San Francisco Symphony Last Week

Michael Tilson Thomas

Photo: Brandon Patoc, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

I didn't review SF Symphony's Concert for MTT, a concert in honor of and in memory of the late conductor, whose leadership over his 25 years as music director was truly remarkable. It was as you might expect, a varied program of music that was important to him, sung or played or conducted by those who were close to him.

Of course, I had some favorites; Sasha Cooke singing, Jamie Bernstein's amazing recollections of the young MTT and their long friendship (and his friendship with her father Leonard), Teddy Abrams and Edwin Outwater's conducting, the Symphony Chorus in a brief marvel by Meredith. Monk, reminisces by bass Chung-Wai Soong and piccolo player Catherine Payne (she was hilarious!). I wish Flicka had been there; at MTT's 80th birthday concert, she was riveting in a Debussy song.

I did review the Strauss program the day before, with Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Renée Fleming. 

Media round-up of both:

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV and SF Chronicle. Despite what I note about her singing, Fleming did get a standing ovation from a loving audience. If you're looking for a great performance of Vier Letzte Lieder, try Soile Isokoski, who is about perfect. Historically, Kirsten Flagstad is amazingly grand and beautiful. Jessye Norman's recording is eccentrically slow, magnificently sung.
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle, Strauss concert and MTT concert. I agree with him about Fleming, on all counts. I was never a fan, but I loved Ruth Ann Swenson, whose career roughly paralleled that of Fleming. Swenson was not much of an actress, but she sang with such joy and liveliness, and, to my ear, a much more beautiful voice.
• Jeff Kaliss, MTT concert, SFCV
• Matthew Travisano, Parterre Box

 

Blomstedt at 99

Herbert Blomstedt

Photo by J.M. Pietsch / Courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

Herbert Blomstedt, Conductor Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, turned 99 yesterday, and Medici.tv has a nice article about him on their website (I think it is not paywalled). I wanted to note that since his unfortunate Mahler 9 in San Francisco, he has withdrawn from a couple of engagements. There was one in Sweden where Alan Gilbert stepped in.

Blomstedt has subsequently withdrawn from three October concerts in Japan, with the NHKSO. The conductor noted the following:

To my dear audience in Japan

I am so sorry that I cannot come to play with my dear orchestra in Tokyo in October, when conducting in May in San Francisco I was struck by a serious infection that will take several months to overcome. But – be of good courage – the great music of Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner will always remain for our enjoyment. I will be with you in spirit, and will never forget you. Thank you for all you have been to me.

Herbert Blomstedt

Wishing him a happy 99th birthday, and of course hoping his health recovers as swiftly and completely as possible. 

Emerging Black Composers: Do Better

Christopher Thompson

Winner of the Sixth Annual Emerging Black Composers Project

Photo Courtesy S.F. Symphony

Christopher Thompson is the winner of the sixth annual Emerging Black Composers Project. He will receive a $15,000 prize, mentoring, and a performance by SFS. Congratulations to him; I'm looking forward to hearing his new work.

Here are the six winners of the prize. all men:

• Christopher Thompson
• Kyle Rivera
• Tyler Taylor
• Xavier Muzik
• Jens Ibsen
• Trevor Weston

Here are the seven winners of the additional prizes, of whom five are men and two are women:

• Jonathan Bingham
• Quenton Xavier Blache
• Jordyn Davis
• Tyson Gholston Davis
• Nathaniel Heyder
• Shawn Okpebholo
• Sumi Tonooka

A total of 13 winners, 11 of whom are men. There is a problem here, whether it's in who is submitting their scores or in the selection process. I've heard a lot of new music in the last 20-plus years and there just is not a quality imbalance like this between men and women.

Elim Chan Arrives

Elim Chan and Sasha Cooke

Photo: Stefan Cohen, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

June, 2026

Back in January, 2026, when Elim Chan's June concerts with San Francisco Symphony were announced, I jumped to the conclusion that this meant Chan would be the next music director of the orchestra. I was right, as it turned out, but in an article in the South China Morning Post, Chan herself says that SFS only approached her in February. She is a good source – obviously – so in January and before, maybe they were trying to figure out how and when to approach her and the concerts were to give the conductor an opportunity to appear with the orchestra as music director designate if they reached an agreement with her.

Anyway, I was at the second of the two concerts, on Saturday, June 6. 

