Indulge in the music of three great Romantics with French conductor François-Xavier Roth and the San Francisco Symphony. Hear Brahms' Second Symphony, a piece with an airy, bucolic atmosphere—like the lakeside resort where it was written—and the explosive energy of Liszt’s First Piano Concerto performed by French pianist Cédric Tiberghien in his San Francisco Symphony debut. Also on the program, Schumann’s portrait of Lord Byron’s tormented youth, Manfred.
Inside Music: an informative talk by Peter Grunberg, begins one hour prior to concerts. Free to ticketholders. Learn More.
Off-The-Podium: a post-concert Q & A opportunity for the audience to ask questions of Maestro Roth and Mr. Tiberghien.
SCHUMANN
Manfred Overture 1848 | 12 mins
Robert Schumann told Franz Liszt that he considered the Manfred Overture to be one of his “most powerful children.” Schumann’s music for Lord Byron’s dramatic poem Manfred stressed the musical medium most deferential to poetry: the melodrama, in which text is recited over an accompanying score. The result is an odd musical hybrid, and of Schumann’s Manfred music only the Overture has found an enduring place in the repertory. In this somber work we find Schumann at his most demonic, setting the scene for Byron’s tortured hero with music of wide fluctuation, passionately designed melodies, and insistent rhythms. LISTEN FOR: This is a marvelously imagined piece of scoring—hear, for example, the economical and stunningly effective use of the trombones. MORE
LISZT
Piano Concerto No. 1 1830-56 | 20 mins
Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 was composed, and re-composed, and revised again and again over a quarter of a century. Liszt could turn out facile piano solos at the drop of a hat but he tended to anguish over those of his works that he envisioned more for posterity, works in the “big” forms of the symphony or the concerto, for example. A single theme dominates the entire First Piano Concerto. As the piece progresses the melody undergoes all manner of transformations. The soloist’s part qualifies as a catalogue of the possibilities available to an ultra-virtuosic pianist such as Liszt. LISTEN FOR: The triangle is spotlighted in the concerto’s scherzo section. Conservative critics were already skeptical of Liszt’s more-than-normal enthusiasm for the percussion section, but thus elevating the triangle left them aghast! MORE
BRAHMS
Symphony No. 2 1877 | 40 mins
This symphony is almost invariably described as “sunny,” and that is often how it’s approached. But there are clouds in this sky. Listen to the first three notes in the low strings. From those Brahms generates a miraculously varied first movement. The second movement’s stern opening changes almost immediately into a glorious melody of enormous length and breadth. Throughout, one voice is pensive and searching, the other full of optimism. The Allegretto grazioso that follows is Brahms at his most lighthearted; when considered as a pair with the work’s previous Adagio, it reinforces the concurrence of pensive and joyful voices. The finale’s opening hush erupts suddenly in a shout. At the end, the orchestra embraces a heroic transformation, a sweetly killing reminder that every silver lining masks a cloud. MORE
Steven Ziegler is Managing Editor and Jeanette Yu is Editorial Director at the San Francisco Symphony.
Program
Manfred Overture
Symphony No. 2
Piano Concerto No. 1
Brahms' Symphony No. 2
Piano
Conductor
Born in Paris in 1971, François-Xavier Roth was appointed General Music Director of the City of Cologne in 2015, leading both the Gürzenich Orchestra and the Opera. He is Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and the first-ever Associate Artist of the Philharmonie de Paris. In 2003, Mr. Roth founded Les Siècles, an innovative orchestra performing on modern and period instruments. With Les Siècles, he has given concerts throughout Europe and toured to China and Japan. Les Siècles was nominated for Gramophone Magazine’s first Orchestra of the Year Award.
This season, Mr. Roth makes a return appearance with the Berlin Philharmonic and leads the Cleveland Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, NDR Elbphilharmonie, and the Bavarian Radio Symphony. In his fourth Cologne opera season, he leads new productions of R. Strauss’s Salome and Offenbach’s La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein. With the Gürzenich Orchestra, he leads works of Schumann and continues a focus on the composer Philippe Manoury, with the premiere of Lab.Oratorium, the third of the trilogy of works commissioned by the orchestra, which will also be played in Hamburg and Paris. He will take the orchestra on tour to Turin, Zurich, and Vienna, performing Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.
Mr. Roth recorded the complete tone poems of Richard Strauss while principal conductor of the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra. With Les Siècles, he is currently recording a complete Ravel cycle for the Harmonia Mundi label. Previous releases in the series include Daphnis and Chloé, winner of the Gramophone Orchestral Album of the Year 2018, and Ma mère l’Oye, winner of a Diapason d’Or in 2018 and nominated for a 2019 International Classical Music Award. His recording of The Rite of Spring with Les Siècles received a German Record Critics’ Prize. Mirages, a vocal recital with Sabine Devieilhe for Erato, received a Grammy nomination and won a Diapason d’Or. A new album commemorating Debussy’s centenary year, including Jeux and Nocturnes was released by Harmonia Mundi in November 2018. Mr. Roth’s first recording with the Gürzenich Orchestra of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony was released in December 2017.
Engagement with new audiences is an essential part of Mr. Roth’s work. With the Festival Berlioz and Les Siècles, he founded the Jeune Orchestre Européen Hector Berlioz, a unique orchestra-academy with its own collection of period instruments. Mr. Roth and Les Siècles also devised the French television series Presto!.
For his achievements as musician, conductor, music director, and teacher, François-Xavier Roth was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French government last year. He makes his San Francisco Symphony debut at these performances.
(March 2019)
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