Following the opening week festivities celebrating the 25th season of Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) serving as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), MTT will kick off his final season as Music Director with three weeks of subscription programming as follows:
September 12–15: The subscription season will begin in MTT’s “comfort zone,” devoting an entire program to the music of Gustav Mahler. The program will be consist of a single composition, which many take to be Mahler’s darkest symphony, the sixth in the key of A minor. Indeed, Mahler was so superstitious about the three “hammer blows of fate” in the fourth and final movement of his symphony that he eliminated the final blow from the score, fearing that it was a sign of his own death.
This concert will be given four performances, at 8 p.m. on Thursday, September 12, Friday, September 13 (talk about superstition), and Saturday, September 14, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 15. There will be an Inside Music talk given by Jon Platoff 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 $160. 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. Flash must be enabled for 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.
September 19–22: The first visiting soloist of the season with be pianist Daniil Trifonov, performing Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 40 (fourth) concerto in G minor. The “overture” for this overture-concerto-symphony program will be a world premiere. The program will begin with a composition by John Adams commissioned jointly by SFS and Carnegie Hall. The title of the new work is “I Still Dance.” The concluding symphony will be another selection from MTT’s “comfort zone,” Robert Schumann’s Opus 97 (“Rhenish”) symphony in E-flat major.
This concert will be given four performances, at 8 p.m. on Thursday, September 19, Friday, September 20, and Saturday, September 21, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 22. The Inside Music talk will be given by Sarah Cahill in conversation with Adams. Ticket prices range from $20 to $160. They may be purchased online through the event page for this program.
September 26–28: The final concert of the month will feature the music of another one of MTT’s “comfort zone” composers, Igor Stravinsky. The program will begin with “Canticum Sacrum,” a cantata based on Biblical texts in the Latin Vulgate sung by a chorus with tenor and baritone solos. Director Ragnar Bohlin will prepare the SFS Chorus, and the tenor soloist will be Nicholas Phan. This is the only piece composed by Stravinsky that requires an organ, while neither violins nor cellos are included in the score. The SFS Chorus will also be featured in a performance of the 1948 revision of Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms” (also setting texts in the Latin Vulgate), originally composed in 1930. For this piece the only strings are cellos, basses, and harp. The program will conclude with Stravinsky’s “Symphony in Three Movements,” commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and first performed (with Stravinsky conducting) on January 24, 1946. The concerto soloist will be cellist Oliver Herbert playing Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken VIIb/2 concerto in D major. Herbert’s appearance is supported by the Shenson Young Artist Debut Fund. This will be Herbert’s first performance as a subscription soloist. However, he made his SFS debut in a SoundBox concert at the end of 2017 and performed in Davies last year as the soloist in the All San Francisco Concerts program.
This concert will be given three performances, all at 8 p.m. on Thursday, September 26, Friday, September 27, and Saturday, September 28. The Inside Music talk will be given by Scott Foglesong. Ticket prices range from $35 to $160, and an event page has been created for online purchase. That event page also has sound clips from previous SFS performances of both “Symphony of Psalms” and “Symphony in Three Movements.” As is the case for online ticket purchases, Flash must be enabled to play these excerpts.
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