SFS in February: All the Options in Davies

Last year concluded with an update on the plans for pianist Yuja Wang’s visit to Davies Symphony Hall next month. Now it is time for a more thorough review of the diversity of performances that will be taking place in Davies during the month of February. These include the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Orchestral Series Concerts, the Great Performers Series, the first Shenson Spotlight recital, and the annual Lunar New Year concert. For the convenience of those trying to plan their activities for the month, these events will be presented in chronological order.

Thursday, February 6, and Friday, February 7, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, February 9, 2 p.m.: Paavo Järvi will conduct the first Orchestral Series Concert of the month. Pianist Kirill Gerstein will be the guest soloist in a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 102 (second) piano concerto in F major. This will be the only selection prior to intermission. The second half will be devoted entirely to Gustav Mahler’s seventh symphony in five movements. This has sometimes been called (not by Mahler) the Song of the Night because the second and fourth movements carry the title “Nachtmusik.”

Saturday, February 8, 5 p.m.: Francesco Lecce-Chong will conduct the annual Lunar New Year concert. The program will include the second pipa concerto by Zhao Jiping with soloist Wu Man and cellist Amos Yang as soloist for the concerto entitled “The Butterfly Lovers,” composed jointly by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao. There will also be a world premiere performance of a new work by Shuying Li, composed on an SFS commission.

Sunday, February 9, 7:30 p.m.: The next Great Performers Series program will be a solo piano recital by Seong-Jin Cho in which he will perform the complete solo piano works of Maurice Ravel.

Thursday, February 13, Friday, February 14, and Saturday, February 15, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, February 16, 2 p.m.: This will be the updated program for Yuja Wang’s appearance as soloist with SFS conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

The private mausoleum built for the tomb of Fritz Kreisler in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx borough of New York City

Wednesday, February 19, 7:30 p.m.: This season’s Shenson Spotlight Series will begin with a recital by violinist Tessa Lark. Her program will include two works composed by virtuoso violinist Fritz Kreisler, the “Chanson Louis XIII et Pavane,” composed in the style of Louis Couperin (and falsely attributed to him), and “Syncopation.” She will couple these with a pair of her own compositions, “Ysaÿe Shuffle” and “Jig and Pop.” The former will be played immediately after her performance of Eugéne Ysaÿe’s Opus 27, Number 4, the fourth (composed in the key of E minor) in a series of solo six violin sonatas, each dedicated to a different violinist, Kreisler being the one for whom this sonata was written. The program will begin with a selection familiar to many violinists, Béla Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances suite. The final selection will be John Corigliano’s sonata for violin and piano.

Friday, February 21, and Saturday February 22, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, February 23, 2 p.m.: Pianist Daniil Trifonov will return to Davies as soloist in a performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 16 (second) piano concerto in G minor. The “overture” for the program will be the world premiere performance of “Strange Beasts,” composed by Xavier Muzik on an SFS commission. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Igor Stravinsky’s score for the ballet “The Rite of Spring.” Salonen will again be the conductor.

Wednesday, February 26, 7:30 p.m.: The next Great Performers Series concert was announced on this site at the end of last year. This is the program in which students of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) will give a side-by-side performance with the musicians of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields (AMSF). The conductor will be Joshua Bell, who will begin the program with Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1043 concerto for two violins in D minor, taking one of the solo parts with SFCM violin student Fiona Cunninghame-Murray taking the other. As was already announced, ASMF will begin the program with Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken I/29 symphony in E major and conclude with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Opus 35 symphonic suite Scheherazade.

Friday, February 28, 7:30 p.m.: Robin Ticciati will conduct the final SFS program of the month. This will be a concerto-symphony program. Pianist Francesco Piemontesi will make his Orchestral Series Debut as soloist in a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 16, his fourth piano concerto in the key of G major. The intermission will be followed by Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 27, his second symphony in E minor. Since this is a subscription concert, there will also be performances at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 1, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 2.

San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2025 Plans

The early days of computer programming (the “mascot image” for this year’s San Francisco Tape Music Festival, from the Festival’s Eventbrite Web page)

Once again the San Francisco Tape Music Festival will mark the beginning of a new year. This event continues to be our country’s only festival devoted to the performance of synthesized audio compositions projected into a three-dimensional space. As in the past, that space is configured with 24 high-end loudspeakers; and, for many of the performances, the projection of the audio sources onto those speakers is controlled in real-time. The results are experienced by the audience sitting in total darkness.

Once again, the Festival will see four performances of “fixed media” compositions by 42 local and international composers. Eleven of those local artists will be (in alphabetical order) Thom Blum, Cliff Caruthers, San Genovese, Matt Ingalls, Cheryl E Leonard, Douglas McCausland, Kristin Miltner, Maggi Payne, Gino Robair, Jon Leidecker, and Michael Zelner. There will also be a survey of electronic music composed in India between 1969 and 1972. Other contributing composers from the past will include Amon Tobin, Luc Ferrari, John Chowning, Laurie Spiegel, Annette Vande Gorne, and Giles Gobeil. Specific dates and times of the four performances are as follows:

• Friday, January 10, 8:30 p.m.
• Saturday, January 11, 7 p.m.
• Saturday, January 11, 9:30 p.m.
• Sunday, January 12, 7 p.m.