The concert was an occasion, and a heartening one after the last two years. Chan received standing ovations at the start and end. She likes to talk to the audience and she's genuinely funny and charming, which MTT was and Salonen wasn't, though he had a wry sense of humor. I think she will connect well with the audience and the city, again, an area where MTT was great and Salonen (a great conductor) wasn't.

 

As a concert, it was all solid and well played, with nothing revelatory about Chan as a conductor or about the music.

 

San Francisco has two first-class orchestras performing across the street from each other, and one plays a lot more Wagner than the other.* The SF Opera Orchestra has his music in their bones and ears a lot more than SFS. So the Prelude & Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde was correct, but not idiomatic, though the last phrase before the pizzicato of death at the end of the Prelude stood out for its gorgeous phrasing. Overall, it had insufficient rubato and portamento and just did not flow the way it would have in the hands of the SFOO. 

(I have fond memories of Salonen's bleeding chunks as a guest conductor during the centennial season, on a program where the real highlight was his violin concerto. I can't recall whether I have 

heard Wagner at SFS since. I had hoped Salonen would do Tristan in concert, but...)

 

I don't have strong opinions about Debussy's La Mer; I haven't studied the score and somehow it doesn't stick when I hear it in concert or on record. I do not have strong opinions about the range of possibilities in the piece. I would have given Mark Inouye a solo bow for knifelike playing in the third movement and was surprised that Chan didn't. Well, she waded right into the orchestra to shake hands and give solo bows, and the trumpet section is pretty far from the podium!

 

Berlioz's song cycle Les Nuits d'été was the concert's highlight for me. Sasha Cooke is so good! She sang absolutely immaculately, though she didn't move me the way she did in Mahler 2 last year. I felt there were points where she could have raised the emotional temperature for greater impact. Chan had the orchestra sounding particularly great in the Berlioz, a composer she adores.

Various people, myself included, noticed that the originally-announced Mendelssohn Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream had disappeared from the program; in the event, it was to make way for an encore, one of Michael Tilson Thomas's Rilke songs. Cooke sang it beautifully – of course – and it was a lovely connection to the orchestra's past and to the man who did so much to make it what it is today.

Elsewhere:

• Steven Winn, SFCV and SF Chronicle
• Gabe Meline, KQED
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center

* Robert Ward, retired principal horn of SFS, told me that he regretted that he hadn't played more opera, "especially Wagner." I can report that Jonathan Ring and Bruce Roberts did play one Ring with SFO, presumably either 2011 or 2018, under Donald Runnicles.

 

Exciting Times at Davies

Davies Symphony Hall, S.F.

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Exciting, yes, in good and not so good ways. Perhaps most importantly, I interviewed San Francisco Symphony music director designate Elim Chan for SFCV the day the announcement of her appointment went out. Yes, you could say that I'm happy about this! She is an excellent conductor and I think will be a good fit with the orchestra and the city. She was also a lot of fun to talk to. (I never interviewed Michael Tilson Thomas or Esa-Pekka Salonen, her immediate predecessors, which I greatly regret.)

The day after, Cristian Mǎcelaru led the orchestra in an incendiary performance, including Embers, by Tyler Taylor, winner of the Emerging Black Composers Project award, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1, with Simon Trpčeski, and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, "From the New World." Trpčeski is not only a terrific pianist, he is a classy guy: he dedication one encore to Elim Chan – who was in Loge A with SFS CEO Matthew Spivey – and the other, which included associate concertmaster Wyatt Underhill, to MTT.

I also reviewed conductor laureate Herbert Blomstedt's program, which consisted only of Mahler's Symphony No. 9, and which turned out to be an unfortunate occasion. Blomstedt arrived in S.f. in a sufficiently exhausted state that he spent several days in the hospital, with David Robertson taking over rehearsals. By the day of this concert, he had recovered enough that, it seems, he insisted on leading the last rehearsal and conducting the concert.

It did not go well. He was escorted in a wheelchair to the podium, where several people helped him onto the podium and the piano bench from which he was conducting. During the third movement, he started listing to the right and it appeared he might fall off. The music stopped; the helpers came out; they swapped the bench for an armchair. The music went on, but it was scary for the audience (and I'm sure the musicians) and not entirely clear how in charge of the performance Blomstedt was. 

He withdrew from the remaining two performances, which Robertson conducted, and has subsequently withdrawn from scheduled performances in Sweden, which Alan Gilbert led.

