By Alex Heigl

SFCM's final orchestra performance of the semester promises to be a special one. Not only will they be led by Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser—who among his positions listed above is also chair of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) and SFCM's Emerging Black Composers Project—but they'll be performing a long-overlooked piece by a Black composer, a lovestruck Berlioz masterpiece, and a Rachmaninoff piano concerto featuring Alex Fang, SFCM's most recent Piano Concerto Competition Winner.

Julia Perry's Short Piece opens the evening. "We collectively have missed her music," Bartholomew-Poyser said. "She was a prominent woman composer whose career was … not cut short, but curtailed because of physical ailments. But she held posts and she toured America and Europe and was writing differently from many women in her field and certainly many Black women. And it's a shame that we've come to her music so late and I wish that she'd had more opportunities to hear her work performed by different orchestras and be championed and celebrated. But it's never too late to hear good music, and so I hope that this concert helps expose her to a wider audience."

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"It's a surprising piece," he laughed, "either delicate or totally savage."

Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, which closes out the evening, "is a piece I've loved for a long time," Bartholomew-Poyser said. None other than Leonard Bernstein pitched the symphony as practically psychedelic because of its dream-like nature and because some historical accounts suggest that Berlioz composed some of it while on opium.

In 1827, Berlioz fell in love with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, who he had just seen portray Ophelia in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. After sending volleys of love letters that went unanswered, when Smithson left Paris, Berlioz embarked on Symphonie fantastique to express his unrequited love. While Smiths

on wasn't at the work's premiere in 1830, she did hear it two years later, and the two met and were married by October 1833. But the story does not have a fairy-tale ending: They separated 10 years later.

"Berlioz was doing something very brave and courageous and just making a statement as an artist," Bartholomew-Poyser continued. "It takes a lot of guts to write what he did, but that's how strong he felt; he was in love. Symphonie fantastique tells a very powerful, compelling story, and not a story necessarily with a happy ending, but a story that takes us off on this wild, wild ride. Which is usually what love does."

Bartholomew-Poyser has nothing but kind words for the SFCM Orchestra, saying that they "play really well, they're really attentive, and their retention is really good. A lot of times you find that in between rehearsals with ensembles, things leak, but things stay with them."

Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1, in F sharp minor, Op. 1, featuring Alex Fang, the winner of the SFCM 2021-22 Piano Concerto Competition, "is not an easy piano concerto," Bartholomew-Poyser said. "But it's going to be wonderful. He's a gem to work with and has really strong musical ideas about how he wants it to go, and our goal is to be able to provide him with the best support so that he can give it his all."

Guests are asked to reserve seats for the Dec. 10, 7:30 pm performance at the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall in the Ann Getty Center at 50 Oak Street. 

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