Latest news with #SymphonyNo.2
San Francisco Chronicle
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
The finale after the finale: S.F. Symphony Chorus shines in Verdi's Requiem
Like a baseball game rescheduled after a rainout, there was one more concert on the San Francisco Symphony's season calendar after last week's grand finale with outgoing Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen. The orchestra staged its makeup performance of Verdi's Requiem on Friday, June 20, a concert that was canceled during the Symphony Chorus' strike in September last year. James Gaffigan generously stepped in to conduct the work, which Salonen would have led in the fall. The program is slated to be repeated on Sunday, June 22, at Davies Symphony Hall. After its extraordinary contributions to Salonen's farewell performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, the Chorus showed it was worth every penny of the anonymous $4 million gift made in the months following the strike. The singers came to the fore not just in the 90-minute Requiem, normally programmed by itself, but in a first part that included three choral pieces by Gordon Getty, himself a generous donor to the Symphony (and a co-founder of San Francisco Classical Voice). Getty's works are genial, melodic and accessible, and Gaffigan, a friend of the composer, led them deftly and with evident care. The Intermezzo from Getty's 2017 opera 'Goodbye, Mr. Chips' begins delicately, with spare lines in the marimba giving way to the harp, then acquiring a more definitive melodic profile in the strings. It's a meditative piece that finds an unexpected climax when the choristers interject a school hymn, almost as if overhead from afar. The Chorus also gave fine performances of 'Saint Christopher' (2024), which features effective writing for voices, and 'The Old Man in the Snow' (2020), a more substantial work in several sections that Getty skillfully sets apart with different instrumentation, including a trombone choir, keyboards and mallet percussion. If the performance of the piece as a whole lacked finesse, their contributions were nonetheless stellar. The singing was artful, from the opening 'Requiem aeternam,' with the sound humming in the air through the nasal consonants, to the explosive 'Dies irae' and the stentorian 'Rex tremendae.' The women made a luminous entrance in the 'Lacrimosa' at the line 'Huic ergo parce, Deus' (Therefore spare him, O Lord), and the whole chorus concluded with the fearful declamation and hortatory final fugue of the 'Libera me.' The singers encompassed the range of Verdi's writing in finely balanced sound that pulled emotion from every chord change. Gaffigan's conducting, however, emphasized drive and the titanic climaxes while shorting the Requiem's poetic side. Certainly, this is a public religious work, conceived as a memorial to Italian art — first to the composer Gioachino Rossini and then, when that initial plan fell through, to author Alessandro Manzoni. But it's not only theatrical. This interpretation was driven by inflexible tempos and a sameness to all of the climaxes and fortissimo outbursts that ultimately became wearing. Though the orchestra played well, earning deserved applause, the performance was missing a sense of transcendence and the overarching struggle of mourning and fear giving way to tranquility and acceptance. The soloists — soprano Rachel Willis-Sørenson, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, tenor Mario Chang and bass Morris Robinson — were generally excellent. The notable exception was Chang's effortful 'Ingemisco' prayer, sung without any bloom in the tone and generally unresonant and unconvincing. The violins joined Willis-Sørenson in a moving 'Sed signifer sanctus Michael' (Let the standard-bearer holy Michael), the soprano singing sweetly in one of the score's many standout lyrical moments. If there had been more of those, this Requiem would have been even better.
Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Esa-Pekka Salonen leaves the troubled San Francisco Symphony with Mahler's call for ‘Resurrection'
SAN FRANCISCO — Saturday night, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted his San Francisco Symphony in a staggering performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 2, known as the 'Resurrection.' It was a ferocious performance and an exalted one of gripping intensity. This is a symphony emblematic for Mahler of life and death, an urgent questioning of why we are here. After 80 minutes of the highest highs and lowest lows, of falling in and out of love with life, of smelling the most sensual roses on the planet in a search for renewal, resurrection arrives in a blaze of amazement. Mahler has no answers for the purpose of life. His triumph, and Salonen's in his overpowering performance, is in the divine glory of keeping going, keeping asking. The audience responded with a stunned and tumultuous standing ovation. The musicians pounded their feet on the Davies Symphony Hall stage, resisting Salonen's urgings to stand and take a bow. It was no longer his San Francisco Symphony. After five years as music director, Salonen had declined to renew his contract, saying he didn't share the board of trustees' vision of the future. 'I have only two things to say,' Salonen told the crowd before exiting the stage. 'First: Thank you. 'Second: You've heard what you have in this city. This amazing orchestra, this amazing chorus. So take good care of them.' Salonen, who happens to be a bit of a tech nerd and is a science-fiction fan, had come to San Francisco because he saw the Bay Area as a place where the future is foretold and the city as a place that thinks differently and turns dreams into reality. Here he would continue the kind of transformation of the orchestra into a vehicle for social and technological good that he had begun in his 17 years as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It was to be a glorious experiment in arts and society in a city presumably ready to reclaim its own past glory. He had the advantage of following in the symphonic footsteps of Michael Tilson Thomas, who for 25 years had made the orchestra a leader in reflecting the culture of its time and place. Salonen brought in a team of young, venturesome 'creative partners' from music and tech. He enlisted architect Frank Gehry to rethink concert venues for the city. He put together imaginative and ambitious projects with director Peter Sellars. He made fabulous recordings. There were obstacles. The COVID-19 pandemic meant the cancellation of what would have been Tilson Thomas' own intrepid farewell celebration five years ago — a production of Wagner's 'The Flying Dutchman' with a set by Gehry and staged by James Darrah (the daring artistic director of Long Beach Opera). Salonen's first season had to be streamed during lockdown, but became the most technologically imaginative of any isolated orchestra. Like arts organizations everywhere and particularly in San Francisco, which has had a harder time than most bouncing back from the pandemic, the San Francisco Symphony had its share of budgetary problems. But it also had, in Salonen, a music director who knew a thing or two about how to get out of them. He had become music director of the L.A. Phil in 1992, when the city was devastated by earthquake, riots and recession. The building of Walt Disney Concert Hall was about to be abandoned. The orchestra built up in the next few years a deficit of around $17 million. The audience, some of the musicians and the press needed awakening. Salonen was on the verge of resignation, but the administration stood behind him, believing in what he and the orchestra could become. With the opening of Disney Hall in 2003, the L.A. Phil transformed Los Angeles. And for that opening, Salonen chose Mahler's 'Resurrection' for the first of the orchestra's subscription series of concerts. Rebirth in this thrillingly massive symphony for a massive orchestra and chorus, along with soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists, was writ exceedingly large, transparent and loud. On Oct. 30, 2003, with L.A. weathering record heat and fires, Salonen's Mahler exulted a better future. The San Francisco Symphony has not followed the L.A. Phil example. It did not put its faith and budget in Salonen's vision, despite five years of excitement. It did not show the city how to rise again. Next season is the first in 30 years that appears to be without a mission. In Disney 22 years ago, Salonen drew attention to the sheer transformative power of sound. At the same time Tilson Thomas had turned the San Francisco Symphony into the country's most expansive Mahler orchestra, and it was only a few months later that he performed the Second Symphony and recorded it in Davies Symphony Hall in a luminously expressive account. That recording stands as a reminder of the hopes back then of a new century. Salonen's more acute approach, not exactly angry but exceptionally determined, was another kind of monument to the power of sound. In quietest, barely audible passages, the air in the hall had an electric sense of calm before the storm. The massive climaxes pinned you to the wall. The chorus, which appears in the final movement to exhort us to cease trembling and prepare to live, proved its own inspiration. The administration all but cost-cut the singers out of the budget until saved by an anonymous donor. The two soloists, Heidi Stober and Sasha Cooke, soared as needed. Salonen moves on. Next week he takes the New York Philharmonic on an Asia tour. At Salzburg this summer, he and Sellars stage Schoenberg's 'Erwartung,' a project he began with the San Francisco Symphony. At the Lucerne Festival, he premieres his Horn Concerto with the Orchestre de Paris instead of the San Francisco Symphony, as originally intended. Saturday's concert had begun with a ludicrous but illuminating announcement to 'sit back and relax as Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts your San Francisco Symphony.' Salonen, instead, offered a wondrous city a wake-up call.
