April will be the next month during which, in all San Francisco Symphony (SFS) subscription concerts, the podium of Davies Symphony Hall will be occupied entirely by visiting conductors. One of them will be making her (note the pronoun) SFS debut; and another will be returning after having previously served as SFS Associate Conductor. In addition, all three of them will be conducting piano concertos, meaning that all of next month’s guest soloists will be pianists. Specifics are as follows:
April 11–14: Andrey Boreyko was last seen on the SFS podium in February of last year, when his soloist was violinist Vadim Gluzman in a performances of Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade after Plato’s ‘Symposium.’” This time his soloist will be Emanuel Ax; and the first half of his program will be devoted entirely to Johannes Brahms’ Opus 83 (second) piano concerto in B-flat major. The second half of the program will also consist of a single composition, Alexander von Zemlinsky symphonic poem Die Seejungfrau (the mermaid), a fantasy based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Little Mermaid.”
This concert will be given three performances, at 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 11, and Friday, April 12, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 14. There will be an Inside Music talk given by Peter Grunberg that will begin one hour before the performance. Doors to the Davies lobbies open fifteen minutes before the talk begins. Ticket prices range from $35 to $245. 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 Brahms concerto can be found on the Program Note Podcasts Web page; and the event page includes sound clips from previous SFS performances of that concerto. 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, April 11, with coffee and complimentary doughnuts, followed by a half-hour introductory talk by Grunberg 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.
April 18–20: Australian conductor Simone Young will make her SFS debut. Her soloist will be Louis Lortie in a performance of Maurice Ravel’s piano concerto in G major. The “overture” for the program will also be by Ravel, his orchestration of his “Pavane pour une infante défunte” (pavane for a deceased infanta), which was originally composed for solo piano. The “symphony” will be Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Opus 35 symphonic suite Scheherazade (not strictly a symphony but structured in four movements).
This concert will be given three performances, all at 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 18, Friday, April 19, Saturday, April 20. The Inside Music talk will be given by Scott Foglesong one hour prior to each concert. Ticket prices range from $20 to $160, and an event page has been created for online purchase. The event page also has an embedded sound file of KDFC’s Rik Malone’s podcast about Scheherazade and sound clips of previous SFS performances of both Scheherazade and the Ravel concerto.
April 25–27: The final concert of the month will see the return of both conductor and soloist. The conductor will be James Gaffigan, who served as SFS Associate Conductor from 2006 to 2009 and is now Chief Conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. His concerto soloist will be Hélène Grimaud performing Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 58 (fourth) piano concerto in G major. The “overture” will be the Good Friday music from the third act of Richard Wagner’s opera Parsifal. The second half of the program will offer two symphony selections, both relatively short, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 297 in D major, followed by Samuel Barber’s first symphony.
This concert will be given three performances, at 2 p.m. on Thursday, April 25, and at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 26, and Saturday, April 27. The Inside Music talk will be given by Elizabeth Seitz one hour prior to each concert. Ticket prices range from $35 to $170, and an event page has been created for online purchase. The event page also has an embedded sound file of previous SFS performances of the Beethoven piano concerto. In addition, KDFC’s Rik Malone’s podcast about the Mozart symphony can be found on the Program Note Podcasts Web page.
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