Amaral Brightens Shenson Spotlight Series

Violinist Nathan Amaral (from the San Francisco Symphony Web page for last night’s recital)

Some readers may have noticed that my headlines for the first two Shenson Spotlight Series recitals, presented by the San Francisco Symphony, in January and February both included the adjective “dim.” I am happy to report that things brightened up last night in Davies Symphony Hall with the debut recital by violinist Nathan Amaral, accompanied at the piano by Sophiko Simsive. The program was framed by two major (in both key and reputation) violin sonatas, beginning with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and concluding with César Franck. Amaral was born in Brazil and selected the second “Valsa de esquina” by Brazilian composer Francisco Mignone to separate these two European sonatas.

I first became aware of Mignone through Nelson Freire’s Brasileiro album, which I had written about during my tenure with Examiner.com. Last night he was just the right composer to reflect on the soloist’s Brazilian heritage. Personally, I found it to be a perfectly well-conceived “centerpiece,” which could competently “rub shoulders” with both Mozart and Franck. Furthermore, because the Mozart and Franck sonatas both show up frequently in violin recitals, there was something refreshing in Mignone’s rhetoric in departing from the more familiar “classics.”

That said, Amaral did far more than just doing justice to both Mozart and Franck. There is a diversity of intensity in Franck’s rhetoric, which Amaral captured perfectly without ever overplaying it. The Mozart sonata, on the other hand, was conceived as a modest delight, making it the perfect selection for engaging the attentive listener. For all of these selections, Simsive knew how to establish just the right framework for the rhetorical phrasing in the violin solo passages. The result was a selection of three duo performances in which the attentive listener had much to benefit from both of the performers.

As might be expected, Amaral prepared an encore. This was Florence Price’’s “Adoration.” This piece has been championed by violinist Randall Goosby, who has performed it in San Francisco during his past visits. I have come to enjoy that short piece and was glad to listen to an interpretation by another violinist!

Agustin Hadelich Makes his SFP Debut

Agustin Hadelich and his accompanist, Francesco Piemontesi (from the SFP Web page for last night’s performance)

Last night violinist Agustin Hadelich made his debut with San Francisco Performances (SFP) as a soloist in the Shenson Great Artists & Ensemble Series. Many readers may recall having seen him in Davies Symphony Hall, where he made his last visit in November of 2023, when he was the soloist in the San Francisco Symphony performance of Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 53 violin concerto in A minor. For his visit to Herbst Theatre, he was joined at the piano by Francesco Piemontesi for a program structured around three sonatas for violin and piano. In “order of appearance,” the composers were Claude Debussy, Francis Poulenc, and César Franck.

Each of these sonatas was preceded by a sharply contrasting composition. Debussy’s sonata followed “Récit du chant de l’hymne précédent” (recitative on the melody of the preceding hymn), composed in the late seventeenth century by Nicolas de Grigny, organist at the Notre-Dame de Reims cathedral. Poulenc was preceded by Jean-Philippe Rameau with a selection from his Pièces de Clavecin en Concert collection. Finally, the concluding Franck sonata followed the most recent work on the program, a set of three short pieces by György Kurtág composed in 1979.

It would be fair to say that the overall breadth of the program was balanced by the depth of each of the sonatas. The fact is that the only thing the sonatas had in common was an association with the history of French music. That said, Hadelich knew how to evoke just the right rhetorical interpretations for each of those sonatas; and, where Poulenc was concerned, Piemontesi seemed to be enjoying himself as much as Hadelich. Taken as a whole, this was a “no frills” program; but both soloist and accompanist knew exactly how to mine engaging rhetoric from each of the selections. Just as engaging was the encore entitled simply “C.” This was an arrangement for violin and piano of the first piece in Poulenc’s vocal work, Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon.

Hadelich always gives the impression that he enjoys visiting San Francisco, and I am glad to acknowledge that I have enjoyed every one of my encounters with him.

A Dim Shenson Spotlight Performance

Pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko (by Waldy Martens Photography, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Yesterday evening in Davies Symphony Hall saw the beginning of this season’s Shenson Spotlight Series, its fifth iteration. The was the first of four recitals, the remaining three of which will take place on February 25, April 15, and June 3. Last night saw a solo performance by pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko, who framed his program with works by two major Russian composers. He began with Alexander Scriabin’s Opus 28 “Fantasy,” composed in the key of B minor, and concluded with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 23 collection of ten preludes. These selections framed the “keystone” of the program (to mix metaphors), which was César Franck’s “Prélude, Choral et Fugue.”

Sadly, this was a promising undertaking that did not live up to its promise. To be fair, the Scriabin selection receives more attention in my collection of recordings than in concert performances. Thus, Izik-Dzurko deserves credit for advocating that attention. However, when it came to the listening experience on audience side, his delivery amounted to little more than sound and fury signifying you-know-what.