There was a lot of discussion about Blomstedt on Facebook, both before and after the concert, by members of the public and members of the orchestra. This kind of situation – reviewing a concert where a performer is very old, or ill, or merely getting to the end of their career – needs to be handled carefully. If the performer is a Herbert Blomsted, who is nearly 99 years old, or a Michael Tilson Thomas, who performed after surgery for a brain tumor, their performances are occasions, not just concerts, and should be reviewed with that in mind.

I attended most of MTT's post-diagnosis performances, and, well, were they the best performances I heard from him? Mostly not – but it didn't matter, because they were as much about who he was and what he meant to the audience as about the quality of the performances. Similarly with any performances by Herbert Blomstedt, an honored and much-loved past music director of the orchestra.

 

Elim Chan, Music Director Designate of the San Francisco Symphony

Elim Chan

Cody Pickens, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

.

Big news from Davies Symphony Hall this morning: Elim Chan, 39, will be the next music director of the San Francisco Symphony. She joins the orchestra immediately with the title Music Director Designate, and will become Music Director with the 2027-28 season.

Chan has conducted SFS three times, most recently in a program of excerpts from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Previously, she led works of Britten, Holst, Ogonek, Prokofiev, and more Tchaikovsky.

On June 5 and 6, she's leading this program, which I expect will be gorgeous:

• Felix Mendelssohn, Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  
• Hector Berlioz, Les Nuits d'été,  with Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano
• Richard Wagner, Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
  
• Claude Debussy, La Mer

Get your tickets right now, because there will be a run on them any second. 

Chan will be the 13th music director of SFS, joining a lineage that includes such luminaries as Pierre Monteux, Seiji Ozawa, Edo de Waart, Herbert Blomstedt, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Her initial contract is for six years.

SFS will be by far the biggest-budget U.S. orchestra to have a woman as music director. Current female music directors elsewhere include Xian Zhang at the Seattle Symphony, JoAnn Falletta at the Buffalo Philharmonic, and Carolyn Kuan, who conducted The Monkey King at San Francisco Opera last fall, at the Hartford Symphony. Just across the street from Davies, Eun Sun Kim is the music director of San Francisco Opera. Added 5/22: Nathalie Stutzmann is music director in Atlanta, too.

The press release has these details:

In September 2027, Elim Chan begins her tenure as Music Director, leading the Orchestra in a minimum of 10 weeks of programming, including the Opening Gala and All San Francisco concert. From the 2028–29 season onward, she will conduct a minimum of 10 subscription weeks, as well as Opening Week, with an additional three weeks devoted to special projects such as touring and SoundBox.

A while back, Joshua Kosman wrote this in a review:

At intermission, a well-connected observer whispered unconfirmed rumors in my ear, which I unapologetically pass along, about the strong bond that’s been forming in recent years between Chan and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The Philharmonic will need a new music director by 2026, when Gustavo Dudamel pulls up stakes and decamps to lead the New York Philharmonic.

Make of that scuttlebutt what you will, if anything. But Thursday’s triumph suggested that the orchestra could do worse — and that Chan’s next appearance in San Francisco is something to look forward to with unreserved excitement. 

Let's double and redouble that, now that Chan will be the next music director of the San Francisco Symphony.

Media round-up, with more to come:

• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle news report (gift link)
• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle opinion piece (gift link)
• Janos Gereben, SFCV
• Adam Nogourney, NY Times (gift link)

MTT Update

Michael Tilson Thomas

Photo by Brandon Patroc, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

My post on the occasion of MTT's death has grown by quite a bit since April 23, as I've located more obituaries and tributes to him. I think that every orchestra he conducted has posted a memorial to him; I saw tons on social media and didn't grab all of the links.

I want to note Mark Swed's Los Angeles Times article (now behind a paywall) and Tim Page's Washington Post obit (gift link has expired), which go into some detail about MTT's personality and, well, why there's a period in his life when he didn't have a music director job. He was impetuous and somewhat arrogant; Peter Pastreich's comments in my NPR obituary mention that in 1985, when SFS hired Herbert Blomstedt, MTT wasn't ready for the top job, but he was a decade later. 

 

Michael Tilson Thomas

Michael Tilson Thomas visits Google

November, 2008

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

(I took many photos that day, but most of them are a little blurry because MTT was perpetually in motion.)

