The next Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra program will be led by Rachel Podger. (Note the choice of noun. A “leader” generally leads while performing from the first chair of the first violin section, while one “conducts” from a front-and-center podium.) Podger served as leader of The English Concert between 1997 and 2004, and since 2004 she has been a guest director of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. She has also been Artistic Director of her own annual festival, the Brecon Baroque Festival, since 2006.
For her visit to Philharmonia Baroque, she has prepared a program of concertos for one, two, and four violins by a representative array of eighteenth-century Italian composers: Antonio Vivaldi, Arcangelo Corelli, Giovanni Mossi, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, and Pietro Locatelli. Her fellow soloists have all served as Concertmaster of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra: Elizabeth Blumenthal, Katherine Kyme, and Carla Moore. This will be Podger’s first performance with Philharmonia Baroque.
The San Francisco performance of this program of Italian violin concertos will take place at Herbst Theatre (401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street) at 8:00 p.m. on Friday, March 15. There will also be a pre-concert talk beginning at 7:15 p.m. at which Podger will discuss Vivaldi’s Opus 9 collection of concertos, known as La cetra (named after an ancient plucked-string instrument). Ticket prices are $25, $57, $79, and $95. There is an event page for this concert on the Philharmonia Baroque Web site, as well as a Web page for purchasing tickets from City Box Office. City Box Office may also be reached by telephone at 415-392-4400.
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