As in the past the second Saturday concert will feature late-night appropriate works that lean towards ambient and long-form explorations. The specific compositions to be performed at each of these concerts will be as follows:

Friday, January 10, 8:30 p.m.

• LUC FERRARI - Visage V (1958)
• MAGGI PAYNE - Surface Tension (2010)
• ANNETTE VANDE GORNE - Vox Alia IV: Vox Populi (2023)
• MARTIN BÉDARD - Honey (Architectures From Silence No. 1) (2021)
• MARIE-JEANNE WYCKMANS - Voyage, Voyage (2006)
• S.C. SHARMA - After the War (1969)
• NIKOS KANELIKIS - Inflection Point (2024)
• SAM GENOVESE - Image Storm (2024)
• CHERYL E LEONARD - Eremozoic (2021)
• DOUGLAS MCCAUSLAND - Premiere (2025)

Saturday, January 11, 7 p.m.

• JOHN CHOWNING - Phoné (1981)
• AMON TOBIN - Piece of Paper (2011)
• GILLES GOBEIL - Dans l’air du soir (2019)
• MAŁGORZATA ALBIŃSKA-FRANK and CHARLOTTE HUG - Voices Found (2024)
• ENRICO DORIGATTI - Quantum (2020)
• I.S. MATHUR - Soundtrack of Shadow Play (1969)
• JULIE MONDOR - Phloême (2024)
• THOM BLUM - Combustible (2008)
• CLIFF CARUTHERS - Blue Sky (2006)
• MATT INGALLS - Sketches (2025)
• KRISTIN MILTNER - Premiere (2025)

Saturday, January 11, 9:30 p.m.

• LAURIE SPIEGEL - Patchwork (1977)
• YANNICK DAUBY - Other Topographics (2023)
• CHARLES DELUGA - Ecospherical: The Flood (2023)
• MARCO DIBELTULU - Due atomi di idrogeno e uno di ossigeno (2024)
• DAVID PIAZZA - L’arène aux songes (2023)

Sunday, January 12, 7 p.m.

• KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN - the Spanish anthem section from Region III of Hymnen (1967)
• JOHN CAGE - Medio Mutante (2023, version 23A of “Williams Mix,” originally composed in 1953)
• JOHN OSWALD - Plexture ’24 (excerpt) (2024)
• NEGATIVLAND - Incomprehensible Solution (2020)
• RUTH ANDERSON - DUMP (excerpt) (1970)
• CARL STONE - Apsara (2022)
• PEOPLE LIKE US - Gone Gone Beyond (excerpt) (2022)
• PHILIPPE MACNAB-SÉGUIN - Gone For Eggs (2024)
• DIANA SALAZAR - La Voz Del Fuelle (2012)
• GINO ROBAIR - Doom Scroll (2024)
• WOBBLY - Wild Why (2002)
• MICHAEL ZELNER - Public (2024)

All performances will take place in the Victoria Theatre, located in the Mission at 2961 16th Street, one block east of the 16th Street BART Station and the Muni bus stops on the corner of Mission Street. General admission will be $20 for each concert with a special $10 rate for balcony seating and for the underemployed. The one exception will be the 9:30 p.m. show on Saturday, which will be $10 for all. As in the past, there will be a festival pass sold for all four concerts for $50. Tickets will be available at the door after 7 p.m. on each of the three days of the festival, and only cash will be accepted. Eventbrite has created a Web page for advance ticket purchases for both individual concerts and the festival pass.

Vox Humana SF Updates Plans for Next Month

Poster design for Vox Humana SF’s Voyages program (currently shown on the Vox Humana SF home page)

Readers may recall that, when the Vox Humana SF a cappella choir, led by its Artistic Director Don Scott Carpenter, announced its second season this past August, I was able to relate the program details for the second of the two concerts of the season. That performance, entitled Voyages, will take place in a little over a month’s time. However, I learned yesterday that there would be a change in the February program; and it seems to be appropriate to account for that change sooner rather than later.

Works that had been previously announced and will remain on the program include “God’s World” by José Daniel Vargas, which will be a world premiere performance. Other recent compositions that are still on the program will be by Joan Tower (“Descending”), Jake Heggie (“Stop this Day and Night With Me”), and Jacob Mühlrad (“Ay Li Lu”). The earlier works on the program will still be Fest- und Gedenksprüche, Johannes Brahms’ Opus 109 cycle of three motets for mixed double choir, and one of Gustav Mahler’s settings of a poem by Friedrich Rückert, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’.” As of this writing, further details involve only contributing composers, rather than specific works. Those composers are (in alphabetical, rather than chronological, order) Eleanor Alberga, John Corigliano, and Eric Whitacre.

