SFS: A Promising Program that Did Not Deliver

Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya (from the Web page for this week’s SFS concert)

Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya made his San Francisco Symphony (SFS) debut in November of 2023 when he led the annual Día de los Muertos concert. Last night he returned to Davies Symphony Hall to give his first Orchestra Series performance. The program had a Hispanic theme with composers born on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. Three of the four selections were composed in the last century, but the other enjoyed a United States premiere performance.

The composer of that new work was Jimmy López, born in Lima (Peru) in 1978 and currently composer-in-residence for both the San Diego Symphony and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. His contribution to the program was “Shift,” a four-movement concerto for trombone and orchestra with Principal Trombone Timothy Higgins as soloist. The titles of the four movements suggest that the composer may have had an interest in synesthesia:

1. Sound
2. Water
3. Light
4. Sonoluminescence

Each of these movements had its own approach to sonorities. The first required a plethora of double-tonguing episodes. The second exploited the instrument’s most powerful capability: glissando passages! The “Light” movement was performed with mute, leading into a richly extended cadenza to introduce the final movement. Higgins brought a confident command to each of these movement, making it a pity that he is on leave this season.

The program began with the most recent of the twentieth-century selections. Alberto Ginastera composed music for his Opus 8 ballet “Estancia” and then extracted four of the movements for the Opus 8a suite. The suite has little relation to the narrative for the ballet. Nevertheless, the movements were engaging; and the third of them, “Los peones de hacienda” (the cattlemen) seem to offer more than a few nods to Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score, “Le sacre du printemps” (the rite of spring)!

The second half of the program was rooted in the early decades of the century. The better-known selection was the final one, Maurice Ravel’s four-movement “Rapsodie espagnole.” I am familiar enough with this music that I know the subtlety it demands, but Harth-Bedoya never seemed to invoke that spirit.

He seemed more “at home” with the preceding composition, Joaquín Turina’s three-movement “Danzas Fantásticas.” My encounters with this composer have been almost entirely through the guitar recitals I have attended and covered, so I was looking forward to listening to his command of the orchestral repertoire. Once again, however, it felt as if Harth-Bedoya was undermining the spirit that Turina had injected into his dances.

Fortunately, the impact of López’ capacity for invention made the evening worthwhile!

Miró Quartet Surveys Ginastera Quartets

Cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)

It seems as if this year my encounters with the PENTATONE label seem to involve anniversaries. Almost exactly three months ago, I wrote about the Quatuor Diotima album devoted entirely to the “Livre pour quatuor” composed by Pierre Boulez, released a few weeks after the composer’s birth on March 26, 1925. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the Miró Quartet, which was founded by four students at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. One week from today, that occasion will be celebrated with the release of their latest album, devoted entirely to the complete (three) quartets composed by Alberto Ginastera. As most readers will probably expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for pre-orders.

Ironically, the booklet for his album never mentions the membership of this ensemble. According to their Wikipedia page, those members are violinists Daniel Ching and William Fedkenheuer, John Largess on viola, and Joshua Gindele on cello. Four of the five movements of the last quartet involves vocal settings of texts by Juan Ramón-Jiménez and Federico García Lorca). The vocalist for these tracks is soprano Kiera Duffy.

Ginastera was born on April 11, 1916 and died at the age of 67 on June 25, 1983. During my student days, his name received more attention than any opportunities to listen to his music, whether in performance or on recordings. There was a tendency to view his music as a Latin perspective on the Second Viennese School. While the advance material I received associated him with Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky, I found myself thinking more about Alban Berg’s “Lyric Suite.”

The dates of the three quartets cover a generous span of the composer’s life: 1948, 1958 (revised in 1968), and 1973. That period covers the time I spent as a student at the campus radio station of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, I have to confess that, over that rather generous span on time, I do not think I ever encountered any of Ginastera’s music. I am pretty sure that none of my teachers had anything to say about him, meaning that, if I had encountered his name at all, it probably would have been through Time magazine!

That said, I have listened to this new quartet album several times. The ensemble had an Artist Residency at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), which included a recital in January of 2017; but I was unable to attend the performance. However, looking back about a decade earlier, I discovered I had encountered Ginastera’s second quartet there in November of 2008 as part of the String and Piano Chamber Music series of concerts. On the basis of what I wrote at that time, I would say that it reinforced the “Bartók connection,” which was further reinforced by the fact that Ginastera published an article entitled "Homage to Béla Bartók" in 1981! Those familiar with Bartók's fifth string quartet (number 102 in András Szöllősy's chronological Sz. numbers) are likely to agree with that reinforcement!

SFO Orchestra: First Community Concert

At the end of last week, this site announced the plans of the San Francisco Opera (SFO) Orchestra to presented free community concerts. The first of those events was given last night at the Minnesota Street Project in Dogpatch. The performers included two different string quartets, three wind players, and a concluding ensemble of four violins and bass. Two of the selections involved vocal music in which the wind players took the vocal parts.

The program began with “Crisantemi” (chrysanthemums), which is probably Giacomo Puccini’s best-known instrumental composition. It was performed by the string quartet of violinists Jennifer Hsieh and Naoko Nakajima, Lindan Burns on viola, and cellist Rachel Ko. It was conceived as a memorial work for King Amadeo I of Spain, and the thematic material would subsequently find its was into Puccini’s Manon Lescaut opera. The players perfectly captured Puccini’s rhetoric of stillness, readily seizing the attention of the audience that surrounded them on all sides.

This was followed by Gustav Mahler’s song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (songs of a wayfarer). The quartet players were joined by Benjamin Brogadir on Cor anglais (English horn) performing the vocal line. The quintet presented an arrangement by Cliff Colnot and Stefan Hersh. This music was probably familiar to many of the listeners, at least some of whom could probably hear the words of the text (by Mahler himself) behind Brogadir’s solo work. The performance may not have had the no-holds-barred intensity of the composer’s score, but it still provided an absorbing account of a highly expressive narrative.

The quartet then accompanied the duo of flutist Stephanie McNab and Gabriel Young on oboe. This time the words transformed into instrumental music came from the text of the “Flower Duet” from Léo Delibes’ opera Lakmé. The vocalists in the opera were a soprano and mezzo, and arranger Carrie Weick definitely made the right choice of instruments for those voices. It would probably be fair to say that most listeners know more about this music than about the words being sung, and such listeners would have been more than satisfied with this particular sextet arrangement.

Alberto Ginastera (photograph by Annemarie Heinrich, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

McNab and Young then departed from the vocal repertoire to play the one work on the program without any “vocal connections.” This was a three-movement duo for flute and oboe by Alberto Ginastera. He identified his final movement as a “wild fugue;” and he was not being modest about it! The composer’s Wikipedia page describes him as “one of the most important 20th-century classical composers of the Americas;” but I suspect that most of my generation knew him better by his name than by his music. I have to say that, last night, I deeply appreciated a rare opportunity for the music to take priority over the name!