Knowing this day would come did not make it any easier: Michael Tilson Thomas, universally known at MTT, died last night at his home in San Francisco, nearly five years after a diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme. I am tremendously saddened by his passing and especially by his illness. I'd hoped he would have a long and happy retirement, guest conducting, composing, and dreaming up all sorts of wonderful things.

I wrote an advance obituary for NPR, commissioned the week he announced he had a brain tumor and updated many times since owing to his amazing survival. (Huge thanks to Steve Smith for commissioning the piece.)

While researching the obit, I turned up some numbers numbers that describe his sheer impact on the San Francisco Symphony, of which he was music director from 1995 to 2020:

• He conducted around 1,800 concerts with SFS, from 1974 to 2025.
• His first concert showed the shape of things to come: it included Mahler's 9th.
• During his tenure, SFS presented 41 world or U.S. premieres.
• He appointed about 60 musicians, conductors, music librarians.
• He led festivals devoted to Beethoven, Bates, Stravinsky; Yiddish theater and its impact on Broadway and American music; the Barbary Coast; Mendelssohn and Ades; Schubert and Berg; Sofia Gubaidulina; George Benjamin; Leonard Bernstein; Russian music, and more.
• He conceived SFSoundBox and helped found SFS Media, the orchestra's own record label, which was among the first of any U.S. orchestra. (The Louisville Orchestra, I have learned, started its own label in 1950.)

In addition to all of that, he made more than 120 recordings with a number of orchestras and was awarded 12 Grammys. 

He and his late husband, Joshua Robison, were very much a part of San Francisco, and MTT was loved throughout the city. The block of Grove that runs between Davies Symphony Hall and the War Memorial Opera House was renamed MTT Way in honor of him.

Be sure to check out the amazing collection of photos of MTT, Joshua, their beloved dogs, and more at his website.

On KQED's Forum, Alexis Madrigal spoke with Mark Leno, former California state senator and longtime friend of MTT and Joshua Robison, classical music critic Joshua Kosman, composer John Adams, soprano Julia Bullock, and conductor Donato Cabrera about MTT. You can listen to the archived broadcast.

Obituaries and memorials:

• Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle obit (gift link)
• Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle, a beautiful appreciation (gift link)
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
• Joshua Kosman, The Gramophone, originally published in 2024
• Tony Bravo, SF Chronicle, a beautiful appreciation of MTT's life as a gay man and what he and Joshua Robison meant to gay people in classical music (gift link)
• Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle, From the Archive, about MTT's first SFS performance (gift link)
• Lisa Hirsch, NPR
• Janos Gereben, SFCV
• Gabe Meline, KQED
• Emily Shugerman, S.F Standard
• David Bratman, Kalimac's Corner
• Mark Leno remember his friends MTT and Joshua Robison, SF Standard
• Various tributes to MTT, S.F. Chronicle
• San Francisco Symphony remembers MTT
• Barbara Bogatin, SFCV
• Sharon Su, "What I learned from MTT"
• Mark Swed, LA Times (MTT as an Angeleno and California)
• Nardine Saad, LA Times
• Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise
• Elaine Fine, Musical Assumptions
• Chicago Symphony Orchestra, "Remembering Michael Tilson Thomas"
• Tim Page, Washington Post (gift link)
• Anthony Tomassini, NY Times (gift link)
• Hannah Edgar, NY Times (gift link), on how MTT worked with and developed young musicians
• P.J. Grisar, The Forward
• The Times, unsigned
• The Telegraph, unsigned
• Richard Fairman, Financial Times
• New World Symphony
• Amanda Rosa, Miami Herald
• Ronald Blum, AP
• Bachtrack, unsigned
• Leonard Slatkin
• Dave Hurwitz, Classics Today

Joshua Robison obituaries:

• Tony Bravo and Aidin Vaziri, San Francisco Chronicle, a heartfelt appreciation of MTT's husband, his partner of 50 years (gift link)
• Gabe Meline, KQED
• MTT's website
• London Symphony Orchestra

San Francisco Symphony 2026-27

Davies Symphony Hall

Home of the San Francisco Symphony

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Well, okay! San Francisco Symphony announced their 2026-27 season the other month – sorry, I am definitely behind in posting about recent events – and it is a good season, a return to the kind of adventurous programming we got used to during the long tenure of Michael Tilson Thomas (okay, there was a slump at the end, I know, I know) and the too-short tenure of Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Salonen will be back for what will be a fun program – it includes a new concerto for harp and percussion, by Rene Orth, to be played by principal percussionist Jacob Nissly and principal harp Katherine Siochi – and his influence is clear in a few other places during the season. That's because there are a bunch of big new works programmed or coming in the near future, and they absolutely must have been commissioned when he was music director. These include the Orth, a new violin concerto called How to Be a Bird, by the prodigiously gifted Gabriella Smith, and a future concerto for orchestra by Reena Esmail. 

