Saturdays at 7pm
San Francisco Symphony. Photo by: Brandon Patoc.
This spring, experience the brilliance of the San Francisco Symphony’s new season, featuring breathtaking performances led by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, world-renowned guest conductors, and esteemed soloists. See the schedule below:
Schedule
April 12
Interplay: Pekka KuusistoConductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, soloist Pekka Kuusisto, and composer/developer Jesper Nordin’s cutting-edge electronics come together in Nordin’s radical reinvention of the violin concerto, Convergence. In Naïve and Sentimental Music, dedicated to Salonen, John Adams celebrates a similar creative impulse: spontaneity, the spirit of free play.
CONDUCTOR
Esa-Pekka Salonen
SOLOIST
Pekka Kuusisto*
Jesper Nordin
Convergence*
John Adams
Naïve and Sentimental Music
April 19
Esa-Pekka Salonen & Emanuel AxIn Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn, Brahms travels in time, using ancient musical forms to explore possible futures. In Beethoven’s Second Symphony, anarchic glee subverts Classical elegance. Between the two big Bs, precisely in the present, Esa-Pekka Salonen debuts his longtime friend Anders Hillborg’s witty and colorful new Piano Concerto, performed with genial sophistication by soloist Emanuel Ax.
CONDUCTOR
Esa-Pekka Salonen
SOLOIST
Emanuel Ax*
Johannes Brahms
Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Opus 56a
Anders Hillborg
Piano Concerto No. 2*
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Opus 36
April 26
Beethoven 9Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas is joined by soprano Angel Blue, mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford, tenor Ben Bliss, and bass Dashon Burton with the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus to perform Beethoven’s dramatic Symphony No. 9, which celebrates the bonds of humanity and the glory of the creator in its triumphant “Ode to Joy.”
CONDUCTOR
Michael Tilson Thomas
SOLOISTS
Angel Blue, soprano; Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano; Ben Bliss, tenor; Dashon Burton, baritone; SFS Chorus
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Opus 125
May 3
California Festival: To the EdgeIn kínēma, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s lyrical imagination takes flight via five cinematic scenes for solo clarinet and chamber orchestra, performed here by Principal Clarinet Carey Bell. Emerging Black Composers Project winner Jens Ibsen grew up in the Bay Area, where he soaked up samba, soul, R&B, and progressive metal along with the music of Ghana and the African diaspora—all influences you might detect in Drowned in Light, a world premiere. Igor Stravinsky’s turbulent Symphony in Three Movements, which he called his “war symphony,” reflects the rampant destruction in Europe and Asia.
CONDUCTOR
Esa-Pekka Salonen
SOLOIST
Carey Bell, clarinet*
Esa-Pekka Salonen
kínēma*
Jens Ibsen
Drowned in Light
Igor Stravinsky
Symphony in Three Movements
May 10
California Festival: From the Edge
Composer Gabriella Smith conjures the spaces and sounds of California in the organ concerto Breathing Forests, performed here by James McVinnie. Igor Stravinsky depicts a festive, folk-inflected Slavic wedding in his ballet Les Noces, augmented by Steven Stucky’s orchestration. Stravinsky’s Octet for Winds and Brass, a uniquely scored neoclassical work, was inspired by a late-night dream.CONDUCTOR
Esa-Pekka Salonen
SOLOISTS
James McVinnie, organ*; Hillary Leben, animation**;
Lauren Snouffer, soprano**; Kayleigh Decker, mezzo-soprano**;
Paul Appleby, tenor**; David Soar, bass**; SFS Chorus**Igor Stravinsky
Octet for Wind Instruments [1952 revision]
Gabriella Smith
Breathing Forests*
Igor Stravinsky
(Orch. Steven Stucky)Les Noces**
May 17
Dudamel Conducts Brahms 2Conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s program opens with Gabriela Ortiz’s Kauyumari, which refers to a magical blue deer, sacred to the Huichol people of Mexico. In the one-movement concerto Odisea, commissioned by Dudamel for Jorge Glem, Venezuelan composer Gonzalo Grau highlights his country’s national instrument, the versatile, four-stringed cuatro. On the surface Johannes Brahms’ Second Symphony seems like a sunny summer idyll, but shadows abound.
