I have to back off from my headline for the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Special Event entitled A Concert for MTT. The text said it would “begin October” with a performance on Friday, October 2; but it turns out that, like the calendar, October will begin on Thursday, October 1! This will be when the month’s Orchestral Series will get under way with four Orchestral Series programs, all of which definitely deserve attention.
The entire month will present another impressively busy and diverse series of performances, all taking place in Davies Symphony Hall. Those determined not to miss out on any of these events next month, will, as usual, be able to take advantage of the hyperlinks in this article for purchasing tickets; and (of course) tickets may also be acquired at the Box Office, which is at the entrance to Davies on the south side of Grove Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. The four events of the month are as follows:
Thursday, October 1, and Sunday, October 4, 2 p.m., and Saturday, October 3, 7:30 p.m.: The month will begin with the Orchestral Series debut of conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali. His program will be devoted entirely to two major compositions by Richard Strauss. The first of these is Four Last Songs, a title provided by Ernst Roth, who published the four songs as a single unit in 1950, about two years after Strauss died. The vocalist for this performance will be soprano Renée Fleming. The intermission will be followed by what is sometimes called Strauss’ “biographical” tone poem, “Ein Heldenleben.”
Friday, October 9, and Saturday, October 10, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, October 11, 2 p.m.: Karina Canellakis will return to the Davies podium. She will begin by introducing the audience to a tone poem composed by Victoria Borisova-Ollas in 2003, “The Kingdom of Silence.” The remainder of the program will be divided by two major Russian composers from the twentieth century. The first of these will be Sergei Prokofiev with his Opus 63 (second) violin concerto, composed in the key of G minor. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances.”
Friday, October 16, and Saturday, October 17, 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, October 18, 2 p.m.: Some readers may recall my having written about conductor Xian Zhang’s “fixation” on “ninth symphonies.” In May of 2022 she led SFS in a performance of Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 95 (ninth) symphony in E minor (“From the New World”) and then followed up in December with the symphony just called “the ninth,” Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 125 (“Choral”) in D minor. For her return to Davies, she has selected Dvořák’s Opus 88 (eighth) symphony in G major, shifting her attention to a major key. The intermission will be preceded by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 33 “Variations on a Rococo Theme,” which explores a diversity of major and minor keys. The program will begin with “Dances of Galánta,” a composition by Zoltán Kodály based on Hungarian folk sources.
Johannes Brahms about six years after his composition of “Nänie” (photograph by Fritz Luckhardt, public domain)
Thursday, October 29, Friday, October 30, and Saturday, October 31, 7:30 p.m.: This will be the first SFS performance by conductor Elim Chan since her appointment as Music Director Designate earlier this year. The second half of the program will be devoted to another “first,” the performance of John Adams’ “Doctor Atomic Symphony,” based on the overture, interludes, and orchestral settings of music from his Doctor Atomic opera. This will be preceded by Arvo Pärt’s “Magnificat,” which will also be a first SFS performance. The first half of the program will present music from the nineteenth century in reverse order. The intermission will be preceded by Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 64, his violin concerto in E minor with soloist Renaud Capuçon. The program will begin with the SFS Chorus, directed by Jenny Wong, performing “Nänie,” a setting of the poem of the same name by Friedrich Schiller, the Opus 82 of Johannes Brahms.