There's plenty of good stuff in the season! In addition to works named above, I'm looking forward to seeing Metropolis with live orchestra on the very big screen at Davies.

The full season brochure can be downloaded as a PDF; you can also view or download the full season calendar.

• Lisa Hirsch, San Francisco Chronicle.
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
• Janos Gereben, SFCV

 

Major Openings

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

I'm months overdue on a big music director update, but last week's bombshell at the Boston Symphony reminded me that four of the big-budget U.S. orchestras now have music director openings:

• Boston Symphony, where there has been drama.
• Cleveland Orchestra, where there has not been drama. The orchestra announced in January, 2024, that Franz Welser-Möst would leave at the end of the 2026-27 season. Three years' notice, similar to MTT's three at SFS.
• SFS, where there has been drama, with Esa-Pekka Salonen deciding to part ways over differences with the board.
• LA Philharmonic, where there has not been drama. Gustavo Dudamel decided to move to the NY Philharmonic in February, 2023, and commences the new position with the 2026-27 season. Well, the return of Esa-Pekka Salonen in a non-music director position could be considered dramatic and could cause some conductors to rule out the appointment, because being music director when one of the best conductors in the world – who is also one of the best composers in the world – is in the office next door could be discouraging.

Better Late Than Never

Mozart Requiem

Manfred Honeck, cond.

Photo: Kristen Loken, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

A couple of years ago, I saw Manfred Honeck, music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, guest conduct at San Francisco Symphony. I am surprised to see that I never posted about it, because it was Not Good. Joshua Kosman reviewed the concert (gift link) and was not happy; as the headline says, Honeck was a speed demon and the speed served the music poorly.

When the 2025-26 SFS season was announced, I was skeptical about Honeck's program, a re-envisioning of Mozart's Requiem, a problem child of a work if ever there was one. Mozart died before finishing it; his friend and student Franz Xaver Süssmayr completed it and, well, to say the least he was no Mozart.

I sang the Requiem long ago and didn't particularly like it then; recordings I've heard along the way mostly didn't work for me. Too many conductors go at it like it's the Brahms, written in the 1860s, and no, that's not appropriate. I liked Christopher Hogwood's period instrument recording, which sounds like Mozart, but I haven't heard it in 20 years.

I probably would have gone to the final dress rehearsal of Honeck's program if I hadn't had a conflicting appointment, and wasn't really planning to go (demand pricing in action and I was not comfortable asking for a press ticket), but then a friend said it had been phenomenal, and, well, okay, a chance to hear the wonderful Ying Fang and Sasha Cooke, okay.

Well, it turns out that I will have to rethink both Manfred Honeck and the Mozart Requiem.

The Requiem wasn't the only thing on the program; the first half of the program was Beethoven's Coriolan Overture and Haydn's Symphony No. 93 in D major. The Beethoven got a sharp and appropriately dramatic reading in which I was particularly impressed by the energy of the conducting and how Honeck and the orchestra controlled the dynamics within each phrase. By energy, I do not mean speed. Honeck's tempo was just right, neither too fast nor too slow, but underlying every note was tremendous momentum and energy.

The same was true in the Haydn, which has a character quite different from the Beethoven. The cheery first movement was a lively delight. Kudos to the quartet of string players in the opening of the slow movement. (They included concertmaster Alexander Barantschik and principal viola Jonathan Vinocour; I couldn't quite see who was in the cello first seat. I think Chen Zhao was playing principal second violin.) I laughed out loud at the musical joke late in the movement, which was beautifully timed.

Honeck took a broad tempo for the minuet and it worked fabulously well in this bumptious music; the trio was appropriately more sober and delicate. The last movement bustled along nicely.

On to the Requiem.

