By design, chamber music can be performed anywhere. Bay Area musicians like to perform it everywhere. Here, SFCV’s premier chamber music maven takes on the task of winnowing down this gorgeous superfluity to just five (well, and a few more) hot tickets you can’t afford to miss.
Brentano Quartet
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I have yet to hear this intensely thoughtful, deeply vocal quartet play without coming away from the recital with a markedly different perspective on the music, be it Schubert or Mendelssohn or Britten or late Beethoven. The ensemble’s upcoming Stanford University recital features Beethoven’s final quartet and ranges over material that the Brentanos have played often in other venues, though not in the Bay Area. We are promised some of their Renaissance transcriptions, as well as some Steven Mackey (the quartet and the composer have collaborated closely for several years). Also: the Barber Adagio for Strings, which alone ought to be worth the asking price; if any quartet can make the piece sound like music rather than a thinly disguised bow-control étude, it’s this one.
After the concert, the quartet will coach local amateur string quartets; seats are free to ticket-holders from the recital.
Stanford Lively Arts presents the Brentano Quartet, Feb. 13, 2:30 p.m., Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford, $44-$50; postconcert coaching, 5 p.m., Campbell Recital Hall, Braun Music Center, Stanford, free to ticket-holders ($10 to others).
Jennifer Stumm With Elizabeth Pridgen
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We violists are ever on the lookout for new champions of the instrument. Jennifer Stumm, to judge by the slew of prizes she’s amassed over the past several years, looks like one to keep tabs on. Certainly, the recital she’s programmed for her Mill Valley Chamber Music appearance suggests no self-doubt: Few are the violists who feel up to playing both Brahms sonatas, Rebecca Clarke’s 1919 sonata, and Britten’s Lachrymae all within the space of two hours. If the reports of her playing I’ve read are even close to reality, this is the mustn’t-miss Bay Area viola recital of 2011. Stumm is accompanied by pianist Elizabeth Pridgen.
Mill Valley Chamber Music presents Jennifer Stumm, violist, April 3, 5 p.m., Mount Tamalpais United Methodist Church, Mill Valley, $25.
Pavel Haas Quartet
Of course, if you’re not particularly a viola nut, you have another enticing recital to consider on April 3: the Pavel Haas Quartet, a young Czech ensemble of uncommon ferocity and singleness of purpose. Its first two recordings were of the two Janáček quartets, coupled with the three quartets of their namesake composer (a student of Janáček’s). The results were, to say the least, startling — sometimes gritty, sometimes singing, but always at a level of intensity that it’s hard to see translating easily to other music.
The April program finds the quartet in its element: Haas’ Second Quartet (probably without, alas, the optional percussion for the finale that features on the recording, but you never know), Erwin Schulhoff’s First Quartet, and Debussy’s quartet. (The last would be fascinating even if there were nothing else on the program. How much edge do they keep? How much silk do they overlay?)
San Francisco Performances presents the Pavel Haas Quartet, April 3, 7 p.m., Herbst Theatre, S.F., $35-$55.
Tetzlaff Quartet
If an ensemble I’d never heard of were to program Haydn’s quartet Op. 20/3, Mendelssohn’s Op. 13, and Schoenberg’s First Quartet on one concert, I think I’d show up just to find out whether they were nuts ... or geniuses. Given that it’s violinist Christian Tetzlaff’s recently founded string quartet, I’m leaning toward “geniuses.” The Haydn is a personal favorite, not least for one of the more gorgeous slow movements he ever wrote, yet the piece as a whole is too danged strange to have made it into the ordinary string quartet’s “Hey!-we-need-some-Haydn!” bin. And the Mendelssohn is teenage Felix smitten by late Beethoven — urgent, impassioned, and (again) not a little strange.
As for the Schoenberg, it’s the sort of vast undertaking that tends to be done well if done at all, because you just don’t try it unless you believe in the piece. And if you do believe in it (and have the requisite colossal chops), it comes startlingly alive. If you missed the Artemis Quartet’s jaw-droppingly-great performance four years ago, here’s another chance to visit the outskirts of tonality, and to understand why so many people found that neighborhood so fascinating.
San Francisco Performances presents the Tetzlaff Quartet, April 16, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, S.F., $35-$60.
Lindberg/Koh/Karttunen Trio
The program so far is a little vague (promising “Lindberg and Stravinsky”), but anything involving Magnus Lindberg, Jennifer Koh, and Anssi Karttunen is bound to be worth hearing. Koh, the violinist, is an extraordinary player, brimful of energy and game for the most exhausting projects, yet remarkably savvy at picking them; I’ve never seen her pour her enthusiasm into bad music. Karttunen, the cellist, is a one-man concerto-inspiring magnet. We haven’t had much opportunity to sample Lindberg’s pianism, but his fertile compositional imagination has been proven in the test.
San Francisco Performances is also sponsoring this trio for a free concert event at the San Francisco Community Music Center following the main concert.
San Francisco Performances presents the Lindberg/Koh/Karttunen Trio, May 15, 2 p.m., S.F. Conservatory of Music, $30-$50. Free hour-long concert; Jennifer Koh in solo recital, May 15, 6 p.m., San Francisco Community Music Center.
Extra, Extra!
Five picks are, as usual, insufficient for a half-season of chamber music in the Bay Area. So here are a few more truffles to consider:
- The New Esterházy Quartet, playing a quartet by Haydn-student Ignaz Pleyel with Haydn’s Op. 50/5 (“The Dream”), and Beethoven’s Op. 135 (Feb. 5, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco; Feb. 6, 4 p.m., All Saints’ Church, Palo Alto)
- The Pacifica Quartet, with clarinetist/composer Jörg Widmann, playing the Brahms Clarinet Quintet along with a work of Widmann’s and quartets by Haydn and Stravinsky (March 8, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco)
- The BluePrint Project, in a memorial program for composer Andrew Imbrie (April 9, 8 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Francisco)