his Latin Suite, scored for two violas. That suite will be coupled with a cello quartet by Anton Arensky. The program will begin with Caroline Shaw’s “Entr’acte” and conclude with Johannes Brahms Opus 67 in B-flat major, the last of his three string quartets.
As usual, doors will open at 1 p.m. Davies Symphony Hall is located at 201 Van Ness Avenue and fills an entire city block. The other boundaries are Grove Street (north), Hayes Street (south), and Franklin Street (west). The main entrance (which is also the entrance to the Box Office) is on Grove Street, roughly halfway down the block. Single ticket prices for all performances will be $50.
No comments:
Post a Comment