During intermission, audience members were able to get an electric (I think) candle and place it on the edge of the stage in front of the orchestra, in memory of those no longer with us. The candles remained there until after the concert was over and created a beautiful look and mood for the Mozart.

Honeck contributed a program note, in which he says that we can't know how Mozart would have finished the Requiem, so "I have chosen to perform only the parts that he composed himself." A wise decision and I admire his integrity in making this choice. 

Honeck's conception of the Requiem places the work in the context of "elements that reflect Mozart's time and personal thoughts on death," creating a funeral liturgy around the Requiem. The performance included plainchant (sung by the St. Dominic’s Schola Cantorum), readings from the Book of Revelation, two poems by Nelly Sachs, an excerpt from a letter the composer wrote to his father, the "Masonic Funeral Music," K. 477, the "Laudate Dominum" from the Vespers, K. 399, and the motet "Ave Verum Corpus."

The performance opened and closed with three bell strokes, played by principal timpani Edward Stephan – the only time I've seen him play anything other than timpani. They were a solemn introduction and solemn close to a performance of gravity and majesty.

Honeck led the program with all the virtues of the first half – judicious tempos, crisp phrasing, superb dynamic control – and added a real sense of drama and style. The structure created some of the drama, and Honeck conducted with operatic grandeur and pacing.

Did I mention disliking Brahmsian performances of the Requiem? This performance looked back to the Baroque, emphasizing the counterpoint and antique elements of the work. Honeck used a reduced orchestra throughout the program; the players had more than enough power for the work. Even with the big chorus, the balances were excellent. The Symphony Chorus was a marvel throughout, wonderfully responsive and singing with a most beautiful sound.

Honeck gave special weight to the "Masonic Funeral Music" and the Confutatis of the Requiem.  I loved Adrian Roberts's eloquent readings. Soprano Ying Fang was glorious in the "Laudate Dominum" from the Vespers and so was bass Stephano Park in the "Tuba mirum" of the Requiem. Mezzo Sasha Cooke was, as always, a warmly beautiful presence. Tenor David Portillo was much as he was at Santa Fe Opera in 2024.

All in all, it was a a magnificent performance of a great work. 

These performances were dedicated to the memory Joshua Robison, Michael Tilson Thomas's husband and creative partner, who died earlier this week. Principal oboe Eugene Izotov read a moving personal memory of Robison and his place in the lives of MTT and SFS.

Elsewhere:

• Rebecca Wishnia, SF Chronicle and SFCV
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle (link to follow)
• DB at Kalimac's Corner

A note after reading Rebecca Wishnia and DB's reviews: I had no problems hearing the soloists from Upper Orchestra S-19. Their sound reflected off the wall at the back of the orchestra seating.

John Storgårds at SF Symphony

John Storgåards

Photo by Marco Borggreve / courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

John Storgårds conducted SFS last week for the first time, and his work was a wow. If the orchestra hadn't already engaged Jaap van Zweden to lead an unnecessary full cycle of the Beethoven symphonies over this and the next two seasons, I'd suggest they hire this guy.

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV/SF Chronicle
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
• Harvey Steiman, Seen & Heard International
• Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
• Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio

During the Beethoven, I kept thinking "Gosh, the last time I heard this the conducting wasn't nearly as good. Who was it?" The answer turned out to be....Jaap van Zweden. Joshua Kosman liked that performance more than I did.

 

Prediction Market

Elim Chan

Photo courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco Symphony has, very unusually, added a program to a blank spot in June, between James Gaffigan's one-night-only special event and Tianyi Lu making her orchestra series debut. I wonder what it could mean.

Elim Chan, who has been excellent in her previous appearances, leads this juicy, if solidly 19th-early 20th c., program:

Friday, June 5, 2026, at 7:30pm

Saturday, June 6, 2026, at 7:30pm 

Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano

FELIX MENDELSSOHN Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream 

HECTOR BERLIOZ Les nuits d’été 

RICHARD WAGNER Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde 

CLAUDE DEBUSSY La mer 

Tickets: $29–89  

 

San Francisco Symphony Auditions

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

San Francisco Symphony has a number of auditions coming up.

