SFCO Home Series Concert: Double Trouble January 3, 2010

The San Francisco Chamber Orchestra performs its first Home Series Concerts of the 2009-10 Season over the New Year's holiday. "Double Trouble" features four pairs of soloists and a great, double-digit Haydn symphony, No. 77 in B-flat Major from his prolific period at the Esterhazy court. Double concertos by Antonio Vivaldi, Arthur Honegger, and a world premiere by local violinist and composer Gloria Justen will be presented, plus an evocative duo for two violins by our Grammy award-winning Composer in Residence, Gabriela Lena Frank, from her string quartet Quijotadas (2007).

The SFCO continues its Debut Artists tradition, featuring rising young classical stars from the Bay Area, with young cellists Isabel Lau and Benjamin Luo performing Vivaldi's dramatic Concerto for Two Cellos in G minor.

Neoclassical in style, Arthur Honegger's delightful Concerto da Camera is in three movements: the first a jaunty, rhythmically charged Allegretto amabile; the second a dark, somber Andante; the third a playful Vivace that puts the soloists through their virtuoso paces.

Gloria Justen's evocative music spring from her explorations in improvisation and desire to create soundscapes that reflect the natural world back to us. Her Double Concerto for Violin and Cello, commissioned by the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, will receive its world premiere performance at this concerts, featuring Ms. Justen herself on violin and SFCO principal cellist Eric Gaenslen on cello.

Ms. Frank's 2007 string quartet, Quijotados, describes in music the extravagant delusions wrought in the quixotic spirit of Cervante's famous novel, El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quixote da la Mancha.

Symphony No. 77 in B-flat major, written by Haydn at the age of 50 in 1782, is remarkable in that it is so unremarkable, yet so clearly a work of genius. From the very first bars, the listener is drawn into a beautifully realized and exquisitely controlled musical world.

Official Website: http://www.sfchamberorchestra.org