Margaret Halbin & Friends Perform in the Sky

On the 11th floor of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's new building on Van Ness Avenue, there is a gorgeous room with wraparound windows that was originally designed as a fundraising event space, but has accidentally morphed into a performance hall for chamber music concerts. Besides the spectacular view, the space is not ideal for concerts since there is no tiered seating so the sightlines are poor unless you're in the front row. Additionally, the acoustics are too bright, particularly for a piano which always sounds clangy when the volume crosses a certain decibel level, no matter who is the pianist. Still, there are amazing concerts to be heard for the price of a free online reservation

Late Sunday afternoon there was a Faculty Recital of pianist Margaret Halbig with three pieces of music I had never heard before. The opener was Zita, a five-minute arrangement for two pianists from the longer 1975 Suite Troileana by Astor Piazzolla. (Click here for a YouTube performance by the composer and his Octeto Electronico in Rome.) The duo of Halbig and Sharon Kim were delightful and so was the music.

I first encountered Margaret Halbig when she was a member of the new music group Wild Rumpus over a decade ago, and since then she has moved on to teaching at the SF Conservatory and anchoring another new music group called Ensemble for These Times. In other words, she is a specialist in collaboration, and this recital was a good example of that. The second work was the 2020 Little River Songs by Jennifer Higdon, written for piano, cello, and mezzo-soprano. The two songs are dark, folksy and captivating, and were given a heartfelt performance by Halbig, vocalist Melinda Becker and cellist Megan Chartier. (Click here for a YouTube performance with the composer at the piano.)

The major work on the program was Rachmaninoff's 1901 Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 19. Pianist Halbig and cellist Chartier obviously loved the complex, four-movement, 35-minute piece and kept the full house audience suspended in attentive silence. It was a lovely concert.