Programming for SFSYO 2023–24 Season

Daniel Stewart conducting SFSYO (photograph by Stefan Cohen, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony)

As usual, November marks the month when the season of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (SFSYO) gets under way. As usual, Wattis Foundation Music Director Daniel Stewart will conduct three Sunday afternoon concerts beginning at 2 p.m. in Davies Symphony Hall over the course of the 2023–24 season, along with the annual contribution of Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” to next month’s holiday programming. SFSYO will also be one of five ensembles to participate in the Bay Area Youth Orchestra Festival.

As was the case last year, tickets are being sold only on a concert-by-concert basis. For the three concerts in the annual series, general admission will still be $20 with a $55 rate for seats in the Loge and the Side Boxes. Ticket prices for the December concert will account for the entire space Davies Symphony Hall, running from $12.50 to $99 with a 50% discount for all those under the age of eighteen. That discount will also apply to the Youth Orchestra Festival with ticket prices between $25 and $70.

Tickets are available through the hyperlinks below that are attached to the concert dates in chronological order. Tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-864-6000. The Box Office will be taking telephone orders from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday. In addition the Box Office will open at noon on the dates of all performances, all of which will take place on Sunday afternoons. Davies is located on the south side of Grove Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. Program specifics, dates, times are as follows:

November 19, 2 p.m.: The first SFSYO concert will be framed by music for the stage. It will open with the music from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story collected under the title “Symphonic Dances.” It will conclude with the two selections from the beginning and end of Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, the prelude to the first act and the “Liebestod” sung by Isolde at the conclusion of the opera. Between these “bookends,” SFSYO will perform “Metacosmos” by Anna S. Þorvaldsdóttir.

December 10, 2 p.m.: The narrator of “Peter and the Wolf” for the holiday concert will be Tom Kenny, possibly best known as the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants. There will also be singalong opportunities for songs such as “Jingle Bells,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” “Peter and the Wolf” will be preceded by familiar excerpts from the music for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker. The program will begin with Leroy Anderson’s overture, “A Christmas Festival.”

January 14, 3 p.m.: SFSYO will share the program for the Bay Area Youth Orchestra Festival with the California Youth Symphony, the Golden State Youth Orchestra, the Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra, and the Young People’s Symphony Orchestra. The program will revisit Bernstein’s West Side Story dances. This will be followed by the dance movement that concludes Manuel de Falla’s music for Léonide Massine’s two-act ballet, The Three-Cornered Hat. Other selections include the final movement of Tchaikovsky’s Opus 36, his fourth symphony in F minor, the incidental music for a performance of Aristophanes’ The Wasps composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams, “Umoja” by Valerie Colman, and the second “Danzón” composition by Arturo Márquez.

March 17, 2 p.m.: The second SFSYO concert will feature the winner of the 2023 SFSYO Concerto Competition. Violinist Hiro Yoshimura will be the soloist in a performance of  Alexander Glazunov’s Opus 82 violin concerto in A minor. This will be preceded by Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 26 concert overture, “The Hebrides.” The second half of the program will begin with Arvo Pärt’s “Fratres,” followed by the second suite that Maurice Ravel extracted from his score for Michel Fokine’s ballet “Daphnis et Chloé.”

May 19, 2 p.m.:  The final program of the SFSYO season will consist of a single composition, Gustav Mahler’s fifth symphony.