Venerable and formerly dilapidated Nourse Auditorium has been rescued and spiffied up beautifully through a major investment and effort by Sydney Goldstein. It’s serving as the new home for her City Arts & Lectures, also rented out to refugee organization from the temporarily shuttered Herbst Theater, such as the 2013 Merola Opera Program and others.
But it will take the always-adventurous Symphony Parnassus to be the first orchestra to play there in about four decades. (I remember seeing Death in Venice and other Spring Opera productions in rehearsal in the already rickety auditorium in the 1970s.) By the way, it’s now neither Nourse Auditorium or Nourse Theater or Theatre — it's called “The Nourse.”
Stephen Paulson’s Symphony Parnassus will strike up the band there on Nov. 3, with yet another centennial tribute to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Holst’s arrangement of Bach’s Fugue à la Gigue, and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, with Kevin Zhu, recent winner of the junior division of the Menuhin Competition, as the soloist.
The Parnassus season continues with Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, Brahms’ Symphony No. 2, and — thank you, Maestro Paulson! — Frank Martin’s 1951 Violin Concerto, with https://www.sfcv.org/article/music-news-july-27-2010#anchor1 Stuart Canin as soloist. The venue for this Jan. 19 concert is the S.F. Conservatory of Music.
On April 13, Parnassus will be at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, with Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and cellist E. Oliver Herbert featured in Ernest Bloch’s 1916 Schelomo, A Hebrew Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra. Herbert, winner of the 2012 Felix Khuner Concerto Competition, is a student at Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. Paulson always selects his soloists in a wide range from students to famed veterans.
The season’s final concert returns to the Conservatory, where, on June 8, Parnassus principal violist Hélène Wickett shows her versatility as soloist in the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25. Also on the program: Debussy’s La mer and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite.
Season subscriptions for this outstanding community orchestra are $75, available from www.symphonyparnassus.org or by calling (415) 728-5997. Here’s a bit more about Parnassus:
To many in the Bay Area, Symphony Parnassus is known as the Doctors’ Orchestra. And for its first 10 years, this was a fitting moniker: officially the UCSF Orchestra, the ensemble drew its talent from the medical professionals at UC San Francisco. When Jonathan Davis (a biophysics graduate student) started the orchestra in 1989, he found an enthusiastic, supportive community of music lovers.Following budget cuts at UCSF in 1999, the orchestra was reorganized as a nonprofit and named Symphony Parnassus to honor its roots in the Parnassus Heights neighborhood. Though it’s no longer the Doctors’ Orchestra, Symphony Parnassus continues to attract top musical talent drawn from the local community: in addition to doctors, the roster also includes teachers, corporate executives, IT specialists, engineers, and scientists, as well as a number of professional musicians.
Over the years, the orchestra has collaborated with world-class musicians like pianist Robin Sutherland, violinist Geraldine Walther, oboist William Bennett and soprano Lisa Vroman. Ballet legend Rudolph Nureyev made his West Coast conducting debut with Symphony Parnassus, and famed jazz saxophonist and composer John Handy premiered his Concerto for Jazz Soloist and Orchestra with the group.