• Associate principal horn and assistant principal / utility horn. Two positions. This reflects the impact of hiring Diego Incertis Sánchez as principal horn: the principal should have input into hiring to fill the vacancies, because the principal will have a concept of how the horn section should sound and thus helps choose players who will create that sound.
• Associate principal bassoon. This position has been filled for the last year by former principal bassoon Stephen Paulson, so it appears he will be retiring from the orchestra after 48 years in that position.
• Section cello (multiple positions), perhaps reflecting retirements that haven't been announced yet.
• Section viola

 

The Best of 2025

Kang Wang as the title character

The Monkey King

San Francisco Opera

Photo: Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO

 

SFCV published the writers' collective opinions of the best performances of the year. The Bay Area list is here. My five choices were these:

• Esa-Pekka Salonen's Mahler 2
• Poiesis Quartet at Noe Music
• The Monkey King at San Francisco Opera
• Pivot Festival, Carla Kiehlstedt's 26 Little Deaths
• Tartuffe, Pocket Opera

It was a tough call. Here's the rest of my long list:

• La bohème at SFO; a seriously great run, beautifully directed, with two terrific casts.
• MTT 80, a deeply touching celebration of the man.
  
• Parsifal at SFO
• Rigoletto at SFO
• Bluebeard's Castle at Opera San José
• Turn of the Screw at SFCM, better staged and conducted than what I saw at Santa Fe over the summer.
• John Adams third piano concerto, After the Fall, at SFS. I couldn't include the concert on my short list because the second half was (&)%$)_@_ Carmina Burana.
• Dalia Stasevska at SFS, in the Thorvaldsdottir cello concerto and RWV's Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.
• Cabrillo Festival, Becoming
• Hello, Star at OP. Just a perfect 45 minutes of opera begging for a larger orchestra. A wonderful libretto, beautiful music, great direction on a tiny stage.
• Donald Runnicles and Irene Roberts at SFS

As you can see, I named four of the last six operas at SFO as among the best things I saw; Dead Man Walking was also superb. SFO had a stupendous year and in fact has been on a roll since the centennial season. Hats off to Matthew Shilvock and his team for this long string of artistic successes, which has also included a fair number of sellouts.

As for the flip side, I am going to pass on flagging concerts I found disappointing or wrong-headed. There's not much doubt that the worst event of the year was Esa-Pekka Salonen's departure from San Francisco Symphony after just five years as music director. He reinvigorated the orchestra's programming, led many great concerts, hired many terrific musicians, and thanks to the short-sightedness of the board and management, which couldn't figure out how to fund his ambitions for the future, he is gone.

• Joshua Kosman's picks
• SFCV Los Angeles writers' picks
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center

SFS New Principal Horn

Diego Incertis Sánchez

Spanish horn player Diego Incertis Sánchez has been appointed principal horn of the San Francisco Symphony. He'll join the orchestra in January, two years after Robert Ward retired following 43 years with the orchestra, 16 of them as principal horn.

Incertis Sánchez, 28, is currently the principal horn of the London Symphony Orchestra and previously held the same position with the Philharmonia Orchestra. (I can't tell if he held that position when a certain Esa-Pekka Salonen was chief conductor of the Philharmonia.) This is Salonen's last hire from his all-too-brief tenure as music director of SFS, where he hired many new musicians, including the new principal and associate principal flutes, principal cello, associate and assistant principal clarinets, associate principal concertmaster, and more.

Joshua Kosman's article on the appointment discusses the reasons Incertis Sánchez is relocating. I would like to add that while London and San Francisco are both very expensive cities, orchestral musicians in London are paid much less than their peers in the major U.S. orchestras.

This appointment leaves three openings in the horn section: associate principal (formerly held by Mark Almond, now the principal horn of the CSO), assistant principal (formerly held by Bruce Roberts, who retired), and utility horn (formerly held by Daniel Hawkins, now the principal horn of the Dallas Symphony). 

Tom Jacobs has also written about this appointment.

 

Emerging Black Composers

Kyle Rivera

Photo courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

No photographer credited.

San Francisco Symphony has announced that Kyle Rivera, currently a master's student in music composition at Yale, has won the fifth Emerging Black Composers Project prize. Congratulations to Mr. Rivera!

Before I post the press release, let me note the previous winners:

• Jens Ibsen
• Xavier Muzik
• Tyler Taylor
• Trevor Weston

"Additional prizes" have been awarded to the following:

• Jonathan Bingham
• Shawn Okpebholo
• Sumi Tonooka

Of the eight composers who've won or been awarded prizes, seven are men. And this is an anonymous competition. Is this a "pipeline problem"? Not enough women applying? Maybe there should be some recruitment. I'm certainly curious about the percentage of composers who are Black women.