CONDUCTOR
Gustavo Dudamel
SOLOIST
Jorge Glem, cuatro*
Gabriela Ortiz
Kauyumari
Gonzalo Grau
Odisea Concerto for Venezuelan Cuatro and Orchestra*
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Opus 73
May 24
MTT Conducts Mahler 5Featuring many of his most rapturous melodies, the Fifth Symphony finds Mahler at his most joyous and life-affirming. It’s the ideal vehicle for Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas, whose decades-long devotion to the Austrian visionary yielded the acclaimed Mahler recording project on SFS Media.
CONDUCTOR
Michael Tilson Thomas
Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor
May 31
Esa-Pekka Salonen & Julia FischerJoining Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, violinist Julia Fischer makes her long-awaited return to the San Francisco Symphony in Brahms’ Violin Concerto. Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, tenor Nicholas Phan, and baritone Luca Pisaroni—all regular collaborators with the San Francisco Symphony—sing in Stravinsky’s cheeky neoclassical ballet Pulcinella, which the composer called “the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible.”
CONDUCTOR
Esa-Pekka Salonen
SOLOISTS
Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano*; Nicholas Phan, tenor*;
Luca Pisaroni, bass-baritone*; Julia Fischer, violin**Igor Stravinsky
Pulcinella*
Johannes Brahms
Violin Concerto in D major, Opus 77**
June 7
Salonen: All SibeliusA Sibelius deep dive conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen: Finlandia is an anthem for a nascent nation still fighting for its very identity after a century of Russian rule. The Violin Concerto, here performed by Lisa Batiashvili, was a vehicle for Sibelius to channel all his virtuoso ambitions. The First Symphony would be Sibelius’ international breakthrough. With deft touches of Tchaikovsky and Berlioz, it’s easy to see why.
CONDUCTOR
Esa-Pekka Salonen
SOLOIST
Lisa Batiashvili, violin*
Jean Sibelius
Finlandia, Opus 26
Jean Sibelius
Violin Concerto in D minor, Opus 47*
Jean Sibelius
Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Opus 39
June 14
Inspirations: Film/ClassicalDrama abounds in Shostakovich’s score for The Great Citizen, a fictionalized biopic about a Bolshevik hero. In his Third Symphony, Prokofiev recycles music from his yet-to-be-staged supernatural opera The Fiery Angel. Walton’s searing and sumptuous Viola Concerto polarized early listeners but ended up launching his career. Gustavo Gimeno conducts with Principal Viola Jonathan Vinocour as soloist.
CONDUCTOR
Gustavo Gimeno
SOLOIST
Jonathan Vinocour, viola
Dmitri Shostakovich
Funeral March from The Great Citizen (Part 2), Opus 55
William Turner Walton
Viola Concerto
Sergei Prokofiev
Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Opus 44
June 21
Ravel’s Mother Goose & Schoenberg’s ErwartungRavel’s enchanting Mother Goose characters come to vivid life in a performance conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Schoenberg described his monodrama Erwartung as a nightmare, a moment of psychological trauma enacted in slow motion. As The Woman, soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams leaps and plunges between emotional extremes: hopeful and terrified, enraged and miserable.
CONDUCTOR
Esa-Pekka Salonen
SOLOISTS
Alonzo King Lines Ballet*; Mary Elizabeth Williams, soprano**
Maurice Ravel
Mother Goose – Music for the Ballet*
Arnold Schoenberg
Erwartung, Opus 17**
June 28
Esa-Pekka Salonen & Sheku Kanneh-MasonSheku Kanneh-Mason makes his Orchestral Series debut with Dmitri Shostakovich’s subtly sinister Cello Concerto No. 1. Sofia Gubaidulina’s poignant Fairytale Poem portrays a small piece of chalk in the hand of a child who draws “castles, gardens with pavilions and the sea with the sun on the pavement.” Also on this concert conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen: Tchaikovsky’s Dante-inspired tone poem Francesca da Rimini.
CONDUCTOR
Esa-Pekka Salonen
SOLOIST
Sheku Kanneh-Mason, cello*
Dmitri Shostakovich
Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Opus 107*
Sofia Gubaidulina
Fairytale Poem for Orchestra
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Francesca da Rimini, Opus 32
July 5
Esa-Pekka Salonen & Yefim BronfmanComposed over four turbulent years, Robert Schumann’s only piano concerto, here performed by Yefim Bronfman, features a lustrous intermezzo, blazing bravura passages, and encoded tributes to the composer’s wife, muse, and finest interpreter. Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, the “Romantic,” was his first major composition to earn real applause.
CONDUCTOR
Esa-Pekka Salonen
SOLOIST
Yefim Bronfman, piano*
Robert Schumann
Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 54*
Anton Bruckner
Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, Romantic