Experience the exuberant spirit of Bernstein's music with his Divertimento, a lighthearted and joyful work inspired by the composer's youth. Then, violinist Vadim Gluzman performs one of Bernstein's most lyrical orchestral works, his Serenade. The program concludes with Shostakovich's tremendous Symphony No. 5.
Floor seats start at $39*!
*Subject to availability.
Inside Music, an informative talk by John Palmer, begins one hour prior to concerts. Free to ticketholders. Learn More.
Guest artist signing: Violinist Vadim Gluzman will be available for autographs following the February 22–24 concerts. Signing takes place in the orchestra lobby, near the Symphony Store.
The Prelude Series: A Pre-Concert Discussion
An engaging new way to enhance your classical music experience at Davies Symphony Hall. Join us 45 minutes before the performance in the First Tier Lobby to take part in a free pre-concert discussion. Discussion topic: The Psychology of Music and Emotion
“Leonard Bernstein and the San Francisco Symphony”
A Special Exhibit
The San Francisco Symphony continues their celebration of the centennial of Leonard Bernstein’s birth with this special exhibit, on display January 18 through February 28. Located on the First Tier Lobby, the exhibit examines the unique relationship between the Symphony and Bernstein as a conductor, composer, educator, activist, and friend.
BERNSTEIN
Divertimento 1980 | 15 mins
We think of Leonard Bernstein as the quintessential New Yorker, but he grew up just outside Boston and throughout his life maintained close ties with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. For that ensemble’s centennial in 1980, Bernstein composed his Divertimento, an eight-movement, lighthearted “diversion.” From two notes, B (for “Boston”) and C (for “Centennial”), Bernstein generates a series of high-spirited miniatures. LISTEN FOR: The Divertimento opens with the exuberant Sennets and Tuckets (instrumental flourishes from the Elizabethan theater). The Waltz, for strings alone, shows Bernstein at his most wistful; at the same time it reveals a sense of humor. Next comes a dark-toned Mazurka for double-reed woodwinds (oboes, English horn, bassoons, and contrabassoon) plus harp, along with an echo of the lone oboe from the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth. The Samba is witty and punchy, the Turkey Trot a toe-tapping dance that might have been encountered in the early years of the twentieth century. Sphinxes, the shortest movement, is also the gravest and, true to its title, the most mysterious. The Blues movement, for brass and percussion, seems more a blues parody than a genuine, brokenhearted blues. The concluding March spends about a minute slowly searching for a way to go, then breaks into a strut. It ends the work in the boisterous spirit of the opening, bringing us full circle.
Serenade 1954 | 30 mins
As a composer, Bernstein was exuberant, warm, generous in gesture, range, and imagination, and blessed with an abundant and unforced gift. The Serenade shows him at his most inventive and attractive. It is a hands-across-the-ocean, hands-across-the-centuries work that only an American would dare. Equally—and delightfully—American is the fearless juxtaposition of “high” and “low” styles. The Serenade, Bernstein wrote resulted from “a rereading of Plato’s charming dialogue, The Symposium. There is, however, no literal program, and the music, like the dialogue, is a series of related statements in praise of love.”
SHOSTAKOVICH
Symphony No. 5 in D minor 1937 | 50 mins
Shostakovich was one of music’s greatest reporters on the human condition. He was an essential composer, a man who could not commit himself to heroism nor to moral and intellectual slavery, one who functioned in a society tyrannically demanding of its artists. It is hard to think of another composer whose work is so intensely affected by life—his own, but also that of the world in whisch and for which he wrote. When that world first heard Shostakovich’s Fifth, it was taken as “a Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism.” The symphony begins at once forceful and questioning—“conservative” does not mean “conventional.” The scherzo and its vein of grotesque humor is an oasis between the intensely serious first and third movements. With the Largo we meet a new warmth of sound followed by remarkable transformations. The brass dominate the finale. This movement expresses triumph. “The theme of my symphony,” Shostakovich said, “is the making of a man. I saw man with all his experiences as the center of the composition. . . . In the finale the tragically tense impulses of the earlier movements are resolved in optimism and the joy of living.”
Jeanette Yu is Director of Publications at the San Francisco Symphony.
Program
Divertimento
Serenade
Symphony No. 5
Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5
First Violin
Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman’s wide repertory brings to life the traditions of the nineteenth and twentieth century while also embracing new music. His performances are heard around the world through live broadcasts and a striking catalogue of award-winning recordings exclusively for the BIS label.