The Rachmaninoff preludes did not fare much better. Each of the ten selections is in a different key, but the composer conceived an intricate overall design based on how the individual preludes were paired. To be fair, it is easier to appreciate that design by looking at the program book; but it would not surprise me if Rachmaninoff himself encouraged his audiences to do just that while he was unfolding the journey from one prelude to the next. Sadly, many of the thematic lines were blurred by Izik-Dzurko’s heavy-handed execution, thus undermining any thoughts the composer might have had of the unfolding of texture.

The Franck selection tends to be more familiar with those that like to follow the piano repertoire. This past August, for example, it was one of the major selections performed at the eighth annual San Francisco International Piano Festival. I have to confess that, while the music is way beyond my “pay grade,” I still enjoyed taking the time to work through the score to enhance any experience of listening to the music in recital. Last night it was difficult for me to avoid disappointment with Izik-Dzurko’s delivery, which amounted to a plethora of notes with little sense of expression.

Sadly, that plethora reared its head again in the first of the two unannounced encores, the second of which was a lame attempt at trying to explore jazzy rhetoric; hopefully, next month’s Shenson pianist will deliver more engaging offerings.

Perlman’s Great Performers Recital at Davies

Violinist Itzhak Perlman (from the San Francisco Symphony Web page for his recital)

Last night violinist Itzhak Perlman returned to Davies Symphony Hall for his latest recital in the San Francisco Symphony Great Performers Series. Perlman has not been a stranger to San Francisco; but, according to my archives, I have not encountered him since his Opening Night Gala performance with the San Francisco Symphony in September of 2018. He used that event to promote his Perlman Music Program, bringing six of the alumni in tow. Last night was a more traditional duo recital with pianist Rohan De Silva as accompanist.

Where violin recitals are concerned, “traditional” usually means “beginning with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.” Sure enough, the evening began with the two-movement K. 301 sonata in G major. The rest of the program took a one-century leap into the last decades of the nineteenth century. The intermission was preceded by César Franck’s A major sonata and followed by the G major sonatina, Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 100.

There were, of course, encores: six of them, all probably familiar to those following violin recitals. Fritz Kreisler was represented by both the familiar “Liebesfreud” (love’s joy, the first of the three Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen pieces) and the less-encountered Opus 3, “Tambourin Chinois.” The other composer given two encores was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the “Chant sans paroles” and “Humoresque,” the second of the two Opus 10 pieces. Perlman then concluded the encores with the one that probably drew the most listeners, the theme that John Williams composed for the movie Schindler’s List.

Taken as a whole, this was an evening of satisfying diversity. However (perhaps because age is catching up on me), it was hard to come away without thinking this had been a “business as usual” encounter. Perlman is clearly as skilled and focused as ever. Nevertheless, there was little, if any, among the stimuli to excite the “little grey cells.” I almost (but not quite) felt that revisiting the album tracks would have been just as stimulating.

SFIPF: Korepanova Disappoints Again

Last night the eighth annual San Francisco International Piano Festival (SFIPF) presented a program entitled The World of Ravel with Asiya Korepanova. When Korepanova gave her debut recital last season, she presented a program of seven transcriptions, all of her own design. Sadly, this was not the Festival’s finest hour, due, as I put it at that time, to “ Korepanova’s overly aggressive keyboard technique,” which “tended to undermine any suggestion of expressiveness in either the music itself or its realization through transcription.”

Asiya Korepanova playing Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau” at SFIPF (screen shot from the YouTube video of the performance)

Expressiveness took it on the chin again last night to such an extent that I decided to limit myself to the first half of the program. The program was a promising one, beginning with the entirety of Claude Debussy’s L. 75 Suite bergamasque, accounting for all four movements, rather than just the third (“Clair de lune”). Debussy’s suite was paired with Maurice Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau.” These two twentieth-century composers were coupled with one of the major French keyboard works of the nineteenth century, the “Prélude, Choral et Fugue” by César Franck. While Korepanova could not be faulted for failing to account for each of the notes in these compositions assuming its proper place with the appropriate delivery of dynamics, there was little in her approaches to interpretation that would guide the attentive listener from one rhetorical outpost to another.

With the arrival of the intermission, I decided that I had had enough of “Korepanova’s Way!”

CMSF Concludes Season with Beijing Guitars

Duo guitarists Meng Su and Yameng Wang (photograph by Sophie Zhai, from the Beijing Guitar Duo Web site)

The Beijing Guitar Duo of Su Meng and Wang Yameng is no stranger to San Francisco. They gave their first recital in Herbst Theatre for San Francisco Performances (SFP) in April of 2010. They have also often contributed to the Dynamite Guitars series presented by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. Yesterday afternoon’s visit returned to Herbst but this time under the auspices of Chamber Music San Francisco for the final program in the ten concerts in this year’s season.

The final work was the only one explicitly composed for two guitars, Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Suite. Su herself provided the arrangement of Claude Debussy’s four-hand piano composition Petite Suite. There was also an arrangement by Sergio Assad, who previously had a major impact on guitar studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He prepared the two-guitar version of Radamés Gnattali’s Suite Retratos, which was originally composed for chamber ensemble. The other guitarist familiar to me was Manuel Barrueco (performing in Herbst exactly one week earlier), who arranged Tan Dun’s Opus 1, Eight Memories in Watercolor. The Beijing Duo played five of the movements from that suite. Enrique Granados was included on the program with his eight Valses poéticos, arranged by Christian Gruber and Peter Maklar; and the program began with Mantanya Ophee’s arrangement of César Franck’s organ composition, Prélude, fugue et variation.

