MTT Conducts Bernstein and R. Strauss

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Artists

Jean-Yves Thibaudet

Piano

San Francisco Symphony

program

The Age of Anxiety, Symphony No. 2

Leonard Bernstein

Ein Heldenleben

Richard Strauss
All sound clips are from San Francisco Symphony performances and are used with permission of the SFS Players Committee.

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Bernstein's The Age of Anxiety, Symphony No. 2

All sound clips are from San Francisco Symphony performances and are used with permission of the SFS Players Committee.
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performances

Davies Symphony Hall

Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 11:00PM

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Davies Symphony Hall

Fri, Nov 3, 2017 at 11:00PM

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Davies Symphony Hall

Sun, Nov 5, 2017 at 5:00PM

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If you would like assistance purchasing tickets for patrons with disabilities, please call the box office at 415-864-6000.

Event Description

Bernstein at 100
The San Francisco Symphony’s celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s centennial continues with his brilliant The Age of Anxiety, a vivid symphonic poem about four disenchanted strangers in post-war New York who bond over their shared struggle to find meaningful relationships and restore their fractured faith in society. Experience the potency of this narrative as it is performed by the “poetic and powerful” (The Washington Post) pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and showcased on his recent album release, Bernstein: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2.

Floor seats start at $49.*

*Subject to availability.

At a Glance


BRETT DEAN
Engelsflügel
 2013  |  10 mins
This concert could be said to begin and end with Johannes Brahms. Engelsflügel (1947)Engelsflügel (Wings of Angels) is a later version of a piece originally written for wind band that grew from ideas Dean explored in a set of brief compositions paying homage to the personal life and piano music of Johannes Brahms. LISTEN FOR: Dean explains that Engelsflügel is “a short essay in mostly hushed, inward, even flighty textures . . . [that] took on a life of its own. . . . The music oscillates between secretive whispers, cascading wind arpeggios and austere, almost funereal brass chorales.” The concert version of this work receives its US premiere at these performances.

HAYDN
Symphony No. 102
 1794  |  24 mins
In 1790, Haydn’s employer of nearly three decades, Prince Nicholas Esterházy, died. For the first time in a long while, Haydn was free to explore. Over the next five years Haydn completed two residencies in England, for which he consented to write a group of twelve symphonies (his Symphonies Nos. 93-104). The works—since dubbed the “London” or the “Salomon” symphonies—are enormously diverse, and the set as a whole represents the apex of Haydn’s symphonic achievement. Symphony No. 102 is one of the set’s finest, covering a broad emotional range that suggests witty Mozartian grace at one end and sober Beethovenian profundity at the other.

BRAHMS
Piano Concerto No. 1
 1858  |  41 mins
Conflict, they say, is the mother of art, and an artist who fails to encounter conflict has to invent it. Brahms did a little of both. In February 1854, the great composer Robert Schumann attempted to drown himself in the Rhine. He was rescued, declared mentally incompetent, and confined to an asylum, where he died two years later. Meanwhile, Brahms fell in love with Schumann’s wife, Clara. Imagine the guilt of being attracted to your friend/father figure’s wife while he lay sick in an asylum. Schumann’s death in 1856 closed a chapter in Brahms’s life, but turmoil continued. . . . Later that year Brahms became romantically involved with a young woman, Agathe von Siebold, and went so far as to wear an engagement ring before he came to his senses and realized just how terrified he was of commitment. This is all to say—Brahms’s D minor Piano Concerto was born in the immense turbulence of those years. LISTEN FOR: Its opening gestures are meant to disturb, a stark jab of sound dominated by timpani, followed immediately by string passages that seem to pull in different directions, as though struggling for air. The second movement is quietly impassioned; Brahms described this music as a lovely portrait of Clara. The finale is confident, music that wants to emerge into sunlight and that is able to breathe freely at last. Demons are conquered.

JEANETTE YU is Director of Publications at the San Francisco Symphony.

Concert Extras

MTT on Bernstein and Strauss, in a rare pre-concert appearance, MTT will give an illuminating talk on Leonard Bernstein and R. Strauss. Beginning one hour prior to the concert, this talk is free to ticketholders.

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