Following up on the annual American Bach Summer Festival this past July, it is now time to review what has been planned for the remainder of the season. This will consist of three concerts in the Discovery Series, for which listeners can take advantage of subscription rates, and three “seasonal” concerts to account for both Christmas and New Year’s Eve. As in the past, all Discovery Series concerts will take place in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church at 1111 O’Farrell Street, on the southwest corner of Franklin Street, beginning at 4 p.m. on Sunday afternoons. The Christmas concerts will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Grace Cathedral, which is located at the top of Nob Hill at 1100 California Street. The New Year’s Eve offering will begin at 4 p.m. in Herbst Theatre, which is entered on the ground floor of the Veterans Building of the San Francisco War Memorial at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Jeffrey Thomas will conduct all performances; and the specific dates, in chronological order, are as follows:
Sunday, October 27: The Discovery Series begins with a program entitled Baroque Extravagance. The “extravagance” will involve five imaginative works, each by a different composer. The program will begin with an early example of program music by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, “Die musikalische Fechtschul” (that last noun meaning “fencing school”). This will be followed by Georg Philipp Telemann’s TWV 55:G2, an eight-movement “Ouverture-Suite” entitled La Bizarre. The next selection will be a more conventional violin concerto in A minor by Giuseppe Tartini. This will be followed by the more dramatic “Battalia à 10” by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, supposedly reflecting the composer’s reactions to the Thirty Years’ War. Finally, the ensemble’s namesake will be honored with a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1064R concerto for three violins in D major.
Thursday, December 12: Christmas festivities will begin with a program that couples the first part of Bach’s BWV 248 Christmas Oratorio with the Christmas portion of George Frideric Handel’s HWV 56 oratorio Messiah.
Friday, December 13: This will be the one and only performance of HWV 56 in its entirety, and it tends sell out long in advance of the event itself.
Tuesday, December 31: As in the past, this will be a program that couples overtures with Baroque opera arias and duets. This year the vocalists will be soprano Maya Kherani and countertenor Eric Jurenas. Most of the selections will be taken from Handel operas … seven of them! There will also be selections from three operas by Jean-Philippe Rameau. Finally, there will be one excerpt from Cesare e Cleopatra, the three-act opera composed by Carl Heinrich Graun in 1742.
Sunday, February 23: This will be a concert performance of Handel’s HWV 49 opera Acis and Galatea. The title roles will be sung by tenor James Reese and soprano Hélène Brunet. The other characters in the opera are Polyphemus (bass Mischa Bouvier) and Damon (tenor Michael Jankosky).
The ABS “vision” of Bach’s “paradise” (from the Web page for this concert)
Sunday, April 6: The season will conclude with a program entitled Bach’s Paradise, consisting entirely of compositions by you-know-who! The focus will be on three cantatas involving solo vocalists: BWV 4, 106, and 182. Those performers will be soprano Elijah McCormack, countertenor Kyle Tingzon, tenor Steven Soph, and baritone David McFerrin. The program will then conclude with BWV 1051, the sixth (and last) of the “Brandenburg” concertos.
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