SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the San Francisco Symphony and renowned guest artists in three Orchestral Series programs, June 13–15, June 21–23, and June 28–30, at Davies Symphony Hall. 

June 13–15: Esa-Pekka Salonen & Sheku Kanneh-Mason
June 13–15, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason joins Salonen and the Orchestra for his Orchestral Series debut, performing Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1, originally composed for Mstislav Rostropovich. Salonen also conducts Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini, inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, and the first San Francisco Symphony performances of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Fairytale Poem, which draws on the fairytale The Little Piece of Chalk by Czech writer Miloš Mazourek and portrays a small piece of chalk in the hand of a child who draws “castles, gardens with pavilions and the sea with the sun on the pavement.”

June 21–23: Esa-Pekka Salonen & Yefim Bronfman
June 21–23, Salonen and the Symphony are joined by Yefim Bronfman for Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto. Though they’re frequent collaborators, this is the first time Salonen and Bronfman have performed Schumann’s concerto, which Salonen called “one of the great jewels of the Romantic piano and orchestra repertoire.” The concerto is encoded with tributes to Schumann’s wife, Clara, who premiered the piece on New Year’s Day in 1846. The second half of the program is devoted to Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, Romantic, the composer’s first major composition to earn wide acclaim and one of Bruckner’s most enduring popular works. 

June 28–30: Salonen conducts Mahler 3
Closing the 2023–24 season, June 28–30, Salonen conducts Gustav Mahler’s epic Symphony No. 3 with mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, and the Pacific Boychoir. Mahler’s Third Symphony played a pivotal role in Salonen’s career when he stepped in for Michael Tilson Thomas on short notice to conduct the piece with the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1983. “I went to London and conducted the piece: it went well, and I enjoyed myself,” Salonen said of this experience. “And following day I woke up and realized that I was a conductor, which was kind of bewildering, because I really was the same guy as I was five days earlier.”  

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