At the beginning of this past week, the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) announced that it would return to presenting concerts to audiences seated in Davies Symphony Hall. A series of eight performances have been planned for the months of May and June, respectively, each of which will present a program at 7 p.m. on both Thursday and Friday evenings. The first of these offerings will be reserved for Bay Area hospital and medical professionals, as well as representatives from community centers and cultural districts, who have been at the front lines supporting the people of a city in critical ways throughout the pandemic. The tickets for those two performances will be free of charge. The SFS Box Office will reopen at 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 6, for the general public to purchase tickets for the remaining seven programs. The Box Office telephone number is 415-864-6000.
The plan for returning to live concerts was developed in accordance with regulations set by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the City and County of San Francisco, and the San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center. All performances will require proof of vaccination or negative COVID-19 testing for all patrons, musicians, staff, and volunteers. In addition universal mask wearing will be required. There will be significantly reduced concert hall capacity, contactless tickets, assigned seats that maximize physical distancing, 75-minute performances without intermission, increased ventilation and filtration standards, social distancing requirements, and other safety measures in place.
SFS Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen (photograph © by Andrew Eccles, courtesy of SFS)
Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct the free program prepared for May 6 and 7. He has prepared a program that will interleave works by Scandinavian and American composers, beginning with the orchestral version (strings, percussion, and triangle) of the Rakastava (the lover) suite, composed by his fellow Finn, Jean Sibelius. The orchestral suite, his Opus 14, was based on a setting of Finnish folk poems, first composed for a cappella men’s chorus and subsequently arranged, first for men’s chorus and orchestra and then for mixed chorus.
The program will continue with selections for the string section, George Walker’s “Lyric for Strings,” will be followed by Carl Nielsen’s Opus 1, a suite for string orchestra composed at the age of 22 during his private studies with Orla Rosenhoff, who had been his composition teacher at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. (Nielsen himself would later teach at that same conservatory.) The other American selection on the program will be the string orchestra version of Caroline Shaw’s “Entr’acte,” which responds to the prankish rhetoric of Joseph Haydn with more than a few pranks of its own. The program will then conclude with the string orchestra version of Edvard Grieg’s Opus 40 Holberg suite.
Programming has been finalized for the next two concerts in May. These may be summarized as follows:
May 13–14: Pianist Jeremy Denk will conduct from the piano keyboard. The program will include concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 1052 in D minor) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (K. 449 in E-flat major). These will interleave with William Grant Still’s “Out of the Silence,” originally composed as a piano solo and later adding instrumental accompaniment, and Gerald Finzi’s “Eclogue,” scored for piano and strings.
May 20–21: James Gaffigan will conduct the United States premiere of Freya Waley-Cohen’s “Talisman.” This will be followed by two pieces of chamber music subsequently rearranged for string orchestra. The first of these will be Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 4 “Verklärte Nacht” (transfigured night), originally a string sextet. The program will then conclude with Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” which began as the second movement of his Opus 11 string quartet.
While program specifics have not yet been announced for the remaining concerts, the conductors have been finalized as follows:
May 27–28: Ken-David Mazur
June 3–4: Joseph Young
June 10–11: Joshua Weilerstein
June 17–18: Esa-Pekka Salonen
June 24–25: Esa-Pekka Salonen
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