San Francisco Symphony 2022-23

Esa-Pekka Salonen

Photo by Minna Hatinen, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco Symphony announced its 2022-23 season today. I'm going to start out with the two most jaw-dropping items on the schedule:

• Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Busoni! Piano! Concerto! with Igor Levit. This program includes the men of the SF Symphony Chorus, because of course no piano concerto is complete without a men's chorus. This will be the SFS premiere of the work. Levit also plays a solo recital, a chamber music program, and LvB piano concerto No. 5 on a program with the Eroica (Salonen conducts).
• Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Kaija Saariaho's Adriana Mater, the composer's second opera, staged by Peter Sellars. I reviewed this opera at its US premiere at Santa Fe Opera in 2008; it's a great piece and Sellars did a fine job directing it then. There's nothing in the press kit about who the singers will be. Note that this means that we'll get a one-two punch of Saariaho's operas in San Francisco, because her most recent opera, Innocence, is a San Francisco Opera co-commission that will be performed in that company's 2023-24 season. We just need someone to stage Saariaho's first, the gorgeous L'amour de loin. 

We'll have 15 weeks of Salonen conducting, if I'm reading everything right!

Here's what I find particularly interesting on the season.

• E-PS, Yuja Wang: Nielsen Helios Overture, Magnus Lindberg "New Work for Piano and Orchestra", which must be Lindberg's Third Piano Concerto, which was announced with the same conductor and pianist on the NY Phil's schedule (I have asked about this); Bartok, Concerto for Orchestra.
• Mirga 
  Gražinytė-Tyla and the CBSO have a program of Britten, Elgar, Adès, and Debussy, but I am willing to take bets on whether she conducts. The orchestra cancelled in 2020 because of the pandemic; she cancelled twice owing to pregnancies, and...she is having her third child some time this year.
• MTT has four programs, perhaps a partial make-up for the months of his last season as music director lost to the pandemic. There's a Brahms program; Danny Elfman's Cello Concerto, an SFS Commission, with Gautier Capuçon; a mostly-French program including Debussy and Messiaen; 
• There's a piece on one of the Youth Symphony programs by SFO clarinetist José González Granero.
• Robin Ticciati's debut program includes Jörg Widmann's Violin Concerto (Alina Ibragimova) and Mahler 4 (Ying Fang).
• Leif OveAndsnes plays Janáček, Vustin, Beethoven, and Dvorák on a solo recital.
• Edwin Outwater conducts a program that include a new work by Gabriel Kahane called emergency shelter intake form that includes a Chorus of Inconvenient Statistics.
• E-PS conducts Sibelius 5, unfortunately the other half of the program doesn't interest me much.
• E-PS conducts a new work by Samuel Adams, unfortunately on a program with Bruckner 6.
• Herbert Blomstedt conducts Dvorak 8, which I love, and a symphony by Jan Vaclav Vorisek.
• E-PS, Yuja Wang; Gabriella Smith Tumblebird Contrails, Salonen Nyx, Rach 3
• Cristian Macelaru leads a program of Marsalis, Tarkiainen, and Shostakovich, and the soloist is Russ de Luna, English horn. The press release says that the big English horn piece is a world premiere.
• Dalia Stasevka makes her debut with a program of Anna Meredith, Sibelius 2, and Sibelius Violin Concerto (Joshua Bell)
• Thomas Wilkins makes his orchestral series debut conducting a program on which Branford Marsalis is the saxophone soloist.
• Philippe Jordan conducts Britten's War Requiem, with Ian Bostridge and Iain Patterson.
• Giancarlo Guerrero leads a program with a big new Julia Wolfe piece on it.
• Manfred Honeck leads a program that includes a work by Gloria Isabel Ramos Triano, Rach Rhapsody with the excellent Beatrice Rana, and the Schubert Great C Major Symphony (compare with the amazing performance by Blomstedt a few years ago).
• Last of the season, after Busoni and Saariaho, is Salonen conducting a program with a new work by Reena Ismail, some songs with Julia Bullock, and Daphnis et Chloé.

Other notes:

• No indication of whether and when the Elektra and Bluebeard's Castle from the cancelled season might be rescheduled.
• The season includes 30 works new to SFS, including four world premieres, three U.S. premieres, and one west coast premiere.
• Florence Price Violin Concerto No. 2 with Randall Goosby, E-PS conducting.
• E-PS conducts Mahler 2 and a new work by Trevor Weston.
• I wished I liked the program with Christopher Purves better; he is hands down the best Alberich I have seen. But it's the Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin; Suite from Psycho; and HK Gruber's Frankenstein!! Even with Purves and E-P, it's a maybe for me.
• Israel Philharmonic, Lahav Shani, Paul Ben-Haim Symphony No. 1 paired with Mahler 1.
• The film series include The Godfather and you bet I'll pay to see this great film with its score played by a great orchestra. (Pacino was robbed, twice.)
• The SoundBox curators include Pekka Kuusisto, Nico Muhly, Conrad Tao.
• Oedipus Rex this season and Adriana Mater next season are the start of a four-year collaboration with Peter Sellars. This will include a staged version of Messiaen's s La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ in 2024 and Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen featuring Collaborative Partner Julia Bullock in 2025

At the SFS web site:

• Press release
• Season calendar
• Season overview