Salonen to Launch SFS Subscription Series

Following the Opening Night festivities, Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen will launch the subscription concerts for the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) on Friday, September 29. He will conduct the first three Orchestral Series concerts, each of which will involve a premiere performance. Each program will feature a soloist with past SFS experience. The first two soloists with be violinists, Leonidas Kavakos and Pekka Kuusisto; and the third program will see the return of pianist Emanuel Ax. Program dates and specifics are as follows:

Friday, September 29, and Saturday, September 30, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, October 1, 2 p.m.: Kavakos will play Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 35 violin concerto in D major. The program will begin with a fanfare to launch the subscription season. That fanfare will be “Herald, Holler and Hallelujah!,” composed for brass and percussion by Wynton Marsalis. The intermission will be followed by “An Alpine Symphony,” composed by Richard Strauss. Horn players Robert Ward and Jonathan Ring will give the preconcert talk about works composed for the horn by Strauss. This will begin one hour before the Friday performance. Doors will open fifteen minutes before the talk takes place. There will also be an exhibit of historic horns in the Lobby, as well as beer from Germany provided by the Lobby Bar.

Friday, October 6, and Saturday, October 7, 7:30 p.m.: The first half of the program will be devoted to the world premiere of “Convergence,” a violin concerto composed by Jesper Nordin on an SFS commission. Kuusisto’s solo work, which will include improvisation, will be complemented by Reactional Music, an electronic instrument that Nordin invented and that Salonen will play while conducting the piece. The performance will also include video projections by the French visual artist Thomas Penanguer. Like the violin improvisations, these will be created live during the performance. Prior to the performance, Nordin and Salonen will give a demonstration of the Reactional Music technology. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to John Adams’ “Naïve and Sentimental Music.”

Thursday, October 12, Friday, October 13, and Saturday, October 14, 7:30 p.m.: Ax will be the soloist in the world premiere performance of Anders Hillborg’s second piano concerto, also composed on an SFS commission. The “overture” for this program will be Johannes Brahms’ Opus 56 “Variations on a Theme by Haydn.” The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 36 (second) symphony in D major. Hillborg will participate in a preconcert discussion, which will begin one hour before the Thursday performance.

These performances will be preceded by the first Katherine Hanrahan Open Rehearsal of the season. As usual, this special behind-the-scenes experience will precede the first performance. It will begin at 8:45 a.m. on Thursday, October 12, with coffee and complimentary doughnuts, followed by a half-hour introductory talk at 9 a.m., which will be delivered by Sarah Cahill. The rehearsal itself begins at 10 a.m.; and, of course, the pieces rehearsed are at the conductor’s discretion.