Coming to San Francisco Symphony?

Esa-Pekka Salonen

Photo by Minna Hartinen, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

When your music director is also a prominent composer, you keep an eye on his guest conducting engagements because he's been known to conduct his own music and works by other interesting prominent composers. I've been scouring Esa-Pekka Salonen's conducting schedule, and I found him conducting, at other orchestras, various works that I'd love to hear in San Francisco. Here's a little list of what he'll be conducting in the near future that isn't on this year's SFS schedule:

• Salonen: Clarinet Concertino (World Premiere, Yle Commission)
• Salonen: Fog (US premiere of orchestral version)
• Muhly: Shrink (concerto for violin and strings); Pekka Kuusisto, violin, co-curator
• Bjarnarson: Piano Concerto (world premiere, LA Phil commission)
• Salonen: Karawane
• Shaw: Entr’acte
• Salonen: Gemini
• Hillborg: Peacock Tales. Millennium version for saxophone and orchestra

We have an extraordinary principal clarinetist at SFS and I think that half of his solo appearances have been the Mozart clarinet concerto (the others were a Debussy work and the fabulous Nielsen concerto). So we can hope that Salonen's Concertino comes around on a future schedule.

Pekka Kuusisto is one of the Collaborative Partners, so, perhaps the Muhly is on its way as well. As might be any of these works! Think of this post as a parallel to my page on San Francisco Opera future seasons.