Friday, September 08, 2023

Adès (and His Program) are Out at SFS

Well, this is a bummer: Thomas Adès has withdrawn from his scheduled San Francisco Symphony programs. One was conducting the orchestra in an unusually tasty program, the other was a SoundBox appearance. The symphony program was this:

  • Nørgård, Symphony No. 2
  • Adès, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with Kirill Gerstein
  • Sibelius, Symphony No. 4,
Gerstein is also off the program.

Here's the reason:

Adès’s opera The Exterminating Angel will be presented at the Paris Opera in February 2024, and he respectfully asked the San Francisco Symphony to be released from his upcoming Symphony programs to revise the piece and conduct this new production. 

 

 

3 comments:

Robert Gordon said...

Adès is scheduled for a weekend of concerts with the LA Phil the week before his cancelled SF program: Feb 9-11. The posted program looks equally wonderful:

Adès: Tempest Symphony and piano concerto with Gerstein
Ravel: Concerto for the left hand and La Valse

At the moment the LA Phil website still shows these concerts, but I'll be amazed if they aren't also cancelled, if for no other reason than that it would be quite a F/U to San Francisco not to cancel.

The piano concerto was scheduled for 2020 and then got lost to the pandemic. And this program is, along with Dudamel's Rheingold in January, the concert I have most been looking forward to. Argh!!!

Lisa Hirsch said...

Big sigh, and I imagine that revising The Exterminating Angel is a huge job. It's been done at the ROH and Met already, so I am a little surprised that it needs revisions.

Harper said...

There is a possibility that Adès indeed won't cancel his concerts with LA Phil since those are a week earlier, so the timing might work out.