Chamber Music S.F. Sets Exciting “Debut Series”
Bay Area audiences will have to wait nearly as long as they will for the local opening of Broadway’s Hamilton, but when Chamber Music San Francisco’s new concert series for young audiences opens next February, it will be a significant, welcome program.
Daniel Levenstein, founder-director of Chamber Music San Francisco, is establishing the series in order to bring in more young talent to perform. He's been frustrated by lack of available dates that limits the organization to presenting only nine concerts in the city.
The new series will add five concerts, he says, “in small San Francisco venues, featuring lesser known artists (many of them young artists) in their local recital debuts.” Levenstein is not exactly right: the two venues — 400-seat S.F. Conservatory of Music Concert Hall and 299-seat St. Mark’s Lutheran Church at 1111 O’Farrell St. — are pretty good size for recitals, and “lesser known” should be qualified with “as of now.”
The young artists are all explosively talented winners of international competitions. First up is violinist Ning Feng (Feb. 7, 2017) Gold Medal winner at the Paganini Competition in Genoa, as well as prizes at the Queen Elisabeth and Yehudi Menuhin competitions, and soloist with the L.A. Philharmonic and Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra.
Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho follows on Feb. 28, gold medalist at both the 2015 Warsaw Chopin and the 2009 Hamamatsu Competitions, as well as winner of bronze at the 2011 Tchaikovsky (at age 16).
Iranian-American pianist Sara Daneshpour (March 11) is also winner of international awards and has performed in Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall and the Moscow Conservatory. Her playing has been praised by the New York Concert Review for “blazing technique, expressivity, imagination, and a lovely stage presence.”
Chinese pianist Haochen Zhang, 25, is known as one of two winners of the 2009 Cliburn Competition's Gold Medal (along with the blind Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii). He has performed with such top orchestras as Munich, Mariinsky, London, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. He studied with Gary Graffman, also the teacher of Lang Lang and Yuja Wang.The recital is on April 1.
The new series closes on May 5, 2017, with a recital by Mayuko Kamio, 29, Osaka-born gold medalist of the 2007 Tchaikovsky Violin Competition. She made her concerto debut at age 10 with conductor Charles Dutoit in a televised concert. Since then, she has appeared with such conductors as Mstislav Rostropovich and Zubin Mehta, in addition to numerous recitals.
Single tickets for the debut series are $40, and subscriptions for the five-concert series are priced at $150. Both venues have open seating.
New Opera NYC Brings Russian Classics to San Francisco
For one weekend only, April 15–16, a New York-based opera company and the Russian Cultural Center of San Francisco join to present new versions of Russian opera classics in Fort Mason's Cowell Theater.
It will be the first West Coast appearance of New Opera NYC, founded by Igor Konyukhov in 2012. The programs consist of a one-act version of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and the full presentation of Tchaikovsky's Iolanta, originally produced as a companion piece to Nutcracker.
Konyukhov — dancer, choreographer and opera director from Moscow, also member of several American companies — produces and stages the program. The conductor is Lidiya Yankovskaya, Russian-born artistic director of Boston's Juventas New Music Ensemble and music director of the Commonwealth Lyric Theater. She is a conducting fellow at the Cabrillo Festival.
The Iolanta cast features Mikhail Svetlov as the King, with soprano Julia Lima in the title role. Costumes are designed by Sausalito-based, Russian fashion designer Vasily Vein, as the announcement says, “has designed gowns for Russian socialites (Tatiana Shesterneva and Anjelika Koulebakina) attending San Francisco Opera Galas.”
Svetlov also sings the role of Boris, and following a tradition began by Feodor Chaliapin, Svetlov will also be heard as drunkard monk Varlaam in the same performance.
Peter Maxwell Davies, 1934-2016
One of the 20th century's most original composers, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, died in his Orkney home on Monday at age 81 after a long battle with leukemia.
Modern, avant-garde, pioneering, and uncompromising: These are just some of the adjectives applied to Davies, but they don't sum up his bold, unique approach to music, which encompassed both complexity and utter simplicity. A prime example for the latter is his haunting lament for solo piano, Farewell To Stromness. Perhaps his best-known works are the orchestral piece An Orkney Wedding With Sunrise, and monodrama Eight Songs for a Mad King.
In spite of all the controversy around him — he was defiant of authority, openly homosexual, a militant environmentalist, and an antiwar activist — Davies was also well honored. He was president of Making Music (The National Federation of Music Societies), made a CBE in 1981, and was knighted in 1987. He was appointed Master of the Queen's Music in March 2004, but in a break from the tradition of lifetime tenure, his appointment was limited to 10 years. He was Visiting Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music.
In Brief: SFS Conductors March On
• Former SFS Music Director (1977-1985) Edo de Waart, 74, will become conductor laureate with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra after the current season. Having girded the globe for almost a half a century as music director of orchestras from his native Holland to Australia, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, de Waart is likely to take guest assignments in the future, rather than lead an orchestra full time.
• Of SFS Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas's many associations, one is soon to change. Simon Rattle is leaving the Berlin Philharmonic to lead the London Symphony Orchestra, and MTT, 71, will become Conductor Laureate of the LSO, Gianandrea Noseda, 51, succeeding him the next season as Principal Guest Conductor, joining Daniel Harding in that position. Another long-time LSO associate, André Previn, becomes Conductor Emeritus. MTT responded to the announcement:
Making music with the London Symphony for over 40 years has been one of the great joys of my life. I am delighted that we will continue our close working relationship into the future.