Janet Packer & Geoffrey Burleson

Old First Concerts

Janet Packer, a violinist with “an opulent tone, a swashbuckling bow arm, meticulous intonation, and a keen sense of gesture” and Geoffrey Burleson, “a remarkable pianist, with tireless attack, unflagging rhythm and energy to burn,” travel from Boston and New York City to bring to Old First Concerts a San Francisco premiere by one of Europe’s most distinguished living composers. Krzysztof Meyer (born in Poland in 1943) wrote the deeply expressive and powerfully moving Imaginary Variations for Violin and Piano for Janet Packer in 2010. Composed 62 years earlier, the witty and elegant six-minute Rondo Variato of Vittorio Rieti was the composer’s favorite of his violin-and-piano compositions. Claude Debussy’s beloved Sonata for Violin and Piano provides an exhilarating conclusion to the first half of the program. Gabriel Pierné’s marvelous and rarely heard Sonata for Piano and Violin, completed just days before the close of the 19th century, is passionate music which yet evokes a French suavity both earnest and appealing. The second movement, not truly a slow movement, has the innocent charm of a folk melody, while the outer movements abound in rhythmic energy and élan.