Old First Concerts: August, 2026

Once again, August will be the month of the San Francisco International Piano Festival. True to the festival’s name, programs will celebrate a kaleidoscope of international voices from the present and both recent and distant past. The Festival will begin on Friday, August 21, and run through Sunday, August 30. Dates and times are as follows:

• Friday, August 21, 8 p.m.: The pianists will be Festival Director Jeffrey LaDeur and Éva Polgár, who will be making her San Francisco debut. The title of the program is Postcards, which reflects on the opening selection, Samuel Barber’s four-hand composition Souvenirs. The first half of the program will then conclude with Derek Bermel’s “Turning.” The second half of the program will be devoted to three compositions by Franz Liszt as follows:
• S. 628: Bénédiction et serment, composed for piano four-hands
• S. 175: the two Légendes: “St François d'Assise: la prédication aux oiseaux” and “St François de Paule: marchant sur les flots”
• S. 586: the four-hand arrangement of the choral setting of “Gaudeamus igitur”
• Sunday, August 23, 4 p.m.: Pianist Alexandre Dossin will present a solo recital entitled American piano music from the last 100 years. Dossin has recorded the complete works for piano by George Walker, and four of those compositions will provide the core of his program as follows:
• Prelude and Caprices
• Variations on a Kentucky Folk Song
• Guido’s Hand No. 4
• Piano Sonata No. 5

          He will begin the program with selections from the Thirteen Anniversaries suite compiled by Leonard Bernstein, which will be followed by Robert Pollock’s collection, Piano Miniatures. He will conclude with two significant works from the last century:

• the fourth of the Bachianas Brasileiras suites composed by Heitor Villa-Lobos
• the solo piano arrangement of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”
• Friday, August 28, 8 p.m.: The TNTeague Duo is a father-and-son partnership. Both of them (father Liam Teague and son Jaden Teague-Núñez) are steelpan virtuosos. Jaden will alternate between steelpan and piano. Selections will be announced from the stage.
• Sunday, August 30, 4 p.m.: The title of the program will be Symphonic Dances, which will also be the title of the final work on the program. This is also the title of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 45, originally composed as an orchestral suite in three movements. The composer subsequently arrangement the score for two pianos. The performers will be pianists LaDeur and Elizabeth Dorman, making her Festival debut. This will be the final work on the program, preceded by “A Visit to Hell,” more steelpan music composed by Liam. This, in turn, will be coupled with Kevin Bobo’s “Rhapsody in Steel.” The program will begin with the two-piano version of Gershwin’s “Cuban Overture.”

Most readers probably know by now that Old First Concerts events take place at Old First Presbyterian Church. This is located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. Tickets will be available for purchase through the above hyperlinks, which are also available for live stream viewing.