Finally, there was one encore selection. This was an arrangement of “Le tic-toc-choc, ou Les maillotins,” from the eighteenth Ordre in F major from the third book in François Couperin’s Livre de piéces de clavecin. This is one of those keyboard compositions that sounds much better on a harpsichord than on a piano. The plucked strings of two guitars served up an excellent evocation of the spirit the composer had in mind.

Taken as a whole, this was a thoroughly engaging journey through an impressively diverse repertoire. Every composition on the program had its own unique rhetorical stance, and the duo players knew exactly how to capture the full breadth of those stances. It might be fair to note that Su and Wang revisited many of the pieces they presented during their last visit in December of 2023, hosted jointly by SFP and Omni; but that was long enough ago that one could still enjoy the repertoire!

SFP’s Annual “Gift” to Subscribers and Donors

Violinist Geneva Lewis (courtesy of SFP)

Every year San Francisco Performances (SFP) offers a free concert to its subscribers and those that had donated at the level of Member or higher. Last year there were actually two of these “Gift” concerts, the first taking place in February with a performance of the piano trio with pianist Juho Pohjonen performing with cellist Jonathan Swensen and Stephen Waarts on violin and the second in April (almost exactly a year ago) with cellist Camille Thomas accompanied at the piano by Julien Brocal. This year’s event took place last night in Herbst Theatre, a performance by violinist Geneva Lewis, making her SFP recital debut and accompanied at the piano by Evren Ozel, making his SFP debut as well.

The program provided an impressively broad scope beginning with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the opening selection and spanning to the last decade of the last century with Valentin Silvestrov’s “Post scriptum.” The early nineteenth century was represented by Robert and Clara Schumann, both of whom composed sets of three “Romances” for violin and piano. The program concluded at the other end of the century with César Franck’s A major sonata, which he composed as a wedding gift for the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe and has been acknowledged (including by Wikipedia) as his most popular work.

I found this to be an engaging journey of both the familiar and discovery. I have become familiar with Silvestrov primarily through ECM recordings, so I was looking forward to this recital opportunity. I was not disappointed; and, in the last of the three movements, Lewis ripped into pizzicato passages that had me on the edge of my seat! I also found myself wondering whether the final movement of Clara’s sonata served as reflections on Robert.

Most important, however, was how the Franck sonata served as a “grand finale.” Franck himself was a keyboardist, and it quickly becomes evident that his intention was that the two “voices” should perform as equals. Lewis and Ozel seemed to be aware of this intention and could not have done a better job of satisfying it. Following up on this “joint debut” appearance, I hope that the wait for a return visit will not be too long!

SFP: Plans for 2025 Gift Concert

Tickets are now available for the annual Gift Concert recital presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP). The “gift” is that subscribers and donors are entitled to tickets at no charge. However, they are now available for seating by the general public in the Orchestra and Boxes at the price of $45. As usual, they may be purchased online through an SFP Web page or by calling 415-392-2545. Remaining tickets will be available at the door with a 50% discount for students and 20% off for seniors.

Violinist Geneva Lewis (from the SFP Web page for purchasing tickets)

This year’s recitalist will be violinist Geneva Lewis, whose parents are from the United States and New Zealand. She will be accompanied by American pianist Evren Ozel. She has prepared an imaginative program that will present works by both husband and wife in the Schumann family. In the first half of the program, she will play Clara Schumann’s Opus 22 set of three Romances. This will be complemented in the second half by another set of three works of this genre, this time composed by Robert Schumann and published as his Opus 94. The entire program will be framed by sonatas from two different centuries. The opening selection will be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 301 sonata in G major, and the recital will conclude with César Franck’s A major sonata. The center of the program will also be a sonata, this time by the living composer Valentyn Silvestrov, who gave his sonata the title “Post Scriptum.”

This concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 22. It will take place in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. This venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel.

David Oistrakh on Warner: Late Romantic Period

1972 photograph of David Oistrakh (from the Fotocollectie Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau of the
Dutch National Archives in The Hague, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands license)

One week ago today, this site began its examination of the Warner Remastered Edition box set compiling all the recordings that Russian violinist David Oistrakh made for Columbia and HMV. As many readers probably expected, the first article focused on First Viennese School composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert. This amounted to thirteen full CDs and one shared with Giuseppe Tartini.

