Saturday, February 25, 2017

Next Month Two Guest Conductors will Return to the SFS Podium

When the plans for four separate subscription programs in March by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) prepared by Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas were announced at the beginning of this month, it was also noted that there would be two weeks of visiting conductors between the first and second of those programs. Each of those weeks will involve the return of a familiar guest conductor along with the return of a familiar guest artist. Specifics are as follows:

The conductor for the first week will be Marek Janowski, last seen on the SFS podium in January of 2016, when he prepared an imaginative program of two symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven separated by the preludes for each of the three acts of Hans Pfitzner’s opera Palestrina. Since that was an all-symphonic program, there was no guest soloist. However, when Janowski visited in May of 2013, Arabella Steinbacher was one of two visiting soloists in a performance of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 102 “double” concerto in A minor. This time she will be the only soloist in the first SFS performances of Paul Hindemith’s violin concerto. This will be the central section of the conventional overture-concerto-symphony structure. The overture will be Beethoven’s Opus 62, which he wrote for a performance of the play Coriolan by Heinrich Joseph von Collin. The symphony will be Johannes Brahms’ Opus 98 (fourth) in E minor.

This concert will be given four performances, at 8 p.m. on Thursday, March 9, Friday, March 10, and Saturday, March 11, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 12. There will be an Inside Music talk given by Scott Foglesong that will begin one hour prior to each concert. Doors to the lobbies open fifteen minutes before the talk begins. Ticket prices range from $15 to $162. 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 Box Office in Davies Symphony Hall, whose entrance is on the south side of Grove Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. The event page also has an embedded sound file of KDFC’s Rik Malone’s podcast about the Brahms symphony and sound clips of previous SFS performances of both that symphony and the Beethoven overture. The Box Office is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday.

In addition, this week’s performances will be preceded by the next Katherine Hanrahan Open Rehearsal. This special behind-the-scenes experience begins at 8:30 a.m. with coffee and complimentary doughnuts, followed by a half-hour introductory talk by Foglesong 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 Premiere Orchestra section, the Side and Rear Boxes, and the Loge. Tickets may be purchased online through a separate event page.

The following week Slovakian conductor Juraj Valčuha will make his fourth visit to the SFS podium. His soloist will be another violinist and familiar face in Daviesl, Gil Shaham. The concerto will be Samuel Barber’s Opus 14, one of the compositions that Shaham has recorded as part of his 1930s Violin Concertos project. This will be preceded by another SFS premiere, the first performances of Franz Schreker’s 1916 chamber symphony, composed about ten years after Arnold Schoenberg’s first chamber symphony, his Opus 9 in E major. The symphony for the second half of the program will be Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 92 (seventh) in A major.

This concert will be given only three performances, all at 8 p.m. on Thursday, March 16, Friday, March 17, and Saturday, March 18. There will be an Inside Music talk given by James Keller that will begin one hour prior to each concert. Doors to the Davies lobbies open fifteen minutes before the talk begins. Ticket prices range from $15 to $162. 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. The event page also has an embedded sound file of KDFC’s Rik Malone’s podcast about the Beethoven symphony and sound clips of previous SFS performances of that symphony. The Box Office is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday.

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