With an impressive calendar of commissions, premieres, top artist residencies, and a European tour – the orchestra’s first since 2016 – music director Esa-Pekka Salonen has announced ambitious plans for the San Francisco Symphony’s 2022-23 season.
In his third season as music director, Salonen, who unveiled the season schedule on March 29, will lead 15 weeks of programming in the Bay Area and abroad.
The 22-23 season, which runs Sept. 15, 2022, to July 1, 2023, features 27 commissions and premieres, including world premieres by composers Samuel Adams, Magnus Lindberg, Elizabeth Ogonek, and 2021 Emerging Black Composers Project winner Trevor Weston. Also on the schedule are U.S. premieres by Danny Elfman, Daniel Kidane, Outi Tarkiainen; and the West Coast premiere of soprano Julia Bullock’s “Her Story.”
A highlight of the season is Salonen’s four-year partnership with director Peter Sellars, who will stage a quartet of large-scale works spanning the seasons. They begin this year, with a double bill of Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex” and “Symphony of Psalms” (performed June 10-12, 2022); followed by the San Francisco Symphony premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s searing dramatic opera, “Adriana Mater” (June 8, 10, and 11, 2023); Olivier Messiaen’s “La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ” (2024, date to be announced), and Leoš Jańaček’s “The Cunning Little Vixen,” with Bullock in the title role (2025).
Bullock is one of five Collaborative Partners with Salonen and the Symphony for the season, along with composers Nicholas Britell and Nico Muhly; violinist, conductor and composer Pekka Kuusisto, and flutist Claire Chase.
Salonen has named Igor Levit the Symphony’s Artist in Residence for the 2022-23 season. In June, 2023, the acclaimed Russian-German pianist will give four performances in Davies Symphony Hall: he’ll join Salonen and the orchestra to perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (June 15-17, 2023); a chamber concert with program TBA (June 18, 2023), a second orchestra concert featuring Busoni’s Piano Concerto (June 22 and 24-25, 2023), and a recital on the Great Performers series (June 27, 2023).
This fall, Salonen will conduct the Symphony’s official Opening Night Gala concert on Sept. 23 in Davies Hall; he’ll lead additional fall programs featuring Richard Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra” and Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2, with Randall Goosby as soloist (Sept. 24); a program featuring Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, with a world premiere by Trevor Weston (Sept. 29-Oct. 2); Stravinsky’s “The Firebird,” and the U.S. premiere of Daniel Kildane’s “Precipice Dances” (Oct. 6, UC Davis; Oct. 7-9, Davies Hall); and Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique” with Liszt’s “Totentanz” (Oct. 21 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall; Oct. 22 at Davies Hall.)
Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas is also on the schedule. He’s scheduled to conduct works including the U.S. premiere of Danny Elfman’s Cello Concerto, featuring Gautier Capuçon as soloist (Nov. 11-13); as well as programs featuring Brahms, with pianist Emanuel Ax (Nov. 17-19); Debussy and Messiaen, with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Jan. 26-28); and Mahler Symphony No. 6 (March 30-April 1, 2023).
Other guest conductors on the calendar include Herbert Blomstedt, Jane Glover, Manfred Honeck, Philippe Jordan, Cristian Macelaru, Rafael Payare, Masaaki Suzuki and Robin Ticciati.
Additional guest artists for the 2022-23 season include pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Yuja Wang; violinist Hilary Hahn, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, countertenors Ian Bostridge and Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, soprano Golda Schultz, mezzo-soprano Michelle De Young, and bass-baritone Iain Paterson.
The 2023 tour — Salonen’s first with the Symphony – runs March 9-17, 2023, with performances in Paris, Luxembourg, and Hamburg. Tour repertoire is still to be announced, but Salonen will be joined for special events by creative partners Claire Chase and Nico Muhly, as well as Yuja Wang and violinist Johan Dalene.
The Symphony’s popular SoundBox series returns this year, with programs running Dec. 9 to April 15, 2023; the calendar also includes events on the Symphony’s Film, Chamber, Great Performers, Music for Families, Shenson Spotlight, and Youth Orchestra series.
Announcing the season, Salonen, who was named San Francisco Symphony music director in 2018, said he saw San Francisco then as a city with “potential for something powerfully transformative to take place here, in this city where things begin, in this state where anything is possible. I could feel that there was something fast approaching — something that I wanted to be a part of.”
Having since bonded with the orchestra and his Creative Partners, he said he’s eager to begin the new season. “Now, as we embark upon our third season together, I am very happy to take what we have created and share it with the world at large. Everything we have done together thus far has been deeply, deeply inspiring and encouraging for the future, and it is an immense privilege to spend another season working with and learning from this orchestra.”
Symphony 2022-23 season subscriptions packages, $150-$978, went on sale 10 a.m. March 29. Single tickets go on sale July 16. For more information, call 415-864-6000 or visit www.sfsymphony.org.
Source: www.mercurynews.com