When one advances to the nineteenth century, the repertoire is far more modest. Johannes Brahms is represented by four CDs, accounting for two performances each of the Opus 77 violin concerto in D major and the Opus 102 double concerto in A minor. George Szell is the one conductor accounting for both of these compositions, leading the Cleveland Orchestra with Mstislav Rostropovich as cellist for Opus 102. The other cellist is Pierre Fournier in a performance by the Philharmonia Orchestra led by Alceo Galliera. (That CD also includes a final track of the Opus 81 “Tragic Overture.”) The other recording of Opus 77 is led by Otto Klemperer conducting the Orchestre national de la Radio-télévision française (formerly known as the Orchestre national de la Radiodiffusion française) in 1960. There is also a recording of Édouard Lalo’s Opus 23 “Symphonie espagnole” with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Jean Martinon. The only chamber music CD couples César Franck’s A major sonata and Karol Szymanowski’s Opus 9 sonata in D minor with Vladimir Yampolsky on piano.

Oistrakh was clearly more in his comfort zone in the preceding century. Nevertheless, both Szell and Klemperer could not have been better guides in leading him through the Brahms repertoire. Where the other nineteenth-century composers were concerned, I have to confess that my attention was never seriously piqued. I happen to have a soft spot for the Franck sonata because I got to listen to my Santa Barbara neighbor preparing it and then performing it in recital. Since then, I have never really risen to any recordings of that sonata but definitely enjoyed Daniel Hope’s take on it when he visited Chamber Music San Francisco at the end of this past April.

The fact is that any revisiting of this portion of the collection is likely to lead me to Szell’s leadership of the Brahms double concerto, leaving me with better choices for the other selections.

Bruno Monteiro’s Franco-Belgian Discoveries

Cover of album being discussed (courtesy of ET'ETERA)

Readers may recall that, this past spring, violinist Bruno Monteiro released his 20th Century and Forward album of his duo performances with pianist João Paulo Santos. The “forward” composer was Ivan Moody, who had died this past January. This Friday will see the release of this duo’s second album of the year. The Franco-Belgian Album turns back the close to the late nineteenth century, presenting compositions by Henri Vieuxtemps, César Franck, Gabriel Fauré, and Camille Saint-Saëns. In then concludes with an arrangement composed by Eugéne Ysaÿe, reworking a Saint-Saëns piano étude (Opus 52, Number 6) into a violin-piano duo. As of this writing, the best site for pre-orders is an imusic Web page, which is based in Denmark but deals in United States currency!

The major work on the program is the four-movement “grand sonata” by Vieuxtemps. I must confess that my knowledge of this composer is very limited. The fact that I know anything about him at all can be attributed to Jascha Heifetz and Gidon Kremer. I have to confess that Monteiro’s account of that sonata was not particularly convincing, which left me wondering if even he was convinced.

The remaining selection on the album were also not particularly familiar to me through either recital encounters or recordings. However, I came away with the impression what both violinist and accompanist were on more familiar ground for these selections. Indeed, since most of my knowledge of Franck comes from his orchestral and organ music, I found myself particularly drawn to his duo tracks on the album.

As always, my thoughts are reflections of personal tastes; and I just hope that any of those that sail under my flag will be willing to skip over the opening four tracks if they are put off by Vieuxtemps, since there are more than enough gems in the remaining selections!

SFIPF: A Disappointing Program of Transcriptions

Late yesterday afternoon at Old First Presbyterian Church, the San Francisco International Piano Festival (SFIPF) continued with its second program, a solo recital by Asiya Korepanova entitled Transformations. That title was selected by Korepanova because all seven of the works she played were transcriptions of her own design. This would have been an impressive undertaking had it been successful. Sadly, Korepanova’s overly aggressive keyboard technique tended to undermine any suggestion of expressiveness in either the music itself or its realization through transcription.

Asiya Korepanova playing Chopin at SFIPF (screen shot from the video of the performance)

The program itself was framed by music for cello and piano. Korepanova began by coupling Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 3, a “Polonaise brillante,” with an extended introduction, with Gabriel Fauré’s Opus 24 “Élégie.” At “the other end” the program concluded with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 19 sonata for cello and piano. All three of these offerings were overwhelmed with aggressive technique, which, in the case of Opus 19, obliterated any sense of coherent phrasing.

The “meat for the sandwich” consisted of four songs, each by a different composer of a different nationality. She began with Amy Beach’s setting of Victor Hugo”s “Extase,” the second of her three Opus 21 songs. This was followed by “Liebesode,” the sixth in Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs collection. She then moved on to César Franck’s “Le mariage des roses,” and concluded with the complete four-song cycle of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Songs and Dances of Death.” These are all selections that deserve more attention in the current vocal repertoire; but, sadly, Korepanova did little, if anything, to make a convincing case for them.

Nevertheless, her audience demanded an encore. They got “Maria,” probably the best known tune from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. She managed to inject just about every well-known Lisztian trope into her arrangement. Perhaps she was thinking of the West Side of Budapest!

Violinist Mayuko Kamio’s Imaginative Program

Yesterday afternoon in Herbst Theatre, Chamber Music San Francisco presented the penultimate program in its 2024 season, a violin recital by Mayuko Kamio, accompanied at the piano by Noreen Cassidy-Polera. The first half of the program offered the sort of music one would expect from such a recital, coupling a sonata by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (K. 304 in E minor) with one by Johannes Brahms (Opus 100, the second, in A major). Kamio preceded these with a solo performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1006, the third partita, in the key of E major, in the collection of six sonata and partitas for solo violin.

