MTT to Return for Two More Weeks at Davies

SFS Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas (photograph by Brigitte Lacombe, courtesy of SFS)

As has already been reported, the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) subscription concerts will resume this coming Thursday at Davies Symphony Hall with a program led by visiting conductor Christoph Eschenbach. The month will then conclude with the second two-week visit by Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT). This time the programming will focus on two of his long-time collaborators. The visitor for the first week will be cellist Gautier Capuçon, followed, the second week, by pianist Yuja Wang.

During the first week, the first half of the program will be devoted entirely to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 126, his second cello concerto (with no indication of key in the score), composed in the spring of 1966 for Mstislav Rostropovich. Capuçon recorded both of the Shostakovich concertos with the Mariinsky Orchestra led by Valery Gergiev, and the Erato album was released in November of 2015. This will be an all-Russian program, with the second half consisting only of Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 100 (fifth) symphony in the key of B-flat major.

This concert will be given three performances, all at 7:30 p.m., on Thursday, January 20, Friday, January 21, and Saturday, January 22. A single Web page has been created with hyperlinks for purchasing tickets for each of those dates. There will be an Inside Music talk given by Peter Grunberg one hour prior to each concert. Ticket prices range from $20 to $165 and may also be purchased by calling the SFS Box Office at 415-864-6000 or by visiting the Box Office at the main entrance to Davies on the north side of Grove Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street.

The concert for the second week will follow the same format: overture-concerto-symphony-without-overture. Wang will be the soloist in a performance of Franz Liszt’s first piano concerto in E-flat major. The second half will be devoted to one of MTT’s “favorite things” (in the words of Oscar Hammerstein II), Gustav Mahler’s first symphony in D major. (Mahler explicitly assigned keys to only four of his symphonies, including the tenth, which he left unfinished at the time of his death.)

This concert will also be given three performances, all at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 27, Friday, January 28, and Saturday, January 29. A single Web page has again been created with hyperlinks for purchasing tickets for each of those dates. There will be an Inside Music talk given by John Platoff one hour prior to each concert. Ticket prices range from $30 to $250.