The program then concluded with the “non-standard” string quintet of violinists Jennifer Cho, Dian Zhang, Barbara Riccardi, and Leslie Ludena performing with William Wasson on bass. This was my latest encounter with a new composer (Julian Milone) deciding to have his way with Georges Bizet’s Carmen opera. By now I have pretty much lost count of the many ways in which this opera has been reworked. My favorite is still the effort by David Hess and John Corigliano to turn the source into an “electric rock opera” in their album The Naked Carmen. I was reminded of this album because it included the Farandole from Bizet’s second L’Arlésienne suite, which Milone also appropriated for his Carmen Fantasy. To be fair, however, last night’s quintet was never as raucous as The Naked Carmen was!

For an encore, all contributing musicians joined forces for an engaging delivery of “To a Wild Rose,” from Edward MacDowell’s Opus 51 Woodland Sketches, providing a calming conclusion to an imaginatively diverse evening.

Le Due Muse Goes Latin

Yesterday afternoon, Le Due Muse, whose members are cellist Sarah Hong and pianist Makiko Ooka, returned to the Old First Presbyterian Church. According to my records, this was their first Old First Concerts recital since June of 2019, when they prepared a full evening of music by Franz Schubert. Once again, they presented a program based on an overall theme, this time featuring four Latin American composers.

The first half of the program was devoted entirely to music by Mexican composer Manuel Ponce. The duo began with what is probably his most familiar composition, “Estrellita,” originally written for solo piano. Some readers may recall that, this past May, this was the encore selection taken by cellist Oliver Herbert and pianist Carlos Ágreda, joined by soprano Esther Rayo. Hong and Ooka played the duo version transcribed by the Spanish cellist Gaspar Cassadó. This served as an “overture” for Ponce’s four-movement cello sonata.

I have to confess that, until yesterday afternoon, I tended to associate Ponce with short selections, more likely to be encountered as encores. While his catalog of chamber music is relatively limited when compared with other genres, it is clear that he was no stranger to working with longer durations. In that context the cello sonata is a highly spirited composition, and Hong definitely knew how to accommodate the full scope of those spirits. By the time I had reached the final movement (Allegro burlesco), I found myself curious as to why such an impressive undertaking should be overlooked by so many cellists.

The second half of the program was framed by the Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos and the Argentine Astor Piazzolla. The duo began with “O canto do cisne negro” (the song of the black swan), which had also been performed by Herbert and Ágreda this past May. The same was true of the first (“Ária”) movement of the fifth of that composer’s nine Bachianas Brasileiras compositions. However, while the May recital involved a trio, Le Due Muse played a transcription by cellist Seymour Barab. Piazzolla closed out the program with “Le Grand Tango,” which he had composed for Mstislav Rostropovich. This was preceded by Kyoko Yamamoto’s arrangement of Piazzolla’s “Oblivion.” Villa-Lobos and Piazzolla were separated by Alberto Ginastera’s Opus 21, the second of his “Pampeana” compositions.

Taken as a whole, this program was as engaging as it was imaginative. Hong may have been “front and center;” but there was no ignoring Ooka’s keyboard skills and her consistent sense of balance with Hong. The duo also deserves credit for venturing into a repertoire that seems to be rising in attention and deservedly so.

Old First Concerts: July, 2023

Cellist Sarah Hong and pianist Makiko Ooka (from the event page for the recital they will be performing)

As of this writing, Old First Concerts (O1C) will be presenting only one concert this coming July. It will mark the return to Old First Presbyterian Church of Le Due Muse, a duo whose members are cellist Sarah Hong and pianist Makiko Ooka. This will be their first appearance since June of 2019, when they presented an imaginative program of the music by Franz Schubert.

The title of next month’s program will be An Evening of Music by Latin American Composers. The selections will account for four of those composers as follows:

1. Manuel Ponce will be represented by his cello sonata, preceded by an instrumental arrangement of his song “Estrellita.”
2. As many will have guessed, there will be an arrangement of the “Ária” movement from the fifth of the Bachianas Brasileiras compositions by Heitor Villa-Lobos, preceded by the cello-piano arrangement of “O canto do cisne negro” (the song of the black swan), which was performed by cellist Oliver Herbert and pianist Carlos Ágreda at the end of last month.
3. There will be one selection by Alberto Ginastera, the second of his three “Pampeana” rhapsodies, which he scored for cello and piano.
4. The program will conclude with two familiar Astor Piazzolla compositions, “Oblivion” and “Le Grand Tango.”

The performance will begin at 4 p.m. on Sunday, July 23. O1C events will continue to be “hybrid,” allowing both live streaming and seating in the Old First Presbyterian Church at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue. All tickets are being sold for $25 (no reduced rate for seniors or students). Tickets may be purchased through this concert’s event page.

Guitarist Zsófia Boros: More of the Same?

Hungarian guitarist Zsófia Boros (photograph by Maria Frodl, courtesy of ECM Records)

I first became aware of Hungarian guitarist Zsófia Boros when her debut album for ECM New Series, En otra parte, was released at the end of September of 2013. When I wrote about that album for Examiner.com, I concluded that it offered: “a quietly restrained account of music that tends to be given livelier interpretations.” Nevertheless, I was happy to encounter three tracks of music by the Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, two of which offered separate interpretations of “Un dia de noviembre” (a day in November).

One week from today, ECM Series will release Boros’ latest (third) album, El último aliento (the last breath). This is the title of the last of the eleven tracks on the new release, composed by Carlos Moscardini, a guitarist and music professor currently based in Buenos Aires. As many probably expect, Amazon.com has created a Web page to process pre-orders for both physical and digital distribution.

Once again, subtlety tends to prevail across all of those eleven tracks. Six of them have been allocated to compositions by French composer Mathias Duplessy, whom I have not previously encountered in any setting. Indeed, the only composer familiar to me is Alberto Ginastera. Boros’ selection of his “Milonga” is consistent with her rhetoric of subtlety, but I would suggest that the music itself does not stand out the way many of the other selections in the Ginastera catalog do.

Having now given both of these albums side-by-side listening, I am afraid I have come to the conclusion that one is enough!

Lise de la Salle’s Return to SFP Disappoints

Pianist Lise de la Salle (photograph by Lynn Goldsmith, courtesy of SFP)

Last night French pianist Lise de la Salle returned to Herbst Theatre for her third San Francisco Performances (SFP) recital. She made her SFP debut in January of 2009, after having made her debut with the San Francisco Symphony in 2007. Her previous SFP recital took place at the end of February in 2014.