All of these selections were given disciplined accounts of the music. Kamio even honored the “unwritten invitation” to provide her own embellishments to the movements of the Bach partita. She also knew how to establish the individual characteristic qualities of each of the partita’s dance movements. Where the sonatas were concerned, each composer had his own approach to expressiveness; and Kamio knew just how to honor both of them. Given that the piano was Brahms’ primary instrument, the interplay in his sonata was particularly evident and could not have been better reflected by the duo’s joint interpretation.

Those of my generation probably remember the British comedy duo of pianist (and composer) Donald Swann and singer (and lyricist) Michael Flanders. Flanders did most of the talking; and his most memorable line was, “We’re running a little late, so we are going to perform all our encores in a single burst!” Kamio did him one better: She devoted the entire second half of the program to nine short selections, all of which are usually performed as encores!

The “order of appearance” of these pieces was as follows:

1. César Franck, Salut d’Amour
2. Antonín Dvořák, Songs My Mother Taught Me
3. Manuel Ponce, Estrellita
4. Fritz Kreisler, Liebesfreud
5. Fritz Kreisler, Liebesleid
6. Sergei Rachmaninoff, Vocalise
7. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Waltz-Scherzo
8. Grigoraș Dinicu, Hora Staccato
9. Vittorio Monti, Csárdás

These were followed by the “real” encore for the program, Antonio Bazzini’s Opus 25, his “Scherzo fantastique,” better known by the title he attached: “The Dance of the Goblins.” While this approach to programming threatened to be “one damned thing after another,” the combination of diversity and expressive interpretation resulted in a thoroughly engaging overall journey.

2021 cropped photograph of violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter (provided by Quincena Musical, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, from Wikimedia Commons)

While I usually do not report on such matters, I feel it is worth reporting on Kamio’s taste in strapless gowns (one for each half of the program). My generation recalls Anne-Sophie Mutter (above), who had a similar wardrobe. She has been reported as saying that any fabric provided a surface that was too slippery. As I recall, the way she put it was that she wanted to feel her instrument on her own flesh. I have no idea whether Kamio was influenced by Mutter, but there was no questioning her sure command of every gesture with her instrument!

LIEDER ALIVE!: Mezzo, Cello, Piano

LIEDER ALIVE! performers Kindra Scharich, Jeffrey LaDeur, and Jennifer Culp (from the LIEDER ALIVE! Web page for the 2023/24 season)

Early yesterday evening, LIEDER ALIVE! concluded its twelfth annual Liederabend season. The vocalist was mezzo Kindra Scharich, accompanied at the piano by Jeffrey LaDeur. However, for the most part, the program consisted of trio performances with the addition of cellist Jennifer Culp (who also gave two duo performances with LaDeur).

The first half of the program was framed by Franz Schubert (the D. 943 “Auf dem Strom”) and Johannes Brahms (the second of the two Opus 91 songs, “Geistliches Wiegenlied”). (The titles translate as “on the river” and “sacred cradle-song,” respectively.) Robert Schumann was represented by a cello-piano duo, the second of his Opus 94 pieces, entitled simply “Romanze.” These three leading figures were joined by Alexander Borodin’s three songs for piano, voice, and cello, which he composed in 1854.

The second half of the program took in a much wider extent. The earliest selections were by Hector Berlioz (“La Captive”) and César Franck (“Le Sylphe”). The most recent work on the program was “Dream with me,” one of the songs that Leonard Bernstein composed for the Peter Pan musical. Between these “bookends” were selections by Amy Beach (“Chanson d’amour”) and Edwin Greene (“Sing me to sleep”). The cello-piano duo for this half of the program was the third movement (Andante) from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 19 cello sonata.

The entire offering proceeded at a fair clip, providing just enough time for the attentive listener to appreciate each selection and then compare it with what would follow. All three of the performers accounted for their parts with engaging clarity, and Scharich always captured just the right dispositions to frame the texts she was singing. I have been listening to Culp’s performances pretty much for as long as I have been doing my writing, and I have never been dissatisfied!

Taken as a whole, the program put the cap on an engaging season, leaving attentive listeners to look forward to the next season, which will establish a new “home” in the Old First Concerts series.

Daniel Hope’s Violin Recital for CMSF

Last night in Herbst Theatre, violinist Daniel Hope gave his San Francisco recital debut in a performance presented by Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF). He was accompanied at the piano by Simon Crawford-Phillips. The program spanned music from the nineteenth to the current century, including the United States premiere of Jake Heggie’s Fantasy Suite 1803, completed in 2022. There was also a last-minute augmentation, which did not appear on the program sheet.

The high point of the evening came in the second half, which was devoted entirely to César Franck’s A major violin sonata. I first became acquainted with this music in the late Seventies during my time in Santa Barbara. I had a neighbor on the faculty of the Music Departments at the University of California, and she was preparing this sonata for a recital. Since I was a frequent visitor to her unit, I heard a wide diversity of excerpts from the sonata each time I came to her door; so I was well prepared for my first encounter with the sonata in its entirety. It remains one of my favorites, and the expressiveness that both Hope and Crawford-Phillips brought to their interpretation triggered many fond memories.

