American organist Paul Jacobs will open the San Francisco Symphony’s first organ recital series on January 17 at Davies Symphony Hall. Jacobs’s performance will include works of Reger, Schumann, Franck, Boulanger, and Reubke. Jacobs is the first of three performers in the series this season; the others are Iveta Apkalna (March 28) and Cameron Carpenter (May 10). Davies Hall has what is described as the largest concert-hall organ in North America, a Ruffatti instrument with 8,264 pipes. In 2000 Jacobs, who is chairman of the organ department at The Juilliard School, peformed the complete organ works of J.S. Bach on fourteen consecutive evenings in New York and Philadelphia, followed by an eighteen-hour performance marathon in Pittsburgh. Jacobs first performed with the orchestra in April 2009 in a program of Mendelssohn, Bach, Sowerby, and Liszt.
Posted December 23, 2009