The primary work on last night’s program was also the only piece to be performed after the intermission, Franz Liszt’s monumental B minor piano sonata. De la Salle brought an aggressive rhetoric to the first half of the program, in which the first of Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz” compositions was sandwiched between Isaac Albéniz’ five-movement Cantos de España suite and the three Danzas Argentinas of Alberto Ginastera’s Opus 2. Those offerings seemed to serve as a “warm-up” for her bringing that same rhetorical stance to the Liszt sonata.

Sadly, where the sonata was concerned, that rhetoric was little more than (to loosely paraphrase Winston Churchill) one damned outburst after another. Mind you, those outbursts reflected secure command of every gesture that de la Salle brought to her keyboard. However, I have had the good fortune to encounter at least one pianist whose technique delivered an account of this sonata that was far more than a roller-coaster ride of outbursts. As a result, I have come to appreciate that there is a solid infrastructure of expressiveness that lies beneath all those churning outbursts; and I came away wishing that de la Salle had invested a bit more of her practice time into seeking out that infrastructure.

Unfortunately, in the context of the overall program, the sonata performance came across as a more-of-the-same “response” to the “call” of her performance of “Mephisto Waltz.” Mind you, the intensity of de la Salle’s technique certainly endowed that waltz-that-is-not-really-a waltz with a diabolical delivery. This was one of those accounts in which an attentive listener could recognize (if not enjoy) the presence of Mephisto in every phrase that she hammered out.

Sadly, however, de la Salle brought that same keyboard technique to both Albéniz and Ginastera. Both of those suites were clearly conceived with dispositions that were anything but diabolical. Rather, those compositions seem to have been created out of some combination of love and pride in the nature of national identity, Spanish in the first selection and Argentinian in the second. Unfortunately, that sense of identity was entirely lacking in de la Salle’s performances, which had more to do with jumping through all of the technical hoops in the score pages with little attention to why the composers put those hoops there in the first place.

Considering how consistently satisfying SFP recitals have been over the last month or so, last night emerged as a rather sad disappointment.

Lise de la Salle to Return to SFP Piano Series

French pianist Lise de la Salle (photograph by Stephane Gallois, courtesy of SFP)

Later this month the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Shenson Piano Series will present the fourth of its five recitals. The recitalist will be French pianist Lise de la Salle. According to my records, her last SFP recital took place at the end of February in 2014; and she made her debut with the San Francisco Symphony in 2007. However, my own most recent encounter with her was the result of viewing streamed performances during the COVID pandemic. In May of 2020 I wrote about her performance of Robert Schumann’s Opus 54 piano concerto in A minor with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra led by guest conductor Karina Canellakis.

Her 2014 recital could be described as a “two cultures” program. The first half was shared by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. The second half paralleled the first by coupling French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

This month’s recital will have a “central core” in the form of Franz Liszt’s monumental B minor piano sonata. By way of a “warm up,” de la Salle will perform the first of Liszt’s “Mephisto” waltzes as a “prelude” to the sonata. That “core” will then be flanked by Hispanic repertoire. The program will begin with Isaac Albéniz’ Opus 232, a suite of five pieces entitled Chants d’Espagne, which Albéniz himself first performed in Paris in 1892. At the other end the program will conclude with a three-movement suite composed by Alberto Ginastera in 1937 entitled Danzas Argentinas.

This concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 19. 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. Ticket prices are $75 (premium Orchestra and front and center Dress Circle), $60 (remainder of Orchestra, all Side Boxes, and center rear Dress Circle), and $50 (remaining Dress Circle and Balcony); and they may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. As available, single tickets will be sold at the door with a 50% discount for students and a 20% discount for seniors. Single tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545.

A Honens Winner that Deserves Attention

My past experiences with the Honens International Piano Competition date back to 2011, during my tenure with Examiner.com; and they were not particularly sanguine. The Competition was launched in 1992 and held in Calgary in Alberta, Canada. 2011 was the year in which the Competition began to release a series of CDs of studio recordings by competition laureates; and I was sent the initial round of four of those CDs. These accounted for the first-place laureate from 2006, and the first, second, and third place winners in 2009. Writing about these releases served to trigger a rant against the whole idea of such competitions.

Pianist Illia Ovcharenko on the cover of his Live at Honens 2022 album (courtesy of 8VA Music Consultancy)

My thoughts about competitions have not changed very much over the following decades. Many readers may already know that this is the case even when the competition is limited to a single institution, such as the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Nevertheless, 8VA Music Consultancy informed me of the latest Honens CD, featuring 2022 Honens Prize Laureate Illia Ovcharenko; and I was impressed with the Ukrainian pianist’s approach to repertoire. As of this writing, however, it appears that the album is only available in the digital domain, and Amazon.com has created a Web page for MP3 download.

Most important was that the album began with Alberto Ginastera’s Opus 22 (first) piano sonata. While Hilary Hahn’s latest album, released this past October, included Ginastera’s violin concerto; it is most likely the case that Ovcharenko’s album was my first encounter with any of his piano sonatas. There is a refreshing energy to the rhetoric that pervades the four movements of this sonata, and that freshness may remind some listeners of early piano compositions by Aaron Copland. Nevertheless, Ginastera’s voice was consistently his own over the course of his lifetime; and I could not have been more satisfied with the opportunity to listen to Ovcharenko interpret this particular sonata.

The same can be said of the final two tracks, the last two movements of the second of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 30 violin sonatas, composed in the key of C minor. Those wondering what a violin sonata is doing at a piano competition should be reminded that Beethoven’s own title pages described all ten of his sonatas as scored for piano and violin (in that order). While the first two movements are often cited for their “Eroica” rhetoric, the third movement scherzo is downright playful; and that sense of play spills over into the final movement. Much of that play emerges from the keyboard work, and Ovcharenko was not shy in presenting the sense of humor behind Beethoven’s preferences.

The middle of the recording is an account of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 414 piano concerto in A major. Accompaniment was provided by bass player Sam Loeck joining the members of the Viano String Quartet: violinists Lucy Wang and Hao Zhou, violist Aiden Kane, and cellist Tate Zawadiuk. This particular concerto definitely lends itself of a chamber music setting, and the string players are dutiful accompanists to Ovcharenko’s solo work. Nevertheless, when compared with the rest of this CD, his approach to a Mozart concerto sounds more like an act of obligation than an inspired account of the playful side of the composer (which does not differ than much from the playful side of Beethoven).

Thus, while I continue to be skeptical about competitions, I found that there was more than enough to engage my attention in this recent Honens release.

Hilary Hahn Gives Ginastera Deserved Attention

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Universal Music Group)

One week from today Deutsche Grammophon will release violinist Hilary Hahn’s latest album, entitled Eclipse. It is a concertante album on which she performs with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the radio orchestra of Hessischer Rundfunk, which serves as the public broadcasting network of the German state of Hesse. The ensemble is led by Andrés Orozco-Estrada, who served as Principal Conductor between 2014 and 2021. As expected, Amazon.com is currently taking pre-orders for this new release.