The same could be said of the encore selection, Fritz Kreisler’s “Liebesleid” (love’s sorrow), the second of the two pieces collected under the title Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen (old Viennese melodies). This is music I have known from childhood, probably because it was often injected into soundtracks for silent cartoons! Hope’s delivery captured the nostalgia of the music without letting the rhetoric get too syrupy.

The first half of the program did not leave as strong an impression. The opening selection was George Enescu’s “Impromptu Concertante.” Enescu was a major figure in the twentieth century, not only as a composer but also as a violinist, a conductor, and a teacher. “Impromptu Concertante” was one of his earliest works, composed in 1903 but not published until 1958. In retrospect I would call it one of those pieces by an up-and-coming-talent throwing everything but the kitchen sink into his efforts. Hope had a solid command of the technical demands, but the overall rhetorical framework left much to be desired.

This was followed by Maurice Ravel’s first violin sonata, composed in the key of A minor and not published until after his death. This was a relatively short single-movement composition, and one can appreciate why Ravel never published it. Hope chose to segue it into Suite populaire espagnole, six of the seven Spanish folksongs (Siete canciones populares españolas) composed by Manuel de Falla, who made the arrangement with Paul Kochanski. I never fail to enjoy these pieces, regardless of setting; but I did not think that Hope quite caught the spirit of the music.

The first half of the program concluded with the Heggie suite, and the composer was on hand to introduce the audience to its four movements. Considering its relatively brevity, this music was, as they say, “all over the map,” which may have been foreboded by an opening movement entitled “Constellations.” The following movements capture the aggressive nature of Ludwig van Beethoven, the rise and fall of his relationship with George Bridgetower (for whom the “Kreutzer” sonata was written), and Heggie’s own opera Dead Man Walking. (I am surprised that the kitchen sink did not show up in the midst of all that diversity!)

Fortunately, the second half of the program compensated for any shortcomings encountered during the first.

April Begins with a New Omni Video

The frequency with which the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts is releasing new videos has become quite impressive. The next release will take place this coming Sunday; and this one is in the Live from St. Mark’s series, video documents of performances that took place here in San Francisco. The date for this particular performance by the Beijing Guitar Duo is December 2, 2023. For those interested in details, I was fortunate enough to cover that concert; and, as usual, documented it as an article on this site. However, the video that will be released this Sunday will account for only three of the selections from that program:

1. The transcription by Matanya Orphee of César Franck’s Opus 18 “Prélude, Fugue et Variation,” which was composed for pipe organ
2. The Valses poéticos collection by Enrique Granados in arrangements by the guitar duo of Christian Gruber and Peter Maklar
3. Astor Piazzolla’s three-movement Tango Suite

As usual, the performance will be streamed through the Omni Foundation’s YouTube channel. The specific YouTube Web page for this program has already been created. Those that visit this page now will see that it will become available for viewing at 10 a.m. on Sunday, April 7. There is no charge for admission, which means that these performances are made possible only by the viewers’ donations. A Web page has been created for processing contributions, and any visits made prior to the streaming itself will be most welcome.

Yo-Yo Ma: A Disappointing Evening at Davies

The good news is that last night may be the first time in a long time (if ever) that I was aware that every possible seat in Davies Symphony Hall was occupied. The occasion was a visit by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, accompanied at the piano by Kathryn Stott (who plans to retire at the conclusion of this current tour). Sadly, the take at the Box Office may have been the only positive element of the evening.

The program was structured around two major sonata offerings. The first half concluded with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 40 cello sonata in D minor. The program concluded with a less conventional offering. Ma played the solo part in César Franck’s A major violin sonata, most likely without any change in the score except for a shift in register. Ironically, I may have been there for the first recital program that Ma prepared for a tour. I was working in Santa Barbara at the time; and I suspect that the tour had included visits to several of the University of California campuses, Santa Barbara have been selected as one of them. That was a time when I had a violinist neighbor, who had been preparing that sonata for her own recital; and I was not particularly impressed by the idea of a cello moving in on Franck’s turf! Last night I was no more impressed by Ma’s undertaking than I had been when I encountered it a little less than half a century ago.

The Shostakovich offering was no more satisfying. This was one of his earlier works, before his prankish capacity for inventiveness was crippled by the iron hand of Joseph Stalin. Each of the movements of the cello sonata has its own take on a different aspect of high spirits, covering the full scope from the introspection of the Largo through the energetic drive that permeated the fast movements. Sadly, Ma never captured any of those spirits in his performance. The fast movements ran the gamut from too polite to too much affectation, while the Largo was just plain squirm-inducing.

The Franck sonata was preceded by Arvo Pärt’s “Spiegel im Spiegel.” This provided a perfectly good example of that composer’s approach to minimalism. It therefore seemed ironic that it was preformed in front of a screen on which were projected “maximal” images conceived by James Webb. The music is short enough that it really requires little more than sit-still-and-listen attention, and “media enhancement” was the last thing that the performance of “Spiegel im Spiegel” required.

