Singer

A happy habit for a generation of San Francisco Performances concertgoers devoted to spending Saturday mornings with great music and fun, informative commentary. Deftly placed into compelling context by Robert Greenberg, our music historian-in-residence, each program features complete works performed by the Alexander String Quartet.
This season, the five look back 100 years to the tumultuous social and political era of the early 20th century—times not unlike our own—and explore enduring works of the great music it produced. Programs will include works by Debussy, Ravel, Webern, Schoenberg, Sibelius, Bartók, Elgar, and Vaughan Williams.

EPSG:4326

Alexander String Quartet & Robert Greenberg | Host

War Memorial and Performing Arts Center

No other Bay Area performances come close to offering the visual, aural, and emotional qualities that have made ABS’s Messiah in Grace Cathedral so superlative.
The finely tuned voices of the American Bach Choir and the polished sheen of sonorities brought by ABS’s period-instrument orchestra soar within the majestic interior of San Francisco’s Nob Hill landmark.
Our annual tradition of performing Handel’s Messiah in San Francisco’s historic Grace Cathedral perennially provides a treasured December holiday event to capacity audiences. A Bay Area holiday tradition now in its 24th year, ABS’s performances of Handel’s timeless work have become an essential part of the musical year for many music lovers and have attracted audiences of more than 50,000 from around the world.

Handel's Messiah in Grace Cathedral

Grace Cathedral

In this special abridged evening performance, you’ll hear the Christmas portion (Part I) of Handel’s Messiah along with music of the season by Baroque composers Giovanni Valentini, Johann Christoph Pez, and Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
Together with the best highlights of Handel's peerless composition, ABS will perform a sweetly captivating concerto for two "pastorale" recorders, an Italian sinfonia composed especially for Christmas, and an evocative musical painting of Christmas night by one of the most treasured composers of the Parisian Baroque.

A Baroque Christmas

This program of soulful and moving compositions by four of the German Baroque’s most masterful composers begins with a 10-part setting of “Christ lag in Todesbanden” by Johann Pachelbel. Its seven movements unfold the deep richness of the composer’s reflections on the Easter text that Bach would later use for one of his earliest cantatas. And from the pen of one of Bach’s favorite composers, Dieterich Buxtehude, comes a bittersweet setting of the famous Eastertide chorale, “Jesu, meine Freude,” that would have been a great inspiration to Bach when he composed his own motet setting of the same verses several decades later. One of Bach’s earliest surviving cantatas, “Der Herr denket an uns” (Psalm 115: “The Lord is mindful of us”) is a joyful celebration of gratitude and blessedness that was probably composed to celebrate the wedding of the minister who had married Bach and his wife, Maria Barbara, about a year earlier. The Passion-themed orbit of this program finds its greatest resonance in a truly hypnotic and almost trance-inducing setting of the Saint Matthew Passion by Johann Theile. From its first movement to its last, Theile’s music mesmerizes the listener and grippingly captivates that attention until the final note.

Mark Bonney

Tenor

Events

Past events

Mar 11, 2023

Alexander String Quartet & Robert Greenberg | Host · San Francisco Performances

15 - 16 Dec, 2022

Handel's Messiah in Grace Cathedral · American Bach Soloists

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