Straits Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Wong Kah Chun is first Singaporean to conduct at BBC proms
Singaporean conductor Wong Kah Chun will be the first Singaporean to conduct at the BBC Proms, London's annual eight-week classical music festival. PHOTO: ANGIE KREMER Wong Kah Chun is first Singaporean to conduct at BBC proms SINGAPORE – Conductor Wong Kah Chun will be the first Singaporean to conduct at the BBC Proms, London's annual eight-week classical music festival. As part of the season running from July 18 to Sept 13, Wong is taking up the baton for a rendition of Austrian composer Gustav Mahler's 'Resurrection' Symphony, or Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, at the Royal Albert Hall on Aug 2. The 38-year-old interprets the choral symphony for 167-year-old, Manchester-based symphony orchestra The Halle. Norwegian Mari Eriksmoen will sing soprano, and Canadian Emily D'Angelo the mezzo-soprano; The Halle Choir and the Halle Youth Choir also supply voices for the mixed chorus. Wong, who has been The Halle's principal conductor and artistic adviser since September 2024, says he is honoured and 'absolutely thrilled' to partake in one of the world's great celebrations of classical music. The performance marks the finale of his first full season. He is officially appointed for five. 'To walk in the footsteps of my predecessors like Sir Mark Elder and Sir John Barbirolli – who also frequently conducted The Halle at the Proms in the same role – is both humbling and inspiring,' he tells The Straits Times. '(The symphony) is a deeply moving work, and even more special to bring it to the Proms with the full Halle family – our orchestra, choir and youth choir.' The five movements of Mahler's work, running up to 80 minutes, explore the afterlife with a view to transcendence, and are among the most popular pieces in orchestras' repertoire, with Wong expected to plug into their sombre tragedy. In 2014, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra became the first Singaporean group to perform at the BBC Proms, showcasing a programme comprising a piano concerto by Chinese composer Zhou Long, a short overture by Russian composer Mikhail Glinka and Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff's hour-long Symphony No. 2 in E Minor. Some members of the 5,500-strong audience flew a Singapore flag. Chinese-American Lan Shui, a Singapore permanent resident who was then the orchestra's music director, conducted despite feeling under the weather. When he gave up the post to spend more time in Denmark with his wife and two sons in 2019, Lan, too, conducted the SSO in a performance of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, choosing it for its message of farewell and new beginnings. Wong's career took off after he won the first prize at the Gustav Mahler Conducting competition in 2016. Since then, he has been appointed chief conductor to various high-profile orchestras including Germany's Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra and the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra. He was a National Arts Council (NAC) scholar, receiving a Master of Music in Orchestral/Opera Conducting from the Hanns-Eisler Musikhochschule in Berlin, and was a recipient of NAC's Young Artist Award in 2017. Tickets range from £15 (S$26) to £66. For more information, go to Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
San Francisco Chronicle
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Esa-Pekka Salonen's farewell to S.F. Symphony ends in tears, cheers, lingering questions
It's over. But the five-year relationship between Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Bay Area didn't end with silence. Over a powerful, emotionally charged three-day stretch, thunderous ovation filled Davies Symphony Hall as the Finnish conductor led his final concerts as music director with the San Francisco Symphony — a role he exits with both reverence and unresolved tension. For his grand finale on Saturday, June 14, anticipation was in the air before a single note was played. While ticketholders streamed into the grand lobby, fans lined up early hoping for last-minute access. Salonen drew fans from across the globe, all eager to witness this defining moment. Among them were national media and Matías Tarnopolsky, president and CEO of the New York Philharmonic, which Salonen will lead on a tour of South Korea and China from June 26 to July 2. Joshua Robison, husband of the Symphony's revered former music director Michael Tilson Thomas, fêted in April for his 80th birthday, was spotted in the audience on Thursday, June 12. At the last performance, retired Symphony principal horn Robert Ward and Daniel Hawkins, formerly with the Symphony and now principal horn of the Dallas Symphony attended. Onstage, Bruce Roberts, retired Symphony assistant principal horn, played all three nights as a guest artist. Their presence reminded longtime patrons of the institution's evolving legacy — and the complex, sometimes painful handoffs between eras. While the mood inside Davies was celebratory, there were somber undertones. Salonen announced in March 2024 that he would not renew his contract, citing creative differences with Symphony leadership, but little has been said about exactly why the organization and the conductor could not reconcile their differences. 'It's a real shame,' said 24-year-old Sarah Quiñones of San Francisco, who noted she and her father have shared Symphony nights for years. 'If he's leaving over lack of funds, I struggle to see how we couldn't have found something to keep (him) here.' Greg Morris and Greg Clinton have been Symphony patrons for four decades. While Clinton, 67, acknowledged 'it's heartbreaking to see it end like this,' the couple said they've appreciated the time — however brief — they've had to witness Salonen's work. 'It's felt really great to have a semi-legendary conductor and composer leading the orchestra,' Morris, 62, said. As Salonen took the podium, he offered no grand gestures of sentimentality. Instead, the music spoke for him. Gustav Mahler's gigantic Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, also known as 'Resurrection' — a richly emotional 80-minute work of immense power — surged with emotional intensity. Takuto Jibiti, 35, who had flown in that morning from Yokohama, Japan told the Chronicle after the concert that he was moved to tears. That response was hardly unique. 'He's a huge loss to the Symphony and to San Francisco,' said San Francisco resident Diana Cramer, 78. 'We certainly love him and we showed that tonight. I'm not sure how many standing ovations there were. … I lost count.' Indeed, the ovations rolled in waves, calling Salonen, Symphony Chorus Director Jenny Wong, and soloists Heidi Stober and Sasha Cooke back to the stage at least a half dozen times. As Salonen turned to leave after the first bow, principal librarian Margo Kieser wound her way to him to offer a gift: a cold beer, a nod to the Finnish conductor's post-concert ritual. Moments later, principal percussionist Jacob Nissly appeared with a bouquet. From the Loge, someone waved a Finnish flag in quiet tribute. Salonen, who turns 67 at the end of the month, tried to deflect some of the attention from himself to the other performers, but twice during the ovation, the chorus and orchestra declined to rise, joining in the applause. After 15 minutes of deafening cheers, Salonen was finally able to quiet the crowd, and, without a microphone, spoke directly to Saturday's audience echoing a sentiment he shared during open rehearsal just days before.