The program began with a cycle of five short pieces played without interruption. The set was framed by two works by Gabriel Fauré, his Opus 16 “Berceuse” and the Opus 77 “Papillon.” These enclosed a somewhat inconsistent assortment of pieces by Antonín Dvořák (“Songs My Mother Taught Me”), Sergio Assad (“Menino”), and Nadia Boulanger (“Cantique”). This all made for a muddled diversity, perhaps a warning sign of the muddle that was to follow in the sonata performances.

The rousing applause at the end of the program was followed by unfamiliar encores that were easily forgotten.

SFP Gift Concert’s Journey of Discovery

Last night in Herbst Theatre, San Francisco Performances (SFP) presented its Gift Concert for the 2023–24 season. The music was provided by a piano trio with pianist Juho Pohjonen performing with cellist Jonathan Swensen and Stephen Waarts on violin. This was Pohjonen’s third SFP appearance, his first having taken place in March of 2008. Of greater interest may be that his second appearance took place in the Gift Concert for the 2019–20 season, when he accompanied South Korean violinist Bomsori Kim (making her SFP debut). In that spirit last night saw debuts of both Swensen and Waarts, and the latter may have been encountered by some at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

The program was framed by two piano trios. The first of these was Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 8, the first of his two trios, so unfamiliar that a performing edition was not prepared until six years after the composer’s death. Equally unfamiliar (if not more so) was the concluding trio, which was composed by a very young César Franck. Perhaps under the influence of Ludwig van Beethoven, his Opus 1 was a set of three piano trios; and last night’s program presented the first of them, composed in the key of F-sharp minor.

If this was his “first serious endeavor,” Franck seems to have been determined to pack as much as he could into the composition’s three movements. Indeed, the first movement is a rondo of generous duration. Not only does the primary theme recur a prodigious number of times but also each “separating” passage has its own abundant rhetoric. That movement is practically a composition unto itself. (The Shostakovich trio consisted only of a single movement.) Nevertheless, Franck’s abundance spilled over into his second movement, a scherzo with two trios, and a finale with everything but the kitchen sink (including several retrospective episodes). This is one of those compositions that leaves the attentive listener in a state of exhaustion; but, if the listener was really attentive, (s)he probably also emerged with a warm sense of satisfaction.

Like the Franck trio, Shostakovich’s Opus 8 was composed in the key of C minor during his conservatory days. (Both of them were in their late teens.) This was another example of a young composer “flexing his muscles,” although Shostakovich’s flexing was not as extensive as Franck’s. More important is that, for Shostakovich, this was a time when Joseph Stalin was barely known, if he was known at all. Thus, the composer was at full liberty to exercise his sense of humor without a care for the horrors that would confront him only a few decades later. There is much to enjoy in that sense of humor, and Opus 8 can be approached as an “early stage of cultivation.” Having had any number of satisfying encounters with Opus 67 (the second trio, composed in the key of E minor), I find it more than a pity that there are so few opportunities to appreciate its contrast with Opus 8. (Even the Beaux Arts Trio, which seems to have had an agenda of performing and recording an exhaustive account of piano trios from every period of history, seems to have overlooked Opus 8; but, to be fair, they also overlooked all of Franck’s Opus 1!)

The two trios on the program framed two duos. Both of these were by Leoš Janáček, the first for cello and the second for violin. Swensen was featured in “Pohádka,” which translates literally as “tale” but seems to have been inspired by fairy tales. The composer revised his score twice; and last night offered the final version, which was first performed in 1923. There is no narrative to speak of behind the three movements, but the rhetoric of the score seems to be directed more at the nature of the teller than of the tale itself.

Waarts then performed the four-movement duo sonata. Like much of the composer’s music (including “Pohádka”), each movement unfolds an intense exchange of thematic fragments. This is a rhetorical device that gives the composer his own unique stamp. One encounters it in just about everything he wrote, going all the way to the episodes that unfold in his full-length operas. Indeed, he composed that sonata at the same time he was working on one of his earliest (and least-known) operas about a trip to the moon. Like Swensen, Waarts was skillfully attuned to the rhetorical aspect of Janáček’s sonata, giving it an account that was both compelling and engaging.

There was no encore last night; but, given the intensity of that Franck trio, one can appreciate that all three of the performers probably felt that enough was enough!

SFP: Plans for 2024 Gift Concert

Tickets are now available for the annual Gift Concert presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP). The “gift” is that subscribers and donors are given tickets at no charge. However, as was announced earlier this week, tickets for all others are now available for purchase at the price of $45.

Composite of photographs of Jonathan Swenson (photographer Matt Dine), Stephen Waarts (photographer Emma Wernig), and Juho Pohjonen (photographer J. Henry Fair) (from the SFP Web page for remaining tickets)

SFP frequently uses this occasion to introduce rising and in-demand artists to its audience. This year there will be three such artists, who have joined forces to form a piano trio. The pianist is Juho Pohjonen, performing with violinist Stephen Waarts and cellist Jonathan Swenson. This will be Pohjonen’s third SFP appearance. Both Waarts and Swenson will be making their SFP debuts.

