Peter Whelan to Begin Tenure with PBO in July

Peter Whelan will curate his first season as Music Director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale (PBO) in a little over a month’s time. San Francisco will see a series of six concerts beginning next month and continuing through April of next year.  As in the past, in addition to full-season subscriptions, there will be Choose-Your-Own subscriptions for five, four, or three concerts. Also as in the past, all San Francisco performances will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Herbst Theatre, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Subscriptions are now on sale, and a Web page has been created, which provides separate hyperlinks for the available options. The San Francisco dates are as follows:

Thursday, July 23, Handel’s Tolomeo: The season will begin with a semi-staged production of George Frideric Handel’s opera seria, Tolomeo, re d'Egitto (Ptolemy, King of Egypt), HWV 25. The advance material I received describes the production as  a “historically informed performance with theatrical elements to heighten the drama.” Countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen will perform the title role. Other vocalists will be countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim, sopranos Lauren Snouffer and Nicole Heaston, and bass-baritone Dashon Burton.

Friday, November 13, Handel’s The Power of Music: The five-concert subscription series will begin with the United States premiere of the 1772 Dublin version of the HWV 75 ode, Alexander’s Feast; vocal soloists will be soprano Sherezade Panthaki, mezzo Rachael Wilson, and tenor James Way with Valérie Sainte-Agathe leading the Philharmonia Chorale.

Friday, December 4, Baroque Brilliance: The program will begin with more Handel, this time limited to a single aria, “Let the Bright Seraphim” from the HWV 57 three-act oratorio Samson performed by soprano Kathryn Mueller. The second half of the program will present two members of the Bach family. It will conclude with the BWV 51 cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. This will be preceded by a concerto composed by his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, his Wq. 172 concerto for cello in A major. This, in turn, will be preceded by the last of the three orchestral suites composed by Georg Philipp Telemann, the TWV 55:G10 Burlesque de Quixotte. In the first half of the program, Mueller will also sing the West Coast premiere of “O virgo, cui salute debet orbis,” composed by Marianna Martines, whose keyboard music was recently recorded by Signum Classics on an album release this past April.

Friday, February 5, Vivaldi and the Oud: I suspect that it is very unlikely that Vivaldi knew anything about the oud. However, Philharmonic Baroque Composer-in-Residence Tarik O’Regan has composed a concerto for it with accompaniment by strings and percussion (perhaps with a nod to Béla Bartók). This new work will be both preceded and followed by works by Antonio Vivaldi. The program will begin with the overture to RV 725, the three-act dramma per musica entitled L'Olimpiade. The second half of the program will survey selected movements from L'estro armonico, Vivaldi’s Opus 3 collection of twelve concertos for string instruments.

Friday, March 5, Baroque on Stage: The first half of this program will survey a selection of works composed for staged performances by Henry Purcell and Jean-Philippe Rameau. It will conclude with a set of variations on the “Folia” theme, composed by Francesco Geminiani in an arrangement by Michi Wiancko. There will also be a concerto in E minor by Antonio Vivaldi, which will apparently be a “synthesis” of RV 273 and RV 278. The second half of the program will begin with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Wq. 182:5, a symphony in B minor.

William Blake’s The Ancient of Days, a depiction of the angel Urizen planning the Creation

Friday, April 9, The Creation: Having began the season with an opera, PBO will conclude with an oratorio. This will be The Creation, the Hoboken XXI:2 oratorio by Joseph Haydn. The vocal soloists will be soprano Lucy Crowe, tenor Nicholas Phan, and bass-baritone Enrico Lagasca. Valérie Sainte-Agathe will again lead the Philharmonia Chorale.