Weekend of Groupmuse Recitals Coming

Readers may know by now that Groupmuse tends to be my primary source for keeping up with news about recitals to be performed by pianist Ian Scarfe. This coming weekend will see the next of those recitals taking place on Saturday. However, I have also learned from Groupmuse about a recital that will take place on the following afternoon. It thus seems fair to account for both of these events in a single article (as a nod to the service that Groupmuse provides me). Specifics are as follows:

Saturday, December 13, 7 p.m., Presidio of San Francisco: Scarfe will open up the townhouse he shares with his partner Tané. He will honor the Christmas spirit with solo piano arrangements of selections from the score for score for the two-act ballet The Nutcracker, as well as “a few Christmas tunes!” The first half of the program will be more secular, beginning with selections from Edvard Grieg’s Opus 40, the Holberg Suite. This will be followed with selections from another suite, this time Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. The Groupmuse event page has a hyperlink for marking reservations in advance for $5. (The audience size will be limited to eighteen; and, as of this writing, eight of those spots are still available.) Shoes are not allowed inside the house, so wear socks judiciously! Also, those allergic to cats should be warned that one of them shares the place! The exact address will be sent by electronic mail once the reservation has been finalized, and visitors can arrive as early as 6:30 p.m.

Sunday, December 14, 2:30 p.m., Mission District: Elektra S. will cohost, with her partner Stephanie W., a duo performance by violinist Vanness Yu, accompanied at the piano by Phoebe Wu. They have prepared a program that will span the period from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth. The works will not be performed in chronological order.

Photograph of Tchaikovsky in 1877, included in Modest Chaikovskii’s The Life & Letters of Peter Ilich Chaikovskii (public domain)

The program will begin with Amy Beach’s Opus 23, composed in 1893, her “Romance” for violin and piano. This will be followed by the “Carmen Fantaisie brillante,” composed by Jeno Hubay drawing upon the themes from Georges Bizet’s popular opera. The next selection will be another “Romance,” Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 11, composed a little over a decade before Beach’s. The first twentieth-century composition will be an early work by Olivier Messiaen, “Theme et variations,” composed in 1932. The program will return to the nineteenth century with the performance of “Mélodie,” the last of the three movements that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky collected under the title Souvenir d'un lieu cher (memory of a dear place). The final selection will be Jascha Heifetz’ arrangement of Manuel Ponce’s “Estrellita.” (Heifetz recorded this piece twice, the second time to take advantage of stereophonic technology.) Once again, the Groupmuse event page has a hyperlink for marking reservations in advance for $5, and those allergic to cats should be warned! The exact address will be sent by electronic mail once the reservation has been finalized.