One might describe the three selections as forming an arch with the keystone position held by Alberto Ginastera’s Opus 30 violin concerto. The advance release describe this piece as “rarely performed;” and this carries a bit of irony. The composer’s Wikipedia page asserts that he “is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century classical composers of the Americas;” but the violin concerto is far from the only work of his that is rarely encountered, whether in performance or on recording. Ironically, the Ginastera legacy seems to have enjoyed somewhat of a surge of attention during the pandemic, since, prior to lockdown, my last encounter with a performance of his music took place at a One Found Sound concert in December of 2017!

To go back to the advance publicity, that “rarely performed” citation is followed by a description of Opus 30 as “a strikingly original 20^th-century gem.” Personally, I think that hits the nail right on the head. While Ginastera follows the usual three-movement convention, the movements themselves are far from conventional. The title of the first movement is “Cadenza e Studi.” In other words the composer handles the cadenza by having it precede everything else, rather than making it a reflection on previously-played thematic material. It is followed by six études, each dwelling on a specific performance technique. The movement then concludes with a Maestoso coda.

The second movement is an Adagio, which would probably be expected. However, it is scored for 22 soloists; and, in the spirit of “enquiring minds want to know,” I was a bit miffed that Hahn was the only soloist mentioned by name! (Yes, I know nothing about the members of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, but I still believe that all soloists deserved to be acknowledged!)

The final movement consists of two sections performed without a break. The first of these is a Scherzo, which, again, can be expected as the sequel to the Adagio movement; and it is followed by a Perpetuum mobile whose Agitato tempo wraps up the concerto in less than two minutes. All this makes for a highly engaging listening experience, and I sincerely hope that Hahn’s efforts will inspire other violinists to explore the many virtues of Ginastera’s concerto.

The other stones of the arch held in place by that concerto are Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 53 violin concerto in A minor and Pablo de Sarasate’s five movement “Carmen Fantasy.” There is no shortage of fireworks in both of these selections, and Hahn’s interpretations abound with positive energy. Taken as a whole, the album serves up a rather unique overall program; but that uniqueness deserves to influence both listeners and other performers.

Imaginative Ideas Make for Engaging Recital

Mezzo Ashley Dixon (courtesy of the San Francisco Opera)

Last night in the Taube Atrium Theater of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, the San Francisco Opera and the Merola Opera Program jointly presented the second concert in the Schwabacher Recital Series. The recitalist was mezzo Ashley Dixon, accompanied at the piano by Kseniia Polstiankina Barrad. Dixon made the bold move of disregarding any songs with texts in German or English. Instead, her focus was on France and the Iberian peninsula, exploring a diversity of unfamiliar (if not unknown) territories.

The program began with Dixon giving an a cappella performance of “Las nubes fecundantes” (the fertile clouds), a traditional Sephardic folk song. This was followed seamlessly by “Triste está la infanta” (the infanta is gloomy), the first song in Alberto Hemsi’s Opus 18, the fourth in a set of ten volumes entitled Coplas Sefardies (Sephardic songs), published in Thessaloniki (in Greece) in 1932. Both of these offerings could be taken as a musical equivalent of haiku, capturing an intense impression in a duration little more than that of a single breath. Dixon’s low-key delivery succeeded in engaging audience attention; and, having established that attention, she could move on to more conventional recital offerings.

The remaining selections in the first set were songs by Maurice Ravel (“Chanson espagnole”), Franz Liszt setting a text in French (“Comment, disaient-ils”), and Reynaldo Hahn (“L’heure exquise”). While the texts were longer in duration, each of those songs captured a single impression, consistent with quietude of the first two songs in the set. Two sets remained prior to the intermission based on Spanish and French sources, respectively.

On the Spanish side my guess is that the most familiar of the offerings was the final one, “Polo” from the Siete canciones populares españolas (seven Spanish folk songs) set by Manuel de Falla. This was “virtually” coupled with “Llámale con el pañuelo” (wave to him with your handkerchief), taken from the Six Castilian Songs composed by Jesús Guridi in 1939. The other composers included in the set were Carlos Gustavino and Alberto Ginastera.

The French set was probably the most familiar portion of the entire recital. It included songs by Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, and Francis Poulenc (in that chronological order). However, it began with the less familiar “Ronde d’amour” (round of love), a poem by Charles Fuster set by Cécile Chaminade.

The second half presented two more extended offerings. The first of these was Joaquín Turina’s Poema en forma de canciones (poem in the form of songs), setting a text by Ramón de Campoamor y Campoosorio. This began with a “Dedicatoria” (dedication) for solo piano, which complemented the a cappella selection that opened the entire program. The was followed by Hector Berlioz’ “La mort d’Ophélie” (the death of Ophelia). The text was Ernest Legouvé’s translation into French of the extended monologue in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Both of these offerings were well-paced, delivered with just the right balance of expressiveness and technique by Dixon.

The encore selection was an engaging delivery of “La Vie en rose” (life in pink), words by Édith Piaf set to music by Louiguy.

The only disappointment was the lack of any background material in the program book. The richness of content that Dixon offered deserved the sort of extended set of notes that one comes to expect from San Francisco Performances. Mind you, I appreciate that Dixon focused on singing, rather than talking. Nevertheless, contextual knowledge for each of these selections, even if brief, would have been a valuable supplement to the texts and their translations into English.

Next Month’s Schwabacher Recital Details

Full program details are now available for the two Schwabacher Recital Series concerts that will take place next month. I have to confess that, in the context of both personal curiosity and personal favorites, I have far more than one dog in this hunt. Particularly where the “novelty factor” is involved, one might even say that I have a litter of puppies. It is also worth nothing that both of these programs have been organized into sections, and there are signs that considerable thought has gone into how the repertoire has been grouped to form those sections.

The first of next month’s recitals will be a program of solo songs performed by mezzo Ashley Dixon. Her accompanist will be pianist Kseniia Polstiankina Barrad. It will be clear from her very first selection that Dixon is not interested in a recital devoted entirely to “the usual suspects.” That song is “Triste está la infanta” (the infanta is gloomy), the first song in Alberto Hemsi’s Opus 18, the fourth in a set of ten volumes entitled Coplas Sefardies (Sephardic songs), published in Thessaloniki (in Greece) in 1932.

Hemsi’s ethnomusicological study of Sephardic melodies began as a result of inquiries into his family origins, and his research paralleled that of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály in Eastern Europe. He could only collect words set to melodies. Coplas Sefardies was the overall title of the piano accompaniments he wrote for those songs. Baritone Cantor Assaf Levitin and pianist Naaman Wagner recorded all of these songs as part of the three-CD release entitled Coplas Sefardies.

Taken as a whole, Dixon’s recital will focus on music from France and the Iberian peninsula. None of the selections will be sung in German (or, for that matter, English). Thus, the set that begins with Hemsi will continue with Maurice Ravel (“Chanson espagnole”), Franz Liszt setting a text in French (“Comment, disaient-ils”), and Reynaldo Hahn (“L’heure exquise”).

