Two weeks ago I received information about the 2026 season in San Francisco that will be presented by Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF). As in the past, the full schedule will consist of ten recitals, five of which will also be given performance in Walnut Creek and Palo Alto. This year only six of those recitals will take place in Herbst Theatre, which is located in the Veterans Building on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and McAllister Street. The other four will take place in the Presidio at 99 Moraga Avenue. Only one of the concerts will take place on a Saturday, March 28 at 7:30 p.m.; and all the others will be Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Specifics are as follows:
February 22, Herbst Theatre: The Aris Quartet made its Bay Area debut with CMSF in February of 2023. The members are still violinists Anna Katharina Wildermuth and Noémi Zipperling, violist Caspar Vinzens, and cellist Lukas Sieber. This time they will frame their program with quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms. They will begin with the second of Beethoven’s six Opus 18 quartets, composed in the key of G major. The Brahms selection will also be a “second quartet,” composed in the key of A minor from his Opus 51 set. The Beethoven quartet will be followed by Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 110, his eighth quartet, composed in the key of C minor.
Tiffany Poon (photograph by Remy Holwick)
March 1, Herbst Theatre: Hong Kong born pianist Tiffany Poon made her debut with CMSF in 2022; program details for her return have not yet been announced.
March 8, Presidio Theatre: Violinist Stella Chan, violist Matthew Lipman, and cellist Brannon Cho formed their trio in 2023. They will present the United States premiere of Andreia Pinto-Correia’s “Cantares.” The program will begin with music by Ernst von Dohnányi, his “Serenade,” composed in the key of C major and conclude with a trio by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, his K. 563 divertimento in E-flat major.
March 15, Herbst Theatre: Pianist Angela Hewitt will use the second half of her program as a reflection on François Couperin. She will play selections from Ordre 6ème de clavecin in B flat major, the first of the seven “ordres” in the Second Livre. (Four of these “Livres” were published between 1713 and 1730.) She will follow those pieces with Maurice Ravel’s tribute to the composer, his suite entitled Le Tombeau de Couperin. The program will begin with one of Couperin’s contemporaries, Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 829 partita in G major. Hewitt will then shift to G minor for a performance of Robert Schumann’s Opus 22, his second piano sonata.
March 28, Presidio Theatre: This will be a less “standard” trio performance. Flutist Demarre McGill and violist Che-Yen Chen will be joined at the harp by Julie Smith Phillips. The program will conclude with Ami Maayani’s arrangement of Beethoven’s Opus 25 Serenade in D major. This will be preceded by “Elegy,” composed for those three instruments by Lita Grier. Details have not been provided as to whether or not the opening selections of keyboard compositions by Jean-Philippe Rameau will be performed as a harp solo. The program announcement also includes Jan Bach’s “Eisteddfod;” but, as of this writing, that composition does not appear on his Web site.
April 12, Herbst Theatre: Quatuor Danel is the string quartet led by violinist Marc Danel. The second violinist is Gilles Millet, joined by Vlad Bogdanas on viola and cellist Yovan Markovitch. Their program is framed by the different ends of the nineteenth century, beginning with Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 13 (second) quartet in A minor and concluding with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 11 (first) quartet in D major. These selections will “frame” Ravel’s F major quartet.
April 19, Presidio Theatre: The piano accompanist for violinist Nathan Meltzer has not yet been announced. However, the program will conclude with Franz Schubert’s D. 934 Fantasia, which includes variations on the composer’s D. 741 song “Sei mir gegrüßt.” The first half of the program will conclude with Gabriel Fauré’s Opus 108, second violin sonata. This will be followed, after the intermission, by Sky Macklay’s “FastLowHighSlow.” The announcement I received claims that the program will begin with music by Francis Poulenc, an “Improvisation” based Johannes Brahms’ best known song, “Wiegenlied” (cradle song), the fourth in his Opus 49 collection.
April 26, Herbst Theatre: The members of the Carion Wind Quintet are Dóra Seres (flute), Egils Upatnieks (oboe), Egīls Šēfers (clarinet), David M.A.P. Palmquist (horn) and Niels Anders Vedsten Larsen (bassoon). They are geographically diverse with Upatnieks and Šēfers based in Riga, Palmquist and Larsen in Copenhagen, and Seres in Malmö. The most familiar work on the program will probably be Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken II:46 in B-flat major, the sixth “Feldparthie,” whose second movement is the “Chorale St. Antoni,” the source of the familiar set of variations composed by Brahms. There will also be an arrangement of Béla Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances suite. The other composers contributing to the program will be György Ligeti, Medaglia Belle, and Gene Cavadlo. Carion has a YouTube Web page on which they perform Cavadlo’s Klezmer Dances for Wind.
Sunday, May 10: Pianist Olga Kern will return performing two works with the Dalí Quartet. The first of these will be Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Ballet, which will be coupled with the second of Antonín Dvořák’s two piano quintets, Opus 81 (B. 155) in A major. Kern has not yet announced her solo performances.
Sunday, May 17: The Escher Quartet will return, joined by flutist Brandon Patrick George. The quintet will begin the program with Amy Beach’s “Theme and Variations” Opus 80 and conclude it with Alberto Ginastera’s “Impresiones de la Puna.” George will also contribute to Mozart’s K. 285 flute quartet in D major. The two quartet selections will be Giuseppe Verdi’s string quartet in E minor and the second movement of Samuel Barber’s Opus 11 quartet, best known under the title “Adagio for Strings.”
No comments:
Post a Comment