The New Year will get off to the stimulating start in Davies Symphony Hall. There will be four Orchestral Series concerts, each led by a different conductor, one of whom will be making a debut appearance. There will also be the next Chamber Series recital with an engaging reflection on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Specifics are as follows, ordered by date with hyperlinks to the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) event pages:
Visiting conductor James Gaffigan (from the event page for this performance)
Thursday, January 9, Friday, January 10, and Saturday, January 11, 7:30 p.m.: Conductor James Gaffigan will return for the first concert of the month. His soloist will be violinist Ray Chen performing Samuel Barber’s only violin concerto. The “overture” for the program will be Missy Mazzoli’s “Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres),” which will be given its first SFS performances. The program will conclude with Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 100 (fifth) symphony in B-flat major.
Thursday, January 16, and Saturday, January 18, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, January 19, 2 p.m.: The SFS Chorus, directed by Jenny Wong, will make its first appearance in the new year. They will be joined by the San Francisco Girls Chorus, whose Artistic Director is Valérie Sainte-Agathe, along with three vocal soloists, soprano Susanna Phillips, tenor Arnold Livingston Geis, and baritone Will Liverman. Both tenor and baritone will be making their Orchestral Series debuts. This full ensemble will perform Carl Orff’s cantata Carmina burana, a twentieth-century reflection on medieval times. The first half of the program will see the world premiere performance of John Adams’ piano concerto, “After the Fall,” with concerto soloist Vikingur Ólafsson, composed on an SFS commission. The “overture” for this program will be Charles Ives’ “The Unanswered Question.” David Robinson will conduct.
Friday, January 24, and Saturday, January 25, 7:30 p.m.: Mark Elder will make his Orchestral Series debut on the Davies podium. The program will feature two overtures by Hector Berlioz, which happen to have consecutive opus numbers: “Les francs-juges” (Opus 3) and “Le roi Lear” (Opus 4). (Don’t let the numbers fool you: Opus 3 was composed in 1826, while Opus 4 was comped in 183. Berlioz was, of course, quite active between those two years!) Claude Debussy’s “Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune” will “intervene” between those two selections. The second half of the program will begin with Richard Strauss’ Opus 30, his tone poem “Also sprach Zarathustra.” The program will then conclude with an “exclamation point,” Adams’ “Short Ride in a Fast Machine.”
Sunday, January 26, 2 p.m.: Thirteen musicians will contribute to an impressively diverse Chamber Music program. It will be framed by two quintets. The opening selection will be a quintet for oboe and strings composed by Arnold Bax in 1919. It will finish with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Opus 10, his clarinet quintet. The first half of the program will conclude with the “Fantaisie,” composed for violin and harp by Camille Saint-Saëns, and the intermission will be followed by two early (1929) pieces by Benjamin Britten, which were not given their first performances 2003, quite some time after his death (and after the release of his “complete works” collection).
Thursday, January 30, 2 p.m., and Friday, January 31, and Saturday, February 1, 7:30 p.m.: After recovering from his hospitalization last year, Herbert Blomstedt will return at the end of January. His program will consist of two symphonies, one from either end of the nineteenth century. The first half will be devoted to Franz Schubert’s D. 485 (fifth) symphony in B-flat major, which was composed in 1816. The second half will be Johannes Brahms’ Opus 68 (first) symphony in C minor, which began with sketches in 1854 but was not completed until 1876.
All programs will take place in Davies Symphony Hall, which is located at 201 Van Ness Avenue and fills an entire city block. The other boundaries are Grove Street (north), Hayes Street (south), and Franklin Street (west). The main entrance (which is also the entrance to the Box Office) is on Grove Street, roughly halfway down the block. Each of the above hyperlinks will provide concert ticket prices for the respective programs. Tickets may be purchased online or by calling 415-503-5351. In addition, the Box Office in the Davies lobby is open for selling tickets.
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