The second set will be framed by two of the songs that Manuel de Falla collected as his Siete canciones populares españolas (seven Spanish folk songs). These will serve as “bookends” for three songs by Carlos Guastavino, Jesús Guridi, and Alberto Ginastera, respectively. (Guridi was Basque, while Guastavino and Ginastera were both Argentinian.)

The third set will shift from Iberian sources to the French. All of the composers are likely to be familiar to most of the audience: Cécile Chaminade, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Ernest Chausson, and Francis Poulenc. The final set will begin with the five songs by Joaquín Turina collected for his Opus 19 entitled Poema en forma de canciones (poem in the form of songs). The program will then conclude with “La Mort d’Ophélie” (the death of Ophelia), the second of three songs that Hector Berlioz collected as his Opus 18 entitled Tristia (sorrows).

This program will begin at 7:30 p.m. on the evening of Wednesday, April 6. Like this month’s offering, the performance will take place in the Taube Atrium Theater, part of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, which is located in the Veterans Building (on the fourth floor) at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. General admission will be $30. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through an event page on the San Francisco Opera Web site. Note that it is possible to select the option of Wheelchair Accessible seats for both performance venues. In addition, subject to availability, student rush tickets will go on sale at 7 p.m. at the reduced rate of $15. There is a limit of two tickets per person, and valid identification must be shown.

The second program next month will feature three vocalists: soprano Elisa Sunshine, baritone Timothy Murray, and bass Stefan Egerstrom. They will be accompanied by pianist Andrew King, and the program will be divided into two sets. The first of those sets will begin with another round of music that has piqued my curiosity for quite some time. It will consist of a selection of seven art songs composed by Jean Sibelius during different periods in his life. All of the texts will be in Finnish. Those songs will then be followed by Try Me, Good King, a song cycle by Libby Larsen consisting of five songs, each named after a wife of the English King Henry VIII: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, and Catherine Howard. (Catherine Parr, who outlived Henry, is not included in the cycle.) The second half of the program will present works by composers from three different nations: England (Jonathan Dove and Cyril Scott), Austria (Erich Wolfgang Korngold), and France (Poulenc).

This program will also begin at 7:30 p.m. on the evening of Wednesday, April 27. The performance will again take place in the Taube Atrium Theater. Ticket prices will be the same but with a different event page for online purchases.

Rediscovering the Guitarist Carlos Barbosa-Lima

courtesy of Jazz Promo Services

This morning, after listening to the latest release of performances by Brazilian guitarist and arranger Carlos Barbosa-Lima on the ZOHO Music label, I discovered that this had not been my first encounter with him. Back when I was writing for Examiner.com, I had the opportunity to use my “pulpit” to discuss the music of composer Leo Brouwer. In 2013 ZOHO released an album of compositions scored for solo guitar, two guitars, and guitar and string quartet. The title of the album was Beatlerianas, a seven-movement suite of Brouwer’s arrangements of favorite Beatles songs for guitar and string quartet with a clearly playful nod to Heitor Villa-Lobos. A little less than a decade later, I find myself embarrassed to discover how long it has been since I listened to another album of Barbosa-Lima.

The object of my discovery is Manisero, Barbosa-Lima’s latest duo encounter on the ZOHO label, this time with German classical guitarist Johannes Tonio Kreusch. This marked Barbosa-Lima’s first album to be recorded in Munich in order to work with Kreusch, and the thirteen tracks on the album were recorded between 2019 and 2021. On four of the tracks the duo expands to a trio with the addition of Kreusch’s brother, the pianist Cornelius Claudio Kreusch.

The album title is the Spanish word for peanut, and it serves to introduce the first track. Written in 1927 by the Cuban composer Moisés Simon, “El Manisero” is better known in this country as “The Peanut Vendor.” Its Wikipedia page asserts: “Together with ‘Guantanamera’, it is arguably the most famous piece of music created by a Cuban musician.” It was whistled by Groucho Marx in Duck Soup, and Judy Garland sang a fragment of it in A Star is Born. The tune seems to have prodigious staying power, having shown up in an instrumental version of Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s Supernova album in 2001.

Brouwer is not one of the contributing composers on this new album; but there are three arrangements of the music of Alberto Ginastera, which Barbosa-Lima created as a thank-you gesture after the composer had written his Opus 47 guitar sonata for him in 1976. Two of the arrangements are taken from the Opus 15 Suite de Danzas Criollas, scored for solo piano; and the final arrangement is “Gato,” (cat), one of the five songs in the Opus 10 collection Canciones Populares Argentinas. Barbosa-Lima then continues his skills as an arranger with “Sentimental Melody,” the third movement of the symphonic poem “Floresta do Amazonas” (forest of the Amazon) composed by Villa-Lobos.

When I first encountered this new Manisero album, my initial reaction was to classify it in my collection of jazz recordings. However, as was the case on the Beatlerianas album, all of the tracks are through-composed. As a result I see no reason why I cannot assign someone like Simon to the same “classical” category occupied by Ginastera; and I would certainly enjoy encountering “El Manisero” at a guitar recital!

Pan-American Program for SFS “Re-Opening”

Last night the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) returned to Davies Symphony Hall to kick off its 2021–22 season with a “Re-Opening Night” program. Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted a program of four composers, all from the North and South American continents. The SFS musicians were joined by Salonen’s Collaborative Partner, vocalist and bassist esperanza spalding, a jazz trio of guest musicians, and members of the Alonzo King LINES Ballet.

This was, for the most part, a high-energy program, climaxing at the conclusion with “Noches de encantamiento,” the theme-and-variations final movement of a four-movement suite that José Yves Limantour extracted from the score that Silvestre Revueltas composed for the film The Night of the Mayas. Most impressive were the four percussion groups that occupied pretty much the entirety of the rear of the stage area.

The program note by James M. Keller observed that “each individual group should be given the opportunity to improvise freely on its basic rhythm whilst the other three accompany these players until it is their turn to improvise.” The unbridled energy of this percussion work tended to distract from both the theme and its four variations. However, it was clear that the rhythms were the core of Revueltas’ score; and the energy behind those rhythms could not have brought the evening to a more stimulating conclusion.

At the other end of the program, things began with a performance of John Adams’ “Slonimsky’s Earbox.” This was also a large-ensemble composition with an extended and diverse percussion section. In the context of my own Adams listening experiences, I would say that this is the most stimulating romp I have encountered since my first contact with “Grand Pianola Music.” However, the brazen in-your-face qualities that made “Grand Pianola Music” such a hoot have been refined by a more attentive approach to the progression of energy levels. While the idea of an “earbox” seems to have been Adams’ own, the title was named after Nicolas Slonimsky, whose encyclopedic knowledge of music history was complemented only by his own repertoire of brazen qualities (such as rolling an orange across a piano keyboard to play one of Frédéric Chopin’s études). In selecting this particular Adams composition, Salonen definitely knew how to get the evening off to a roaring start.