The program will be framed by trios, both early works by their respective composers. The opening selection will be Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 8 (first) piano trio in C minor; and the second half of the program will be devoted entirely to the first of César Franck’s three Opus 1 trios, composed in the key of F-sharp minor. Between these two “bookends” will be two duo performances, both composed by Leoš Janáček. The first is the three-movement “Pohádka” (fairy tale), scored for cello and piano and completed in February of 1910. The second is the sonata for violin and piano composed around the time of the outset of World War I in 1914.

This concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 15. It will take place in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. This venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel. As already observed, all available tickets are being sold for $45. They may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. Single tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545.

Beijing Guitar Duo Returns to SFP+Omni

Duo guitarists Meng Su and Yameng Wang (photograph by Wasin Prastlap, courtesy of SFP)

Last night in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, the Beijing Guitar Duo of Meng Su and Yameng Wang returned to the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Guitar Series, presented in partnership with the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. They have been frequent and consistently welcome visitors since their first SFP recital in April of 2010. They served as SFP Guitarists-in-Residence between 2011 and 2015. This is their sixth appearance and the first since the pandemic.

Over the course of my encounters with them, I have been consistently impressed with their performances of transcriptions of piano music. What made Su’s transcriptions for the first half of the program particularly interesting was that both Claude Debussy’s Petite Suite and Gabriel Fauré’s Opus 56 Dolly were composed for four hands on a single keyboard. To take on even richer keyboard textures, they began the program with a transcription by Matanya Orphee of César Franck’s Opus 18 “Prélude, Fugue et Variation,” which was composed for pipe organ. The clarity they brought to all three of these richly elaborate compositions was nothing short of jaw-dropping.

The second half of the program shifted over to the Hispanic repertoire, beginning with transcriptions of three works for solo piano. The first of these was the Valses poéticos collection by Enrique Granados in arrangements by the guitar duo of Christian Gruber and Peter Maklar. This was followed by Miguel Llobet’s transcriptions of two compositions by Isaac Albéniz, “Sous le palmier” from the Opus 232 Chants d’Espagne collection and “Castilla,” the seventh movement in the first Suite española collection (Opus 47). The program then concluded with Astor Piazzolla’s three-movement Tango Suite, which he composed for his close friends, the guitarists Sérgio and Odair Assad. Taken as a whole, this was a refreshing change in perspective from the French repertoire in the first half of the program.

However, the repertoire returned to France for the first encore. This was a selection from the eighteenth Ordre in the massive collection of keyboard music by François Couperin, “Le tic-toc-choc.” This was followed by one of the movements from Tan Dun’s Opus 1 Memories in Watercolor. (I did not catch the title very clearly, but I think it was the “Herdboy’s Song.”)

It goes without saying that I was delighted to have another encounter with the Beijing Guitar Duo. Their approach to repertoire is consistently inventive, and their technical skills live up to any challenge that confronts them. Su is now on the faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Hopefully, this means that there will be many engaging guitar opportunities to come.

Beijing Guitar Duo to Return to SFP

The Beijing Guitar Duo of Yameng Wang and Meng Su (courtesy of SFP)

Prior to the pandemic, the Beijing Guitar Duo of Meng Su and Yameng Wang were relatively frequent visitors to the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Guitar Series, presented in partnership with the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. At the beginning of next month, they will make their sixth SFP appearance, the first being on a program with their teacher Manuel Barrueco in 2010. This was followed by their serving as SFP Guitarists-in-Residence between 2011 and 2015. My own fondest memory was when they gave a one-hour recital at the Hotel Rex in the SFP Salons series in March of 2012.

As is often the case, Su and Wang perform transcriptions of a prodigious span of piano music. I was particularly impressed by their performances of keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti; and, during my tenure with Examiner.com, I wrote enthusiastically about how they took on Claude Debussy’s Petite Suite (originally scored for piano four hands). The Duo will revisit that transcription when they return next month to perform the final SFP program of the fall season. The Debussy selection will serve as a “keystone” between two other French composers. The program will begin with César Franck’s Opus 18 set of a prelude, a fugue, and a set of variations. Petite Suite will then be followed by another suite, Gabriel Fauré’s Opus 56, given the title Dolly.

The second half of the program will then turn to Hispanic influences. They will begin with Enrique Granados’ set of 8 Valses Poéticos. This will be followed by two selections by Isaac Albéniz, “Sous le palmier” (under the palm tree) from the Opus 232 Chants d'Espagne and “Castilla” from Opus 47, the first of the Suite Española compositions. The geography will then shift to Argentina with Ástor Piazzolla’s three-movement “Tango Suite.”

This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, December 2. The venue will be St. Mark’s Lutheran Church at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. All tickets are being sold for $60, both on the main floor and in the balcony. They may be purchased through an SFP secure Web Page or by calling 415-392-2545.