Beginning around the middle of next month and lasting into the first days of March, San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct four programs all highlighting the piano. As might be guessed, each program will present a different pianist; and one of them will be making his SFS debut. Those programs will precede Salonen’s first European residencies tour with SFS, which will begin on March 9 and conclude at the end of the following week on March 17. The performances will take place at the Philharmonie de Paris in France, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany, and the Philharmonie Luxembourg in the Kirchberg quarter of Luxembourg City. San Francisco program dates are as follows:
February 17–19: Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard will return to Davies Symphony Hall as soloist for Béla Bartók’s second piano concerto. The “overture” for the program will be the orchestral version of Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin suite (excluding the Fugue and Toccata movements of the earlier piano version). Instead of a symphony, the program will conclude with a suite of selections from the music for the four-act ballet Romeo and Juliet composed by Sergei Prokofiev.
February 20: The second pianist will be Lang Lang, and he will make a special one-night-only appearance. His selection will be Edvard Grieg’s piano concerto, which will account for the entirety of the first half of the program. The second half will shift from Norway to Finland with a performance of Jean Sibelius’ fifth symphony.
February 23, 25, and 26: This will be the program at which pianist Conor Hanick will make his SFS debut. He will also account for the entirety of the first half of the program, which will be the world premiere of “No Such Spring,” composed by Samuel Adams on an SFS commission. The title reflects his having listened to Igor Stravinsky’s music for the ballet “The Rite of Spring” around the time that Russia began to invade Ukraine. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Anton Bruckner’s rarely performed sixth symphony.
This program will also be given a Katherine Hanrahan Open Rehearsal on February 23. This special behind-the-scenes experience begins at 8:30 a.m. with coffee and complimentary doughnuts, followed by a half-hour introductory talk 9 a.m. The rehearsal itself begins at 10 a.m.; and, of course, the music to be rehearsed will be entirely at the conductor’s discretion. General admission is $30 with $40 for reserved seats in the Premiere Orchestra section, the Side and Rear Boxes, and the Loge. Tickets may be purchased online through a separate event page.
March 1 and 2: The final pianist will be Yuja Wang, who will perform Sergei Rachmaninoff’s third piano concerto, which, thanks to the movie Shine, has become notorious for its difficulty. The concerto will account for the entire second half of the program. The opening selection will be Gabriella Smith’s “Tumblebird Contrails,” which was performed by the SFS Youth Orchestra (SFSYO) in March of last year. Smith’s composition will be followed by a Salonen work, “Nyx,” which was also performed by SFSYO during the final program of that same season. This program will be presented as part of the Great Performers Series, rather than the usual subscription series. In addition all three works will be performed during the European residencies tour.
March 4: Finally, the last SFS performance prior to the tour will be the March SoundBox event. Both Salonen and Wang will participate, and Salonen will share conducting duties with Ross Jamie Collins. The title of the program is Codes, and it will be curated by composer and SFS Collaborative Partner Nico Muhly. Salonen will conduct Muhly’s arrangement of two of the motets composed by William Byrd, as well as his own “FOG,” scored for thirteen instruments. Other contemporary composers contributing to the program will include Caroline Shaw and Billy Childs. This program will also be taken on the European tour for performance in both Paris and Hamburg.
All tickets may be purchased through the hyperlinks attached to the above dates, as well as the separate hyperlink for the Open Rehearsal. They may also be purchased by calling the SFS Box Office at 415-864-6000. One can also visit the Box Office by way of the main entrance to Davies Symphony Hall on the south side of Grove Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. This is also the entrance for all performances except SoundBox, which has its own entrance on the northeast corner of Franklin Street and Hayes Street.
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