Adams’ energetic intensity was then complemented by the suite extracted from Alberto Ginastera’s Opus 8 score for the ballet Estancia. This was the selection for which Alonzo King created choreography, performed by members of his LINES Ballet company. The Davies stage was extended out into the front rows of the Orchestra seating; and King used this space to create dances for the four movements of the suite, all throbbing with intense energy. The choreographic vocabulary was a bit limited but then so was the area allocated for the dancers.

The one down-side to the evening was the Wayne Shorter composition that followed the Ginastera. “Gaia” was composed in 2013 and was receiving its first SFS performances this week. spalding was the leading soloist on both bass and vocals; and she was joined by a combo of Leo Genovese on piano, Terri Lyne Carrington on drums, and Ravi Coltrane on saxophone. Scoring for the SFS musicians was minimal, usually serving to highlight aspects of the jazz performers.

Sadly, the score was based on an extended vocal text that was not delivered particularly coherently by spalding, even with (or perhaps because of) assistance from a microphone. While her bass work was as engaging as ever, the idea of having a text at all was little more than a distraction from Shorter’s inventiveness and the skills of the jazz musicians. This was also the primary reason why a program that was supposed to be limited to an hour’s duration clocked in at around 90 minutes!

SFS to Present “Re-Opening Night” Program

San Francisco Symphony Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen (photograph by Minna Hatinen, courtesy of SFS)

Next month will begin with the return of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) to Davies Symphony Hall to kick off its 2021–22 Season, which was announced at the end of this past June. As expected, the ensemble will be conducted by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen; and the performers will also include one of his eight hand-picked Collaborative Partners, vocalist and bassist esperanza spalding. In addition there will be a jazz trio of guest musicians and members of the Alonzo King LINES Ballet.

King will create original choreography for a suite extracted from Alberto Ginastera’s Opus 8 score for the ballet Estancia. Both spalding and the jazz trio will contribute to the performance of excerpts from Wayne Shorter’s “Gaia.” These two selections will be framed by orchestral selections. The program will begin with John Adams’ “Slonimsky’s Earbox.” The concluding selection will be “Noches de encantamiento,” the theme-and-variations final movement of a four-movement suite that José Yves Limantour extracted from the score that Silvestre Revueltas composed for the film The Night of the Mayas.

This program will be given three performances. The first of these will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 30. This will be the annual All San Francisco Concert, which is offered to community groups and social service organizations by invitation only. Those interested in being invited should send electronic mail to allsf@sysymphony.org by this coming Friday, September 17.

The “Re-Opening Night” concert will take place the following evening, Friday, October 1, at 7 p.m. Doors will open at 6 p.m. for complementary sparkling wine served in the lobbies. The program will last for about 90 minutes, after which ticket holders are invited to attend an After-Party at the corner of Grove Street and Franklin Street. There are also VIP packages, which include admission for sparkling wine at 5:30 p.m., the best reserved seats, and an invitation to an Encore Reception with Salonen, the guest artists, and SFS musicians. A Web page has been created summarizing the different VIP packages, their respective prices, and the amount of that price that is tax deductible. Tickets for those attending the concert will range from $225 to $425; and the charge for VIP packages begins at $1000.

The first subscription concert of the season with then take place the following day, Saturday, October 2, beginning at 7:30 p.m. The program will be the same as the one performed on October 1 but without any of the Gala festivities. Ticket prices will range from $35 to $200.

Tickets for Davies are available online through the hyperlinks at the beginning of the above two paragraphs. Tickets can also be purchased by phone at 415-864-6000. Also, according to current news, the Box Office Lobby will again be open for in-person ticket sales and exchanges. Davies is located at 201 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of Grove Street. The main entrance (which is also the entrance for the Box Office) is located on the south side of Grove Street, halfway between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street.

Because we are still under pandemic conditions, SFS has released the following statement:

The San Francisco Symphony requires proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 for everyone ages 12 and up entering Davies Symphony Hall. All patrons are required to wear a face mask while attending performances and post-concert events. These protocols are in accordance with policies enacted by the City and County of San Francisco and follow the advice of the San Francisco Symphony Health & Safety Task Force. Details about health and safety protocols at Davies Symphony Hall can be found here.

Andrew Wan’s Latest Analekta Releases

Violinist Andrew Wan was named concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 2008. Since that time he has become a major property of the Canadian Analekta label, recording both concertos with the ensemble and its conductor Kent Nagano and chamber music with pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin. This past October Analekta released his two latest albums. The chamber music release consists of the three Opus 12 sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven, along with the Opus 24 (“Spring”) sonata in F major. The orchestral album presents concertante selections that receive relatively little attention, composed (in their order on the recording) by Alberto Ginastera, Leonard Bernstein, and Samy Moussa.

The Beethoven release is the second in what is probably a project to account for all ten of the sonatas. The project began with the release in September of 2018 of the three Opus 30 sonatas. It is important to bear in mind that the “full canon” of these sonatas amounts to relatively early work. The final sonata, Opus 96 in G major, was composed in 1812; and the other nine were written between 1798 and 1802. The other point I like to raise is that Beethoven described these as sonatas for piano and violin, perhaps setting his priorities on the assumption that he would be the keyboardist!

I have had the good fortune to encounter all ten of these sonatas both in performance and on several different recordings. The recordings are useful to establish familiarity with the thematic material; but the spontaneity of performance carries much more significance, particularly when it involves an encounter between a well-matched pair of virtuoso masters. In that context I am afraid that Wan’s second Beethoven sonata album did little to seize, let alone maintain, my attention over the course of its four sonata offerings.

A nineteenth-century imagining of Plato’s “Symposium” (painting by Anselm Feuerbach completed in 1874, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

On the orchestral album my only familiarity came from the middle selection, Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade after Plato’s ‘Symposium.’” The composer’s educational experiences at both Boston Latin School and Harvard University clearly exposed him to considerable instances of intellect. However, while Bernstein was clearly impressed by intellect, his efforts to rise to it did not fare particularly well. In the canon of Plato’s dialogues, “Symposium” is the one that is as much a character study as a philosophical examination of the nature of love. The movements of Bernstein’s “Serenade” attempt to capture the diversity of Plato’s characters; but his understanding of “Symposium” seems to be based more on whatever predecessor of CliffsNotes he had at his disposal to spare him the trouble of working through the text itself.

“Serenade” is preceded by Ginastera’s Opus 30 violin concerto. This composition involves an imaginatively elaborate architecture with six études at its core. Instrumentation is massive, including about fifty different instruments in the percussion section. However, while the plan for the concerto looks good on paper, its execution (at least as presented by Wan and Nagano) feels like a rather tedious slog from one episode to the next. The Moussa concerto, given its world premiere by Wan and Nagano, suffers from similar tedium; but Moussa at least seems to have had a better sense of working with a shorter overall duration.