The San Francisco performance of Voyages will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 15. The venue will be St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. Most readers probably know by now that the address of the church is 1111 O’Farrell Street, one block west of the corner of Franklin Street. Ticket prices range from $30 to $71. City Box Office has created a Web page, which includes a floor plan for selecting seats as well as a hyperlink for “Quick Pick Tickets.”

Voices of Music Releases Josquin Video

Saskia Coolen, Hanneke van Proosdij, and Andrew Levy performing Josquin on period instruments

Yesterday Voices of Music rang in the New Year with an “earlier” Early Music video than usual. The music was a chanson by the Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez. Josquin was, himself, a singer; so this was a pioneering example of advances in vocal polyphony. However, for this video the music was performed by a matched consort of recorders: treble, tenor, and bass. These were performed, in that order, by Hanneke van Proosdij, Andrew Levy, and Saskia Coolen. The duration of this video is less than two and one-half minutes, but it serves up a generously informative account of Josquin’s impact on the creation and performance of polyphonic music.

SFB Repertory Season to Begin with MacMillan

Now that this season’s run of performances by San Francisco Ballet (SFB) of Helgi Tomasson’s choreography for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet score has run its course, it is time to make places for the Repertory Season. On the principle that one full-length ballet performance deserves another, that Season will begin with an SFB premiere: Kenneth MacMillan’s three act choreographic account of Antoine François Prévost’s novel, Manon Lescaut. Martin Yates arranged and orchestrated the music that Jules Massenet composed for his Manon opera. The SFB performance will be staged by Robert Tewsley, and the arrangement of the music for the SFB Orchestra will be prepared by Leighton Lucas. As usual, dancers will alternate in performing the principal roles of Manon and the chevalier des Grieux, who is smitten by her.

The full list of performance dates and times is as follows:

• Saturday, January 25, 2 p.m.
• Saturday, January 25, 8 p.m.
• Sunday, January 26, 2 p.m.
• Tuesday, January 28, 7:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, January 29, 7:30 p.m.
• Thursday, January 30, 7:30 p.m.
• Friday, January 31, 8 p.m.
• Saturday, February 1, 2 p.m.
• Saturday, February 1, 8 p.m.

Dores André as Manon and Max Cauthorn as Des Grieux (photograph by RJ Muna, courtesy of SFB)

Ticket prices start at $49; and all performances will take place in the War Memorial Opera House, which is on the northwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and Grove Street (across Grove from Davies Symphony Hall). A single Web page has been created for purchasing tickets for all of the above dates and times. Casting information (which is subject to change) for the leading roles includes Principal Dancers Dores André, Jasmine Jimison, Sasha De Sola, and Nikisha Fogo as Manon, and Harrison James, Max Cauthorn, and Aaron Robison as des Grieux. Tickets may also be purchased at the Box Office in the outer lobby of the Opera House or by calling 415-865-2000. The Box Office is open for ticket sales Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Another Baroque New Year’s Eve with ABS

Christoph Platzer’s 1710 portrait of George Frideric Handel, who would have been about 25 years old at the time (from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

Last night, as has been the case for quite some time, American Bach Soloists (ABS) closed out 2024 with its annual Baroque New Year’s Eve concert in Herbst Theatre. As usual, the program was dominated with a generous selection of excerpts from the operas of George Frideric Handel. In “order of appearance” these were Riccardo primo, re d’Inghilterra (HWV 23), Partenope (HWV 27), Flavio, re de Longobardi (HWV 16), Rinaldo (HWV 7), Ariodante (HWV 23), and Giulio Cesare (HWV 17), along with the HWV 46a oratorio The Triumph of Time and Truth. These were complemented by selections from three operas by Jean-Philippe Rameau, Naïs (RCT 49), Platée (RCT 53), and Les indes galantes (RCT 44), as well as Carl Heinrich Graun’s opera Cesare e Cleopatra.

The ABS instrumental ensemble was jointed by two vocalists, both familiar to ABS performances: soprano Maya Kherani and countertenor Eric Jurenas. All of the selections were solos except for the final selection, which was the duet for Cleopatra and Cesare in HWV 17. [added 9 a.m.: The encore selection was also a duet, this time from HWV 23 sung by Ariodante and Ginevra.] There were also several instrumental offerings of overtures and sinfonias.

As usual, in spite of all that quantity, the program proceeded at a relatively fast clip. Each aria had its own characteristic say, and Kherani was particularly engaging for finding just the right body language for each of her appearances. A pessimist might have picked up the program at the beginning of the performance and thought, “One damned thing after another!” However, the selections provided an engaging diversity of musical settings for a generous variety of dramatic situations. As a result, there was never a dull moment; and, with an encore following the conclusion, the performance left the audience with the high spirits necessary for New Year’s Eve celebrations!