Friday July 28 2023 7:30 p.m.
Barbro Osher Recital Hall at the Bowes Center
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
200 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco
The program will last approximately 1 hour & 20 minutes including one intermission.
The passionate connections felt by 19th- and 20th-century composers to Johann Sebastian Bach and his legacy inspired some of the piano repertoire's most virtuoso compositions. In this program that presents transformations of Bach's music into brilliant and bravura works, you'll hear one of the most exalted arrangements of his Chaconne in D Minor, originally for solo violin: Ferruccio Busoni's hypnotic transcription is utterly mesmeric. Brahms was inspired by a melody from Handel, and the resulting set of variations and fugue bespeaks that particular Brahmsian texture that is like no other. Camille Saint-Saëns' short arrangement of the famous Sinfonia that came from one of Bach's solo violin partitas is scintillating. And the crème de la crème on this extraordinary program is Franz Liszt's monumental testament to the letters of Bach's name that correspond to four notes on the keyboard. The result is a towering masterpiece of depth and drama.
Oliver Moore (born in 2001) has been featured as soloist with orchestras including the Hollywood Chamber Orchestra and North State Symphony. On short notice, Oliver substituted for celebrated Gershwin specialist Richard Glazier at the 2022 Bear Valley Music Festival as soloist in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. He has won several first prize awards in numerous piano competitions, and his successful performance under the baton of Alexander Mickelthwate led him to be named the inaugural participant in the Michael Morgan Young Artist Program, in memory of the late BVMF Music Director. Oliver is a native of Chico, California, and he is currently under the tutelage of internationally-acclaimed concert pianist Garrick Ohlsson.