Celebrate the artistry of the San Francisco Symphony when Concertmaster and violin soloist Alexander Barantschik leads a rousing performance of J.S. Bach’s ebullient E major Violin Concerto. Then, experience Shostakovich’s intense and probing wartime monument, the Eighth Symphony, under the direction of conductor Juraj Valčuha.
Inside Music: an informative talk by Elizabeth Seitz, begins one hour prior to concerts. Free to ticketholders. Learn More.
J.S. BACH
Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042 ca. 1720 | 19 mins
Johann Sebastian Bach was renowned in his day as a keyboard virtuoso, but he was also a skilled violinist. Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel recalled of his father: “He completely understood the possibilities of all stringed instruments.” Bach supplied violinists with an abundance of surpassing masterpieces, including the E major Violin Concerto. The concerto bursts with Bach's admiration for the newfangled Italian style of Vivaldi, particularly in the opening movement, which is structured like an Italian opera aria of the time. The second movement is a deeply serious Adagio with music that reaches extraordinary heights of pathos in the rhapsodic violin part. One could easily dance to the all-but-waltzing final rondo, in which the violin’s solo sections escalate in virtuosity. Read More
SHOSTAKOVICH
Symphony No. 8 1943 | 62 mins
As a creative artist under Communist rule, Shostakovich saw his official status seesaw between champion of Soviet music and toxic pariah. At the time he wrote his Eighth Symphony in 1943, he was still riding high from the immense success of his Leningrad Symphony. The idyll would not last, however, as the premiere of the unorthodox Eighth left some puzzled and the work was quickly lost from view. Perhaps if Shostakovich had given the Eighth the sort of slam-bang ending he had found for his first seven symphonies the work would have enjoyed a different fate. But then nothing in this symphony is conventional, especially how Shostakovich rethinks symphonic design in the mold of his beloved Mahler. The first movement is by itself a little under half the entire symphony. Then comes a sequence of three marches of varying character—ranging from the heroic (or is it mock heroic?) to the funereal. Then the finale, reserved and brief. In his typical fashion, Shostakovich keeps the symphony’s true meaning a mystery. One clue is offered by a newspaper article the composer penned in which, reflecting on the Eighth’s final movement, he noted: “Life is beautiful. All that is dark and ignominious will disappear. All that is beautiful will triumph.” Read More
Steven Ziegler is Managing Editor at the San Francisco Symphony
Program
Symphony No. 8
Violin Concerto No. 2
Support for Alexander Barantschik's appearance is provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for Guest Artists.
Conductor
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Violin
Alexander Barantschik began his tenure as San Francisco Symphony Concertmaster in September 2001 and holds the Naoum Blinder Chair. Former concertmaster of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in Germany, London Symphony Orchestra, and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, he has also been an active soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe. He has collaborated in chamber music with André Previn, Antonio Pappano, and Mstislav Rostropovich. As leader of the LSO, Mr. Barantschik toured Europe, Japan, and the United States; performed as soloist; and served as concertmaster for major symphonic cycles with Michael Tilson Thomas, Rostropovich, and Bernard Haitink. He was also concertmaster for Pierre Boulez’s year-long, three-continent seventy-fifth birthday celebration.
Born in Russia, Mr. Barantschik attended the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and went on to perform with the major Russian orchestras, including the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic. His awards include first prize in the International Violin Competition in Sion, Switzerland, and in the Russian National Violin Competition. Since joining the San Francisco Symphony, Mr. Barantschik has led the Orchestra in several programs and appeared as soloist in concertos and other works by Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Walton, Piazzolla, and Schnittke, among others. Mr. Barantschik is a member of the faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he teaches graduate students from around the world in a special concertmaster program. Through an arrangement with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Mr. Barantschik has the exclusive use of the 1742 Guarnerius del Gesù violin once owned by the virtuoso Ferdinand David, who is believed to have played it in the world premiere of the Mendelssohn E-minor Violin Concerto in 1845. It was also the favorite instrument of the legendary Jascha Heifetz, who acquired it in 1922 and who bequeathed it to the Fine Arts Museums, with the stipulation that it be played only by artists worthy of the instrument and its legacy.
November 2022
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