SFCO Rush Hour Concert: Double Trouble December 30, 2009

The San Francisco Chamber Orchestra performs its first Rush Hour Concert of the 2009-10 Season - a special one-hour concert performance in a convenient downtown location.

"Double Trouble" features four pairs of soloists playing double concertos by Antonio Vivaldi, Arthur Honegger, and a world premiere by local violinist and composer Gloria Justen. Also featured is an evocative duo for two violins by our Grammy award-winning Composer in Residence, Gabriela Lena Frank, from her string quartet Quijotadas (2007).

Arthur Honegger (1892-1955) wrote his Concerto da Camera - Chamber Concerto - for flute, English Horn, and strings, in 1948. Neoclassical in style, his 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 performances on these concerts, featuring Ms. Justen herself on violin and SFCO principal cellist Eric Gaenslen on cello.

Gabriela Lena Frank, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra's very first Composer in Residence, was the recent winner of a 2009 Latin Grammy Award, in the category of Best Classical Contemporary Composition for her work Inca Dances, written for guitarist Manuel Barrueco and the Quarteto Latinamericano. Ms. Frank's 2007 string quartet, Quijotados, written for the Brentano Quartet, describes in music the extravagant delusions wrought in the quixotic spirit of Cervante's famous novel, El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quixote da la Mancha.

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