KENDALL, CHIN & BEETHOVEN
October 07, 08 & 09, 2021
Concert Extras
Hear music sparked by artwork and come early to watch a live painting by The Writerz of Doom inspired by the program.
Pre-Concert Talk: Elizabeth Seitz will give an “Inside Music” talk from the stage one hour prior to the October 7-9 performances. Free to all concert ticket holders; doors open 15 minutes before.
Pre-Concert Talk: Elizabeth Seitz will give an “Inside Music” talk from the stage one hour prior to the October 7-9 performances. Free to all concert ticket holders; doors open 15 minutes before.
At a Glance
Composer Hannah Kendall notes, “Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama takes its title from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s iconic 1982–83 artwork Tuxedo…His reference to Vasco da Gama (written as ‘Vasco de Gama’), the first European to voyage to Asia by sea, offers a commentary on exploration and the seeds of globalization and multiculturalism: two important themes in the context of the year 2020.”
Unsuk Chin’s early training in electronic music enlarged her conception of sounds she might apply to acoustic orchestral music. In her three-movement Graffiti, she says, “one can hear allusions to a manifold of styles, which are juxtaposed in a kaleidoscopic manner.” Chin cites Street Art as a stimulus for this piece. The opening movement, “Palimpsest,” is a musical analogy to inscriptions on walls that do not entirely obscure what was written or painted beneath them, and the second movement employs multiphonic woodwind tones that may sound electronic but are not.
Richard Wagner described Ludwig van Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony as representing “the essence of the dance.” The work includes many moments of real abandon. A semi-slow introduction, the largest ever heard in any symphony at the time of its premiere and still one of the largest, defines great harmonic spaces. There is no slow movement. Instead, the famous second-movement Allegretto is relaxed only by comparison with what comes before and after. The symphony’s finale is one wild unharnessing of sound.
After notes by James M. Keller, Hannah Kendall, and Michael Steinberg
For more information, including full program notes, visit the San Francisco Symphony’s digital program book platform at https://sfsymphony.ihubapp.org/ or text “SFS Concert” to 55741.
Unsuk Chin’s early training in electronic music enlarged her conception of sounds she might apply to acoustic orchestral music. In her three-movement Graffiti, she says, “one can hear allusions to a manifold of styles, which are juxtaposed in a kaleidoscopic manner.” Chin cites Street Art as a stimulus for this piece. The opening movement, “Palimpsest,” is a musical analogy to inscriptions on walls that do not entirely obscure what was written or painted beneath them, and the second movement employs multiphonic woodwind tones that may sound electronic but are not.
Richard Wagner described Ludwig van Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony as representing “the essence of the dance.” The work includes many moments of real abandon. A semi-slow introduction, the largest ever heard in any symphony at the time of its premiere and still one of the largest, defines great harmonic spaces. There is no slow movement. Instead, the famous second-movement Allegretto is relaxed only by comparison with what comes before and after. The symphony’s finale is one wild unharnessing of sound.
After notes by James M. Keller, Hannah Kendall, and Michael Steinberg
For more information, including full program notes, visit the San Francisco Symphony’s digital program book platform at https://sfsymphony.ihubapp.org/ or text “SFS Concert” to 55741.
Program
Hannah
Kendall
Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama [San Francisco Symphony Premiere, U.S. Premiere]
Unsuk
Chin
Graffiti [San Francisco Symphony Premiere]
Ludwig van
Beethoven
Symphony No. 7
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Conductor
Esa-Pekka Salonen is known as both a composer and conductor. He is currently the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, where he works alongside eight Collaborative Partners from a variety of disciplines, ranging from composers to roboticists. He is the Conductor Laureate for the Philharmonia Orchestra, where he was Principal Conductor & Artistic Advisor from 2008 until 2021, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he was Music Director from 1992 until 2009, and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He is currently in the midst of Multiverse Esa-Pekka Salonen, a two-season residency as both composer and conductor, at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. As a member of the faculty of LA's Colburn School, he develops, leads, and directs the pre-professional Negaunee Conducting Program. Salonen co-founded— and from 2003 until 2018 served as the Artistic Director for—the annual Baltic Sea Festival, which invites celebrated artists to promote unity and ecological awareness among the countries around the Baltic Sea.
Since joining the San Francisco Symphony in 2020, Salonen’s tenure has been defined by an impulse to embrace the possibilities of the orchestra and expand the institution beyond the confines of the subscription season. In addition to an unprecedented leadership model in which he is joined by eight Collaborative Partners—whose diversity of expertise reflects the scope of experience he envisions as the future of classical music and its audience—Salonen has led a series of collaborations across disciplines and practices which unite the Symphony’s musicians, administrative staff, and hands-on facility workers into a singular engine dedicated to engaging classical music in novel ways.
Salonen also brings his longstanding affinity for emerging technologies to the Symphony. In his first two seasons, he has spearheaded a complete overhaul of Davies Hall’s complement of audio and visual recording equipment, launched the SFSymphony+ streaming platform with a series of signature projects including an AI-infused take on the music of Györgi Ligeti, and the Grammy-nominated Throughline, and reshaped the Symphony into a powerhouse of the unexpected, equally comfortable with live performance and expansive new media projects.
Salonen has an extensive and varied recording career, both as a conductor and composer. His recent recordings include Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, recorded with Lise Davidsen and the Philharmonia Orchestra; Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin and Dance Suite, also with the Philharmonia; Stravinsky’s Persephone, featuring Andrew Staples, Pauline Cheviller, and the Finnish National Opera, and a 2018 box set of his complete Sony recordings. His compositions appear on releases from Sony, Deutsche Grammophon, and Decca; his Piano Concerto (with Yefim Bronfman), Violin Concerto (with Leila Jofesowicz), and Cello Concerto (with Yo-Yo Ma) all appear on recordings conducted by Salonen himself.
Salonen is the recipient of many major awards, including the UNESCO Rostrum Prize for his work Floof in 1992, and the Siena Prize, given by the Accademia Chigiana, in 1993; he is the first conductor to receive it. In 1995 he received the Royal Philharmonic Society's Opera Award and two years later, its Conductor Award. Salonen was awarded the Litteris et Artibus medal, one of Sweden's highest honors, by the King of Sweden in 1996. In 1998 the French government awarded him the rank of Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In addition to receiving both the Pro Finlandia Medal of the Order of the Lion of Finland and the Helsinki Medal, he was named Commander, First Class of the Order of the Lion of Finland by the President of Finland. Musical America named him its Musician of the Year in 2006, and he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010. His Violin Concerto won the 2012 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. He was the recipient of the 2014 Nemmers Composition Prize, which included a residency at the Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University and performances by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 2020, he was appointed an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by the Queen of England. To date, he has received seven honorary doctorates in four different countries.
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