The Kanneh-Mason Duo in Davies Last Night

Sheku Kanneh-Mason (photograph by Ollie Ali, courtesy of SFS)

Last night saw the final Great Performers Series recital to be presented by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) this season in Davies Symphony Hall. The recitalist was cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who made his SFS Orchestra Series debut almost exactly a year ago, when he was the soloist in a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 107, the first of his two cello concertos. For his SFS Great Performers debut, he was accompanied at the piano by his sister Isata.

The first half of the program presented two cello sonatas separated by a little less than a century. The program began with Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 45, his first cello sonata in B-flat major. This was coupled with another “first cello sonata,” Gabriel Fauré’s Opus 109 in D minor. The remaining sonata concluded the second half of the program, Francis Poulenc’s only sonata for cello and piano. This was composed in 1948; and, since the Mendelssohn sonata was composed in 1838, the program offered roughly a century of sonatas. These were complemented by the one recent work on the program, “Tor Mordôn,” composed by Natalie Klouda in 2024.

As expected, this was a radical shift from the rhetorical stances of the sonata selections. I have noticed that many recent compositions tend to establish their identities through unique sonorities, as well as thematic material. The second movement of “Tor Mordôn” involved a fair amount of snap pizzicato work, which was definitely consistent with the “Con fuoco” tempo marking. Nevertheless, when taken as a whole, the music did little to seize attention, reminding me of my composition teacher, who always criticized his pupils for “noodling.”

Sadly, the more traditional offerings did not fare much better. Both of the sonatas preceding the intermission came across as long-winded. Mind you, Mendelssohn tended to revel in outbursts of enthusiasm. One could sense that through the different perspectives of his sonata’s three movements, but each of them went on for longer than even attentive patience could endure. Ironically, the enthusiasm that Poulenc brought to his sonata came across as little more than an outpouring of notes.

Neither of the two encores was announced. The first sounded like an arrangement of one of the orchestral works by Manuel de Falla. The other sounded like more Mendelssohn. Neither left me with an urge to learn more about them.