Once again, however, it appears that Analekta products have been aimed at an audience that, to borrow a phrase that John Cage liked, is “not very fussy about music.”

One Found Sound Ends Year in High Spirits

Last night at Heron Arts in SoMa, the conductor-free chamber orchestra One Found Sound gave their final concert of the year (and the second concert in their fifth anniversary season). The title of the program was Saturnalia Regalia, foregoing any current religious preferences in favor of an ancient Roman festival celebrated near the end of the calendar year. The program selections may not have been as raucous as Roman revelry was known to be; but, at a time when following the daily news is almost an invitation to depression, the spirits of both the music and the performances could not have been higher.

Each of the three selections on the program had its own way of bringing delight to the attentive listener. Conceived in chronological order, the evening began with the overture to Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Naïs, which involves a battle between mortals and the gods of the Ancient Roman pantheon. That battle is in full swing from the opening measures of the overture, complete with the timpani depicting Jupiter’s thunderbolts and rapid-fire articulation across the full ensemble evoking images of Neptune’s ranging seas.

This was followed by one of Johannes Brahms’ earliest orchestral compositions, his Opus 16 serenade in A major. the second of the two serenades, composed in 1859. Both serenades were written during Brahms’ service as a court musician at Detmold between 1857 and 1860. The first (Opus 11) was impressive for its six-movement scale, lasting for about 45 minutes. The second (five movements lasting about half an hour) was most impressive for its unconventional instrumentation, which basically involves only a complete set of woodwind pairs (including horns as woodwinds) and low strings, meaning that the concertmaster is the principal viola player.

This makes for some fascinating experiments in sonorities arising from unconventional combinations of instruments. As might be guessed, the string tones tend to be dark; but there is no shortage of light coming from the winds. Indeed, Brahms brings in a piccolo for the final rondo movement; and what had been merely sunny disposition turns positively raucous. Rather like a canary that has just been released from its cage, the piccolo chirps away with ebullient embellishments while the rest of the ensemble dutifully works its way through the rondo repetitions. This is Brahms’ sense of humor at its best.

The program concluded with Alberto Ginastera’s Opus 23 “Variaciones Concertantes.” This was composed in 1953, shortly after Juan Perón was elected to his second term as president of Argentina. Opinions about Perón vary; but it is generally acknowledged that he was both populist and authoritarian, meaning that Argentina was not the best environment for artists and intellectuals. Ginastera’s Opus 23 may not have been written as a gesture of protest, but it definitely celebrates the practice of the performing arts with attention to both individuals and groups.

Somewhat in the spirit of Benjamin Britten’s “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” individual variations celebrate different instrumental voices, often in fascinating combinations. Thus, there is a scherzo variation for interleaving clarinet parts, while the variation for oboe and bassoon is structured as a canon. Recalling the spirit of Brahms’ serenade, the entire composition is framed by low strings, beginning with a cello accompanied by a harp (playing the open string pitches of a guitar) and assigning the bass as the last solo instrument before a full-ensemble concluding rondo.

The performances accounted for how each of these three pieces had its own unique approach to high spirits. The consistently solid technique of the group thus led the attentive listener through an engaging diversity of rhetorical stances, bound together only by a well-needed contextual sense of optimism. If Ginastera’s Opus 23 amounted to a personal statement of prevailing through Peronism, last night’s concert left the encouraging feeling that we can prevail through the darkness now surrounding us.

A Guitar Recital with Breadth and Depth

Last night Uruguayan guitarist Alvaro Pierri returned to Herbst Theatre to give his second Guitar Series recital for San Francisco Performances (SFP). He had made his SFP debut in 2015, which was preceded by his San Francisco debut in 2013 in a concert presented by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. (Presentation of the SFP Guitar Series is shared with the Omni Foundation.)

Pierri prepared a program that was impressive in both breadth and depth. All of the composers were either Old World or New World Hispanic, but the second half of the program focused almost entirely on the music of Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. It is also worth observing that the entire program exceeded two and one-half hours in duration, a span of time necessary to serve breadth and depth in equal measure!

The Villa-Lobos portion focused almost entirely on selections from the twelve études he composed for the Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia in 1929. These pieces were not published until 1953, by which time they had gone through two revisions. A more recent and scholarly publication was based on closer examination of Villa-Lobos’ own 1929 manuscript pages, which took place during the final decade of the last century.

The études themselves are distinguished only by key and tempo markings. There are no explicit indications of skills to be developed by each individual étude. However, those not actively involved with playing guitar can appreciate how these études cultivate dexterity. At the same time one gets the impression that Villa-Lobos appreciated Johann Sebastian Bach’s approach to pedagogy by making sure that each étude had its own qualities of invention along with the technical challenges it provided.

Pierri probably limited himself to selections because these études pose as many challenges to the attentive listener as they do to the performer. The breadth of Villa-Lobos’ capacity for invention is clear from the vast extent of his catalog, and the fact is that any one of these études allows the listener to take in a variety of different dimensions of detail. By way of preparation, Pierri preceded the études with the cadenza he wrote out for his 1951 guitar concerto (also composed for Segovia). This served as a useful warm-up; but the depth of those études posed a bit of a strain on attention, particularly in light of all the music that had been played up to that point.

The three Old World composers were all Iberian, Joaquín Rodrigo and Federico Moreno Torroba from Spain and Miguel Llobet from Catalonia (with apologies to any eyebrows raised in response to the distinction). The New World composers were all South American. Along with Villa-Lobos they were Agustín Barrios (Mangoré) from Paraguay and Alberto Ginastera from Argentina. There were sonatas by Rodrigo and Ginastera and a sonatina by Torroba; but all three of the pieces involved relatively short movements, which tended to be on the same durational scale as the shorter pieces by the other composers. If this involved a program of longer-than-usual duration, the diversity of approaches kept attention fresh and alert as Pierri introduced each composer to his audience.

OFS Puts a Twist on Seasonal Programming

Readers may recall that the conductor-free chamber orchestra One Found Sound (OFS) began their fifth anniversary season close enough to Halloween to entitled their program Monster Masquerade (with a little bit of both on display among the performers, as well as in the audience). With the major holiday season of the year upon us, the ensemble has decided to entitle their second concert program Saturnalia Regalia. According to its Wikipedia page, this ancient Roman festival was celebrated near the end of the calendar year with “a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms.” It is unclear how much of this will be experienced among either the performers or the audience, but it sounds like another night in San Francisco to me!