The press release is below the jump. There are some typos - missing spaces - in the original.

Runnicles at San Francisco Symphony

Donald Runnicles

Courtesy of his website

Well, I was extremely happy with this week's SFS program, which featured Donald Runnicles conducting Berg's Seven Early Songs and Mahler's First Symphony. For the Berg, he had mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts as soloist, and...her performance was a revelation.

Roberts has sung at SF Opera five times since 2013, in these roles:

• Giulietta, Tales of Hoffman
• Carmen, Carmen
• Bao Chai, Dream of the Red Chamber
• Dorabella, Così fan tutte
• Offred, The Handmaid's Tale

Seeing her in these roles would not have prepared you for the vocal splendor she brought to the Berg, which was gorgeously, immaculately sung. Over in Europe, where she was a member of the ensemble at Deutsche Oper Berlin, she's been singing roles like the above, but also the great Wagner mezzo and Zwischenfach roles. I can imagine that they are magnificent, and I can only hope that she'll be in future Wagner productions at SFO, in roles that would be ideal for her.

As it happens, Deutsche Opera Berlin is where Runnicles headed after SFO, a position he'll be leaving at the end of the 2025-26 season. He is also the chief conductor designate of the Dresden Philharmonic this season, a position he will hold for some time to come. I was wowed by his Mahler, and I've been a fan of his for years, so I consider the people of Dresden to be lucky indeed.

[Update, 9/30: I have now had three people whom I'd consider to be very knowledgeable ask me why Runnicles isn't the music director of S.F. Symphony, and another speculating that maybe he could be principal guest conductor. Well, see the above; he seems to be very happy working in Germany, and also, he doesn't really have an ongoing relationship with the orchestra.]

My review ran very long and I could not compliment every solo player, much as I wanted to. Yubeen Kim and the whole flute section were marvelous; Eugene Izotov was spectacular at many crucial moments and the double reeds were amazing in the Klezmer interjection in the third movement; Carey Bell, as ever, was wonderful and so was Matthew Griffith on E-flat clarinet. Joshua Elmore was right there in a number of critical moments. I loved the timpani / double bass duet at the beginning of the third movement, so kudos to Ed Stephan and Scott Pingel. Then there were the brass, with principal trumpet Mark Inouye fabulous throughout, and all of the horns and trombones, plus Jeff Anderson on tuba:

Horns – Michael Stevens (Principal), Jonathan Ring, Jack Bryant, Jessica Valeri, Roy Femenella, Amy Sanchez, Meredith Brown and Alicia Mastromanco

Trombones – Ben Smelser (Principal), Paul Welcomer, Chase Waterbury and Kyle Mendiguchia

Reviews:

• Lisa Hirsch, S.F. Chronicle / SFCV
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
• Harvey Steiman, Seen and Heard International 
• Michael Strickland, S.F. Civic Center
• Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio
• Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills

Joshua Kosman and I aren't usually this far apart. I didn't hear the clumsiness he does in the Mahler, which maybe I'd describe as extroverted and exuberant. (I even asked my SFCV editors, in email, why I hadn't gotten the word "exhilarating" into my review.) But back in the SFS centennial season, I liked the BSO's visit more than he did. I heard grandeur, he heard lack of discipline. I'd love to revisit those programs, lead by Ludovic Morlot, to see how I'd react to them today. JK could well have been entirely correct, given Seiji Ozawa's overlong tenure and James Levine's health problems and divided attention. Or maybe I like a particular style of big-boned conducting that he doesn't.

It's Official.

Screenshot from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra website

My SFCV article updating SF* orchestra personnel for 2025-26 noted that Timothy Higgins was "on leave" from San Francisco Symphony, because no announcement had been made by the CSO about his appointment.

Now there's a press release and, as you can see from the above, he's on their website. With Christopher Bassett on leave and back in the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and Nick Platoff's resignation (he's now the principal at Houston), the SFS trombone section is currently down to Paul Welcomer.

Higgins might return to SFS at the end of the season. The labor settlement undoubtedly make SFS more attractive than it was, say a week ago, and the weather is better here. But the cost of living is higher than in Chicago and they've got a new music director coming in, one who has a reputation for working very respectfully with musicians, while who knows who will get the appointment in SF.