Saturday, April 20, 2019

SFS Visiting Conductors: May, 2019

Next month will see three conductors visiting the podium of Davies Symphony Hall to lead San Francisco Symphony (SFS) subscription concerts. Readers may recall that all three of this month’s visitors prepared programs featuring piano concertos. Next month all of the visitors will be conducting violin concertos, and one of the concerto soloists will be SFS Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik. Specifics are as follows:

May 2–4: Marek Janowski will return with a program consisting entirely of music from the nineteenth century. The violin concerto selection will be Max Bruch’s Opus 26 (first) in G minor. James Ehnes will return to Davies as concerto soloist. The overture for the program will be Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 95, the concert overture he was commissioned to write based on Victor Hugo’s tragic drama Ruy Blas. In place of a symphony, the second half of the program will present a selection of orchestral excerpts from the operas of Richard Wagner. Tannhäuser will be represented by its overture and the Venusberg ballet music. This will be followed by the opening prelude to Tristan und Isolde. The program will then conclude with the orchestral version of the “Liebestod,” which Isolde sings at the conclusion of the opera.

This concert will be given three performances, all at 8 p.m. on Thursday, May 2, Friday, May 3, and Saturday, May 4. There will be an Inside Music talk given by James M. Keller that will begin one hour before the performance. Doors to the Davies lobbies open fifteen minutes before the talk begins. Ticket prices range from $20 to $156. They may be purchased online through the event page for this program on the SFS Web site, by calling 415-864-6000, or by visiting the Davies Box Office, whose entrance is on the south side of Grove Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. In addition, KDFC’s Rik Malone’s podcast about the Bruch concerto can be found on the event page along with sound clips from previous SFS performances of both that concerto and the music from Tristan und Isolde. Flash must be enabled for both streamed content and online ticket purchases. The Box Office is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, from noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday, and two hours prior to Sunday performances.

In addition, these performances will be preceded by the next Katherine Hanrahan Open Rehearsal. This special behind-the-scenes experience begins at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, May 2, with coffee and complimentary doughnuts, followed by a half-hour introductory talk by Keller at 9 a.m. The rehearsal itself begins at 10 a.m.; and, of course, the pieces rehearsed are at the conductor’s discretion. General admission is $30 with $40 for reserved seats in the Premier Orchestra section and Rear Boxes and $45 for seating in the Side Boxes and the Loge. Tickets may be purchased online through a separate event page.

May 23–25: Krzysztof Urbański will return to conduct the SFS debut of violinist Vilde Frang. Her concerto selection will be Edward Elgar’s Opus 61 in B minor. The entire program will follow the usual overture-concerto-symphony format, but the overture will involve an SFS premiere performance. Entitled simply “Overture,” it was written by Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz during the dark years of World War II; but it delivers a rhetoric of defiant optimism. The symphony will be Mendelssohn’s Opus 90 (“Italian”) in A major.

This concert will be given three performances, at 2 p.m. on Thursday, May 23, and at 8 p.m. on Friday, May 24, Saturday, May 25. The Inside Music talk will be given by Peter Grunberg one hour prior to each concert. Ticket prices range from $20 to $156, and an event page has been created for online purchase. The event page also has an embedded sound file of Malone’s podcast about the Mendelssohn symphony.

May 30–June 1: Juraj Valčuha will return and will conduct Barantschik’s solo performance in Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1042 violin concerto in E major. The remainder of the program will be taken by Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 65 (eighth) symphony in C minor. Composed in the summer of 1943, this symphony was a cry of desperation by a man who had become overwhelmed with war weariness.

This concert will be given three performances, all at 8 p.m. on Thursday, May 30, Friday, May 31, and Saturday, June 1. The Inside Music talk will be given by Elizabeth Seitz one hour prior to each concert. Ticket prices range from $20 to $156, and an event page has been created for online purchase. Malone’s podcast about the Shostakovich symphony will be posted to the Program Note Podcasts Web page prior to the first performance of this program. The event page has an embedded sound file of clips from past performances of that symphony.

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