SFS Media Recordings
SFS MediaTM was formed in 2001, when the San Francisco Symphony became the first U.S. orchestra to create its own label. The label produces both CDs for the Mahler Project and DVDs of the San Francisco Symphony’s Keeping Score project. View the SFS Media catalogue as a PDF file here.
A Celebration of Leonard Bernstein: Carnegie Hall Opening Night 2008
The DVD of the San Francisco Symphony’s Emmy-Nominated all-Bernstein Carnegie Hall appearance, broadcast nationally on PBS’s GREAT PERFORMANCES, with soloists Christine Ebersole, Thomas Hampson, Yo-Yo Ma, and Dawn Upshaw.
The Mahler Project
Since the Mahler recording project began in 2001, the San Francisco Symphony has recorded all of the Mahler symphonies, the Adagio from the unfinished Tenth Symphony, Kindertotenlieder and Das Lied von der Erde and released a re-mastered recording of Das klagende Lied. Additional works still to be released include Mahler’s Rückert Lieder, Songs Of A Wayfarer (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen) and Des Knaben Wunderhorn.
The SFS’s Mahler recording series has sold over 130,000 albums to date and has been recognized with four Grammy Awards: Best Classical Album and Best Orchestral Performance for Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 in 2006, Best Classical Album for Symphony No. 3 and Kindertotenlieder in 2003, and Best Orchestral Performance for Symphony No. 6 in 2002. The MTT/SFS recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with soprano Laura Claycomb received a Best Surround Sound Album Grammy nomination in 2004. All of the new Mahler recordings on SFS Media have entered the top ten of the Billboard Classical Chart.
The titles have all been released on Super Audio CD (SACD) through a contribution from Sony Music Corp. SACD provides the precision of digital technology while retaining the warmth of analog sound.
Keeping Score
SFS Media is also home to Keeping Score, the San Francisco Symphony’s multi-year project designed to make classical music more accessible to people of all ages and musical backgrounds through television, the Web, radio, DVDs, and in the classroom.
The first three episodes of the Keeping Score television series, three one-hour documentary-style episodes and two live concert programs on composers Beethoven, Stravinsky and Copland, aired on PBS stations nationwide in November 2006. A series pilot on Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony including a documentary and a complete live San Francisco Symphony performance of the work, was released in June 2004. The SFS is now in production for its second Keeping Score series which will cover the music of Ives, Berlioz, and Shostakovich and is scheduled to air nationally on PBS in October 2009.
DVDs of these programs are now available on SFS Media at retail outlets throughout the U.S., at the San Francisco Symphony eStore and internationally.
SFS Media Distributors
SFS Media releases are distributed in North America by Harmonia Mundi USA, in Canada by SRI, and by Avie internationally.
The Mahler releases are also available online as MP3s through iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody, and others.
Photo: Chris Lee