Of greater importance is that there will be as much diversity in the Saturnalia Regalia program as there was in Monster Masquerade. In contrast to beginning their first concert with a wildly original arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach by Anton Webern, next month’s program will begin back in the eighteenth century without any latter-day embellishments. The program will open with the overture to Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera Naïs, whose genre is generally described as pastorale héroïque. On the modern side the October selection of music by Igor Stravinsky will be complemented by Alberto Ginastera’s Opus 23, “Variaciones concertantes,” which he composed in 1953.

The remaining selection on the program seems to reflect the principle that one good serenade deserves another. As a “response” to the October performance of Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 44 serenade in D minor, scored primarily for winds, the December program will present Johannes Brahms’ Opus 16 serenade in A major. This was the second of two early ventures into orchestral writing before Brahms felt he was ready to compose a symphony. Because this is early Brahms, it is worth noting that Brahms was an avid supporter of Dvořák in a variety of ways when that younger composer was just beginning to show his talents.

This performance will begin at 8 p.m. on Friday, December 8. The venue will be Heron Arts, located in SoMa at 7 Heron Street on the block between 7th Street and 8th Street. General admission tickets are being sold for $25 with a $45 VIP rate for reserved seating that includes an invitation to an OFS open rehearsal. Tickets may be purchased online in advance through an Eventbrite event page.

Cellist Jennifer Kloetzel Leads Off the 2016 Fall San Francisco Performances Salons

Yesterday evening at the Hotel Rex, San Francisco Performances presented the first of its four Salon programs for the fall season. The featured artist was cellist Jennifer Kloetzel, best known to many (most?) in the audience as the founding cellist of the Cypress String Quartet, which disbanded after twenty years of concertizing this past June. Her accompanist was pianist Robert Koenig, who is now her faculty colleague at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she teaches two days out of the week while remaining a resident of San Francisco. She presented a program that sampled two major cello sonatas in two markedly different styles, both introduced and followed by shorter and lighter compositions.

The first sonata was the second of the two Opus 5 sonatas for piano and cello that Ludwig van Beethoven composed during a visit to Berlin in 1796. By way of context, 1796 was the year in which Ataria published the three Opus 2 piano sonatas that Beethoven had dedicated to his former teacher Joseph Haydn. He was just beginning to establish his reputation and was learning a thing or two about promotion. While in Berlin he was introduced to the King of Prussia Frederick William II, whose love of music was closely tied to his own mastery of the cello. The King’s court was frequented by the Duport brothers, both of whom were cellists. Jean-Pierre was one of the King’s teachers; and both he and his brother Jean-Louis played frequently at court. For those who read about the Dover Quartet recording yesterday, this is the same king that paid little attention to the three string quartets sent to him by a cash-desperate Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart near the end of this life.

Beethoven’s encounter with the King’s court was more successful, and it led to his honoring the monarch with original compositions. He had both of his Opus 5 sonatas performed for the King, taking the piano part and playing with one of the Duport brothers. (There is no conclusive evidence as to which Duport played with Beethoven. The Wikipedia page for these sonatas currently favors Jean-Louis.) This provided the composer with ample opportunity to show off his keyboard virtuosity while also providing a platform for the King’s favorite instrument played by one of his favored performers.

In many ways the Opus 5 sonatas owe as much of a debt to Haydn as the Opus 2 piano sonatas do. By 1796 both Mozart (now deceased) and Haydn (still going) had shared an interest in providing an opening Allegro movement of a symphony with an Adagio introduction, perhaps as a reflection back on either the “French overture” structure or the four-movement sonata da chiesa structure of the Baroque period. By the time Haydn wrote his final (“London”) symphony (Hoboken I/104) in 1795, the Adagio had extended to sixteen measures that took on several critical mood shifts. Still in his twenties, Beethoven continued to maintain a strong streak of showing that he could better Haydn at some of the master’s best games; and, as a result, the Adagio sostenuto e espressivo introduction to the G minor sonata performed last night ran to 43 measures with as much thematic diversity as could be found in a “real” Adagio movement and a few false endings thrown in to build up a bit of suspense. Some might even choose to call this a movement unto itself, but it is clear from the way it ends that it was intended as an introduction to the Allegro molto più tosto presto that follows. (For the record, the first movement of the second Opus 5 sonata is the longest movement found in any of Beethoven’s five cello sonatas.)

Beethoven was clearly trying to impress the King with music whose attention to dramatic qualities was as strong as its commitment to virtuosity. Yesterday evening’s performance could not have scored better on both counts. This proved to establish the full power of the chemistry between Kloetzel and Koenig, both of whom had a generous amount of weight to carry (and this movement was the only part of the two-movement sonata that they performed). Curiously, they chose to couple this ambitious undertaking with an equally ambitious result of another composer writing in his late twenties but from an entirely different era. The composer was Sergei Rachmaninoff; and his Opus 19 G minor cello sonata (the same key as the second Opus 5 Beethoven sonata) was composed in 1901, the same year in which he wrote what is probably his best-known piece, his Opus 18 (second) piano concerto in C minor.

While Kloetzel and Koenig presented the opening of the Beethoven sonata, they played the final two movements (Andante and Allegro molto) of the Rachmaninoff. The Andante is particularly engaging with his rich texture of polyrhythmic superpositions and a melodic line for the cello that weaves its way within the dense counterpoint on the piano. By way of contrast the final movement settles into a more conventional structure in which both cello and piano have ample opportunity to soar through a diversity of highly melodic themes. As was recently observed on this site, Rachmaninoff made it a point to treat cello and piano as equal partners in this sonata. Those who know this sonata could appreciate just how effective this combination was in last night’s performance. Hopefully, those just getting to know the piece came away with a craving to listen to the other two movements.

The opening selection came from Gaspar Cassadó’s Collection de six morceaux classiques (collection of six classical pieces), which Universal Edition published in 1925. Cassadó attributed each of these pieces to a “classical” composer; and Kloetzel selected the “Toccata” attributed to Girolamo Frescobaldi. The other composers in the collection were Franz Schubert, Luigi Boccherini, François Couperin, Gottlieb Muffat, and Martin Berteau, the last known for his études for solo cello. Cassadó added a piano accompaniment for one of those études, but the only other composer whose actually music is included in this collection is Muffat. Thus, the toccata movement is entirely original Cassadó; but, questions of authenticity aside, the music provided a first-rate way to light a fire to stimulate listening to the sonata movements that would follow.

The concluding selection was one of three rhapsodies that Alberto Ginastera composed to evoke the pampas of Argentina. Each was given the name “Pampeana;” and the second was scored for cello and piano. In the manner of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian rhapsodies, the music spans a variety of different moods, each of which captures a different aspect of these wide-open plains. However, Ginastera is best known for his intricate rhythmic patterns; and these made for an impressive display in the final section. During the following Q&A both Kloetzel and Koenig gave their own thoughts about the intense concentration required to negotiate that complexity; but the music certainly made for the perfect razzle-dazzle conclusion to an impressively diverse program.