3rd Season, 2018-19

Sunday, October 21, 2018, 3 pm

Vinifera Trio with guest cellist James Jaffe

Messiaen,  Quatour pour le fin du temps

The Vinifera Trio celebrates repertoire from the classical and romantic periods, from klezmer to newly-commissioned works by today’s composers. They have performed at venues and concert series across California and Oregon, and as ensemble in residence at the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival. In June of 2018 the trio will embark on their first European tour. We are happy to welcome this vibrant ensemble back to the series, along with their accomplished colleague and friend, cellist James Jaffe, for a performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatour pour le fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time). 

Messiaen composed  this piece in 1941 in a German prisoner of war camp. He and three fellow prisoners premiered the work there for 400 inmates on instruments procured with the aid of a guard. The eight movements are a meditation on the mystical experience of time and timelessness, but also a celebration of the material world, expressed through the use of meticulously notated birdsong. Interlocking musical patterns are overlaid with plainchant melodies and the songs of blackbirds and nightingales. Regarded as one of the most important works of the 20th century, this piece is a powerful and ecstatically moving musical experience.

Sunday, November 11, 2018, 3pm 

Brian Thorsett, tenor and Eric Choate, piano

Schumann, Dichterliebe

Hailed as “a strikingly gifted tenor, with a deeply moving, unblemished voice” (sfmusicjournal.com), Brian Thorsett performs opera, oratorio and recital, and repertoire ranging from medieval to newly-composed. Brian has performed with the San Francisco Opera, the American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Mark Morris Dance Group, West Edge Opera, and many others. He is a graduate of San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, Glimmerglass Opera’s Young American Artist program, and the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme at Aldeburgh, England. 

Eric Choate, as well as being an accomplished pianist, is also a composer and a conductor. His compositions have been lauded by the SF Examiner as "music to grab the listener's attention through novelty and hold it through technical discipline." He was awarded First Prize in both the SFCM Art Song Composition Competition and the Vancouver Chamber Choir Composition Competition.  As a conductor, Eric has served as guest Chorus Master for the San Francisco Symphony and the Berkeley Symphony; he is Director of Music at The Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin in San Francisco. 

Robert Schumann composed Dichterliebe (The loves of a Poet) in 1840. This cycle of sixteen songs on poems by Heinrich Heine trace the course of a relationship from the point of view of a sensitive young man, from innocent infatuation through betrayal, suffering and bitterness, and ultimately healing. It is a masterpiece of romanticism, and a tribute to the unique power of music to tell a story. Supertitles to translate the original German will be provided. The program will include one of Eric Choate's compositions.

Sunday, February 17, 2019, 3pm    SOLD OUT

Telegraph String Quartet 

Beethoven, String Quartet Op.130 with the "Grosse Fuge"

Ravel, String Quartet in F Major

Praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for “"tonal warmth and communicative urgency … a combination of brilliance and subtlety”, the Telegraph Quartet formed in 2013 with an equal passion for standard and contemporary chamber music repertoire. The Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. The Quartet has performed in New York City’s Carnegie Hall, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. In 2018 the Quartet releases its debut album, Into the Light, featuring works by Anton Webern, Benjamin Britten, and Leon Kirchner, on the Centaur label. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Quartet is currently on faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as their Quartet-in-Residence.

We are pleased to welcome this exciting young ensemble to the series for a performance of one of Beethoven’s most profound and beautiful quartets. The String Quartet in B-flat, Opus 130, was among Beethoven’s last works, and challenges the conventions of the genre in terms of intensity and scale. Telegraph will perform the quartet’s original final movement - the monumental “Grosse Fuge” - a piece so intense that Beethoven’s friends convinced him to separate it from Op.130 and make it an autonomous work.  Also on the program will be Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F Major, composed in 1903, and inspired by Claude Debussy's string quartet. 

Sunday, March 17, 2019, 3pm 

 Maia Silberstein, baroque violin

J.S. Bach works for unaccompanied violin

Maia Silberstein, a specialist on the baroque violin, lives in Brussels. She performs and records with renowned ensembles such as Les Arts Florissants, La Petite Bande, Ricercar Consort, Currende, Collegium Vocale, Anima Eterna. She plays concertmaster for Euterpe Baroque Consort as well as other European ensembles, and tours regularly in  Europe, Asia, North and South America. Maia has taught at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels and the Corso Internazionale di Musica Antiqua in Urbino, Italy. Growing up in Davis, California, Maia earned degrees from the Juilliard School and the Cleveland Institute, and then pursued her interest in early music, studying in Brussels with Sigiswald Kuijken. In 1999 she received the second prize at the International Schmelzer competition in Austria. 

Ms. Silberstein will perform J.S. Bach’s Sonata #1 in g minor, the Partita #3 in E major, and the Partita #2 in d minor, including the beautiful d minor chaconne.