Isata Kanneh-MasonPiano
About This Performance
A Leonard Bernstein and Opus Klassik Award winner for best young artist, Isata Kanneh-Mason returns to SF Performances as she continues to move and inspire audiences worldwide. “She plays with unreserved power when necessary, thundering forth full-bodied chords that combine sonorous weight and perfectly rounded edges” (San Francisco Chronicle).
Program
HAYDN: Piano Sonata No. 60 in C Major, Hob. XVI/50
FANNY MENDELSSOHN: Easter Sonata
ROBERT SCHUMANN: Kinderszenen, Op. 15
CHOPIN: Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58
Encore
CHOPIN: Prelude No. 24 in D Minor, Op. 28
Performance Sponsors
Martin and Kathleen Cohn
Artist Information
Performer Biography
Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason is in great demand internationally as a soloist and chamber musician. She offers eclectic and interesting repertoire, with her recital programs encompassing music from Haydn and Mozart, via Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, Chopin and Brahms, to Gershwin and beyond. In concerto, she is equally at home in Felix Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, whose piano concerto featured on Isata’s chart-topping debut recording, as in Prokofiev and Dohnányi.
In the 2022–23 season, Isata stepped into her role as Artist in Residence with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, performing three concerti across the season at London’s Cadogan Hall. She returns to Dortmund’s Konzerthaus as one of their Junge Wilde artists and makes multiple visits to both the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Other highlights of the season include recital performances at the Barbican, Queen Elizabeth, and Wigmore halls in London, the Philharmonie Berlin, National Concert Hall Dublin, Perth Concert Hall, Prinzregententheater Munich, and the Sala São Paulo. As concerto soloist, Isata appears with the Orchestra of Opera North, New World Symphony Miami, City of Birmingham Symphony, Duisburg Philharmonic, Barcelona Symphony, Geneva Chamber Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, and Orchestra of Norwegian Opera. She returns to the Baltimore Symphony and recently made her long-awaited debut with the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.
Isata is a Decca Classics recording artist. Her 2019 album, Romance—the Piano Music of Clara Schumann, entered the UK classical charts at No. 1, with Gramophone magazine extolling the recording as “one of the most charming and engaging debuts”. This was followed in 2021 by Summertime, an album of 20th-century American repertoire featuring Samuel Barber’s Piano Sonata and a world premiere recording of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Impromptu in B Minor. In November 2021, along with her cellist brother, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Isata released her first duo album entitled Muse, beautifully demonstrating the siblings’ musicality and refined skill borne from years of playing and performing together.
She was an ECHO Rising Star in 2021–22, performing in many of Europe’s finest halls and is also the recipient of the coveted Leonard Bernstein Award and an Opus Klassik award for best young artist.