Korea Herald
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Music in PyeongChang returns with timely theme: ‘Inter Harmony'
The 22nd edition to offer 21 concerts, 14 outreach programs and educational projects The 22nd edition of Music in PyeongChang kicks off next month in Gangwon Province, exploring the timely theme of 'Inter Harmony," offering 21 mainstage concerts that bridge cultures, eras and musical traditions. Under the direction of cellist Yang Sung-won, the 11-day festival presents music inspired by encounters across cultures and generations. 'There's so much anger building in the world right now. That's why we need music that channels inspiration — works born from encounters with other regions, other folk traditions,' Yang said during a press conference. A total of 21 concerts, nine outreach concerts, five family outreach concerts and educational programs will be offered from July 23 to Aug. 2 at PyeongChang Alpensia Concert Hall, Music Tent in Daegwallyeong and various locations throughout Gangwon Province. "Some of the artists you'll hear may be familiar, while others may be new to you. Even for those you've heard before, it would be rare to experience them in the particular combinations you'll see here in PyeongChang. I've worked to bring a sense of freshness by pairing well-known artists with others in unexpected ways. My aim was to carefully structure the program by balancing internationally recognized names, artists visiting Korea for the first time, and those who appear only occasionally," he explained. Among the headliners are violinist Akiko Suwanai, cellist Bruno Cocset, pianist Kim Su-yeon and tenor Robin Tritschler, each appearing in uniquely curated programs. The celebrated Irish soprano Ailish Tynan makes her Korean debut in a recital that blends French melodie and Irish folk, while Brannon Cho and Chaowen Luo represent a new generation of globally acclaimed string soloists. Violinists Park Ji-yoon and Im Ji-young, and violist Kim Sang-jin return alongside rising stars such as Yulia Deyneka, Rei Tsujimoto and Emmanuel Strosser, forming part of the festival's signature ensemble initiatives like the PyeongChang Dream Team and Festival Strings. Baroque specialists Les Basses Reunies join from Europe, and woodwind virtuosos, including Kim Han, Kim Yu-bin and Ricardo Silva, anchor concerts that push the boundaries between tradition and innovation. Highlights of the 11-day festival range from Mahler's monumental Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection' for the opening night on July 23, to the Korean premiere of Britten's haunting chamber opera "The Turn of the Screw: Secrets and Specters." Throughout the 11-day festival, audiences will also encounter Spanish and Latin American traditions reimagined by guitarist Jose Maria Gallardo del Rey, the modernist wit of Stravinsky's "Pulcinella and The Soldier's Tale" and the emotional depth of chamber works by Elgar, Ravel and Chausson. Newly formed ensembles such as the PyeongChang Festival Strings and the PyeongChang Festival Chamber Orchestra offer fresh interpretations of classic and contemporary works, including Vaughan Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" and Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 2. The program also features the Asia premiere of David Maslanka's Wind Quintet No. 3. Committed to putting on world-class performances across Gangwon Province, the outreach program offers opportunities for local communities and residents to connect with Music in PyeongChang. This year, a total of nine concerts will be held from July 25 to July 30 in five cities and counties: Donghae, Cheorwon, PyeongChang, Gangneung and Jeongseon. The ensemble Les Bons Becs, made up of four clarinetists and one percussionist, delivers performances that seamlessly blend music with playful choreography, offering an experience that's enjoyable for all ages. Designed as a relaxed and family-friendly experience, this concert series will take place from July 29 to Aug. 2 in five locations: Yangyang, Hoengseong, Taebaek, Inje and Pyeongchang. Regarding the chamber ensemble mentorship program and master classes, Yang emphasized that these educational programs are not meant to improve technical skill. 'I asked the musicians to share their experiences in a way that encourages attentive listening and helps participants grasp the language of composers. The Music Academy in PyeongChang is not about helping students play their instruments better or win competitions. Rather, it's an academy dedicated to deepening one's understanding of music as an art form,' he added.
