First Thoughts about Salonen’s First SFS Season

Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen (photograph by Andrew Eccles, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Yesterday morning the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) released the announcement of its 2020–21 season, the inaugural season of the new Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen. I am not sure how much this signifies; but, according to my metrics, this year’s press release is about half as long as last year’s. Nevertheless, my educated guess is that this one is more compact. It has been clear since Salonen’s appointment was first announced that he would be coming to his “new job” with a rather generous number of plans, some of which, like Salonen’s new artistic leadership model through Collaborative Partners, will probably be in motion long before his “first day at the office.” For now, however, I would like to focus on two “festivals” embedded in the overall concert schedule.

The first of these is the Myths and Mortals Festival, inspired by the Greek myths of gods, demigods, and mortals. This Festival will occupy three weeks of subscription concerts in March of 2021:

1. Salonen will use the first of these to give the SFS premiere of his newest composition, “Gemini.” This will be complemented by eighteenth-century music devoted to the same topic, a suite of music from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s one-act opera “Castor et Pollux.” The second half of the program will be devoted to another mythical “pairing,” the complete score for Michel Fokine’s one-act “Daphnis et Chloé” ballet composed by Maurice Ravel.
2. The second week will see the return of pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet as guest artist. He will contribute to a performance of Alexander Scriabin’s Opus 60, “Prometheus: The Poem of Fire.” The resources for this composition include not only piano, full orchestra, and an optional choir but also a “clavier à lumières” (keyboard with lights), invented by Scriabin to provide projections of colored lights in response to the changes of tonality that unfold in the score. According to Wikipedia, the only time this instrument was used was when “Prometheus” was performed in New York in 1915. Presumably, Salonen will be able to take advantage of more advanced technology! The program will begin with selections from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 43 score of music for Salvatore Viganò’s two-act play The Creatures of Prometheus. The program will also present the world premiere of a composition by Fang Man that blends Chinese and Greek mythology.
3. The final program will be devoted entirely to a full concert performance of Richard Strauss’ one-act opera “Elektra.” The title role will be sung by soprano Christine Goerke. The other leading vocalists will be soprano Emily Magee (Chrysothemis), contralto Anna Larsson (Klytaemnestra), tenor Alan Oke (Aegisth), and bass-baritone Peixin Chen (Orest). Ragnar Bohlin will prepare the SFS Chorus.

The second festival, On the Precipice: Music of the Weimar Republic, will take place during the last two weeks of the season. This was a time of adventurous innovations in all of the fine arts. However, it was also the time when the first seeds of “national socialism” would take root in Germany.

1. The title of the first program will be Make Art Not War. The German composer to be featured will be Paul Hindemith with a performance of his “Mathis der Maler” (Matthias the painter) symphony, based on music that he had composed for an opera of the same name. The program will also include the United States premiere of a new violin concerto by Collaborative Partner Bryce Dessner with violinist (and Collaborative Partner) Pekka Kuusisto as soloist. The program will begin with Beethoven’s Opus 21 (first) symphony in C major.
2. The second program, Weimar Nightfall, will be a semi-staged evening of expressionist and satiric musical theater, all directed by Simon McBurney. The program will begin with Hindemith’s earliest opera, the one-act “Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen” (murder, the hope of women). This is based on a play by Oskar Kokoschka, who provide the libretto for Hindemith. It will be followed by two of Kurt Weill’s partnerships with the poet Bertolt Brecht. The first of these, “The Berlin Requiem,” is a cantata based on six of Brecht’s poems. The second half of the program will be devoted to the seven-scene ballet with songs, “The Seven Deadly Sins,” for which Brecht provided the libretto. The vocal soloist will be soprano Nora Fischer, and Bohlin will again prepare the SFS Chorus.