Born in the former Soviet Union in 1973, Mr. Gluzman began violin studies at age seven. He studied with Roman Sne in Latvia and Zakhar Bron in Russia before moving to Israel in 1990, where he became a student of Yair Kless. In the United States, he studied with Arkady Fomin in Dallas and at the Juilliard School with Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki. Early in his career, he enjoyed the encouragement and mentorship of Isaac Stern which continued until Stern’s passing in 2001. In 1994 he received the prestigious Henryk Szeryng Foundation Career Award.
Highlights of his 2017-18 season include appearances with the Boston Symphony under Tugan Sokhiev and debut performances with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly. Mr. Gluzman returns to Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra and celebrates Leonard Bernstein’s centennial year with performances of his Serenade for violin and orchestra with the BBC Symphony. He tours Europe as a trio with pianist Yevgeny Sudbin and cellist Johannes Moser, with engagements at London’s Wigmore Hall and Berlin’s Konzerthaus, and appears as soloist with the Toronto, Vancouver, Oregon, Göteborg, and Lucerne symphonies, the Czech Philharmonic, and the Finnish Radio Orchestra. He leads performances with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus, OH, where he continues in his fourth year as Creative Partner and Principal Guest Artist. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 2008.
This season, Mr. Gluzman gives the European premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Triple Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Bayan with Johannes Moser, Elsbeth Moser, and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich under Omer Meir Wellber. He has given live and recorded premieres of other works by Gubaidulina, as well as Giya Kancheli, Pēteris Vasks, Michael Daugherty, Lera Auerbach, and most recently, Elena Firsova.
His latest CD for the BIS label features Brahms’s Violin Concerto with the Lucerne Symphony conducted by James Gaffigan and the composer’s Violin Sonata No. 1 with his wife, pianist Angela Yoffe. Accolades for his extensive discography include the Diapason d’Or of the Year, Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice, Classica Magazine’s esteemed Choc de Classica award, and Disc of the Month by The Strad, BBC Music Magazine, ClassicFM, and others.
Vadim Gluzman plays the legendary 1690 ‘ex-Leopold Auer’ Stradivari on extended loan to him through the generosity of the Stradivari Society of Chicago.
(February 2018)
Conductor
Andrey Boreyko is in his fifth season as Music Director of Artis—Naples in Florida. He is the driving force behind the continued artistic growth of this multi-disciplinary organization, for which he has commissioned new works by Fazıl Say, Giya Kancheli, and Gabriel Prokofiev. Mr. Boreyko becomes the new Music and Artistic Director of Warsaw Philharmonic with the 2019-20 season.
He was appointed music director of the National Orchestra of Belgium in 2012, a post he held for five years, expanding the orchestra’s activities nationally and internationally, including an annual performance in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. His first position in Europe was as chief conductor of the Poznań Philharmonic. He has also held the positions of chief conductor of the Jenaer Philharmonie (of whom he is now Honorary Conductor), Hamburg Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony, and Bern Symphony, as well as music director of the Düsseldorf Symphony from 2009 to 2014. Mr. Boreyko has received awards for the most innovative concert programming in three consecutive seasons from the Deutscher Musikverleger-Verband. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 2015.
Mr. Boreyko’s 2018-19 season engagements include a festivals tour with Filarmonica della Scala and performances with the Prague Symphony, Vienna Radio Symphony, RAI National Symphony, Sinfonia Varsovia, and the orchestras of Seattle, Minnesota, Toronto, and Sydney. Further ahead, he will conduct the Berlin Radio Symphony and Dresden Philharmonic, and appear in the concert series of the Mozarteum Salzburg and Frankfurt Museums.
A passionate advocate for lesser-known works, Mr. Boreyko championed compositions by Victoria Borisova-Ollas in an extensive concert and recording project with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic last season. As part of the Prague Spring Festival 2018, he conducted the Prague Symphony in Jan Novák’s Dido. This season he conducts Zdeněk Fibich’s rarely performed Vodnik. He returned to the Berlin Radio Symphony in 2018 with a performance of Valentin Silvestrov’s Requiem for Larissa.
Mr. Boreyko’s discography with the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra (of which he previously served as Principal Guest Conductor) includes recordings of Arvo Pärt's Lamentate and Valentin Silvestrov’s Symphony No. 6 (both for ECM Records), the premiere recording of his original version of the Suite from Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, and Shostakovich’s Symphonies Nos. 1, 4, 6, 8, 9, and 15 on Hänssler Classics. He has also recorded Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony with the Düsseldorf Symphony, and Lutosławski’s Chain 2 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Yarling Records. Mr. Boreyko recorded Górecki’s Symphony No. 4 with the London Philharmonic for Nonesuch, which was subsequently also premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the US under his direction.
(April 2019)
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