First, there's a new concert series, to be held in March, when I will inconveniently be doing jujitsu in Chicago (but the trip with include Hamilton and a certain SFS music director designate at the CSO in Strauss and Bartok):
DATES Unless otherwise noted, all concerts are “pay what you can” at the door.
Thursday, March 28, 2019, 8pm Center for New Music 55 Taylor Street, San Francisco
Friday, March 29, 2019, 7:30pm Palo Alto (venue TBA)
Saturday, March 30, 2019, 1pm Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) 2155 Center Street, Berkeley Free with museum admission
Sunday, March 31, 2019, 2:30pm Residence of Composer Vivian Fung
Please contact Bard Music West to RSVP for address at 415-857-1632 or info@bardmusicwest.org.
PROGRAM more program details to be announced in February
Danny Clay – String Quartet + Toy Piano, for string quartet and toy piano
Clay – Playbook for flexible instrumentation
Gabriella Smith – Carrot Revolution for string quartet
Works by Phyllis Chen, Joseph Haydn, and others
Then there's the Bard Music West Festival, which this year will be The World of Grazyna Bacewicz!!!
On October 18-19, 2019 at Noe Valley Ministry, Bard Music West will present its third festival celebrating Polish composer and virtuoso violinist/pianist Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969). The festival will illuminate Bacewicz’s incredibly rich body of work and, in the fiftieth year since her death, make a case for her inclusion among the great composers of the twentieth-century. Three concerts and a talk will dive into her life, music, inspirations, and contemporaries.
“Witold Lutoslawski called Bacewicz ‘one of the foremost women composers of all time,’ but we believe that she was one of the great composers of the twentieth century, period. While she is well- known in her native Poland, she is rarely played in the United States. 2019 marks fifty years since her death and so it seems the right time to make a case for her inclusion in the canon of great twentieth- century composers. Our festival will be a rare opportunity to be immersed in her music which ranges from pure virtuosic fun to terribly moving statements on humanity. We also look forward to exploring her contemporaries from around World War II and its aftermath, many of whom are overlooked in their own right.” —Allegra Chapman, Artistic Codirector and Executive Director, Bard Music West
A virtuoso violinist and pianist, Bacewicz wrote over two hundred pieces of chamber music, virtuosic solo showpieces, concerti, and works for chamber orchestra and large-scale orchestra. Born in Poland, she studied composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and violin with André Touret and Carl Flesch. She was concertmaster of the Polish Radio Orchestra in the 1930s. During World War II, she continued to compose, giving secret underground concerts in Warsaw. Bacewicz won numerous awards for her compositions, and spent the last fifteen years of her life devoted solely to composition.
To reiterate the important dates:
Concerts:
Thursday, March 28-Sunday, March 31, 2019, in various locations.
The World of Grazing Bacewicz:
October 18-19, 2019
Noe Valley Ministry
5 comments:
Urbanski is doing a Bacewicz piece on his visit to SFS this year. Remember we were discussing in the SFCV comments section after his Lutoslawski and Penderecki last year whom he should take on next? I suggested Panufnik or Bacewicz, and am pleased with the result.
The Bacewicz is an overture that's ten minutes long. I have been characterizing this SFS season as one that "has more works by the music director than by women." If only MTT were in a class with any of the great composer/conductors of the past as a composer.
I'd love to hear anything by either Panufnik, but I'm not holding my breath,
Speaking of Urbanski, I chatted a bit with a Penderecki scholar about the Threnody earlier this year, very informally, and the composer eventually abandoned the idea that it should not sound beautiful.
Ubanski's program:
Vilde Frang
Violin
Elgar
Violin Concerto
Bacewicz
Overture
Mendelssohn
Italian Symphony
It's the week before jujitsu camp, so I can go, but...I dunno, I've never heard the Elgar live but most of his stuff puts me to sleep; the Bcewicz is very short; love the Italian, but....
Penderecki's Threnody is less than ten minutes long too, and that's all we got of him. I realize these aren't much, but they're something, and it's nice to see the same name make an appearance, if a brief one, on this prestigious spot.
The Anne Frank piece was, I think, the first I'd heard by MTT as a composer, and I was actually impressed. I'd much rather hear that than anything composed by Furtwängler or Klemperer or even Mahler.
And I've already noted, on my own blog, how Salonen delivered in LA on new music (and I think that includes women: he's certainly bringing one when he comes next month) where MTT only tends to talk big. So there's hope for the future.
I've heard several of MTT's works - missed the Anne Frank piece 0 and have not been impressed.
I agree with you about Salonen and new music. I quoted you in my not-yet-finished OMG OMG OMG IT'S SALONEN blog post.
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