Ludwig van Beethoven’s love for opera was lifelong, but the success of the only opera he actually wrote (titled Fidelio, though originally named Leonore) arrived slowly and late. Beethoven went so far as to write four (!) overtures for the opera over the course of a decade. The one played tonight is a distillation of the Fidelio story, tracing in music the path from darkly troubled beginnings to a work of victory. In the daring Leonore No. 2 (1805), Beethoven gives free rein to fantasy, one in which something disturbing remains.
 
Bryce Dessner notes, “My Violin Concerto was partly inspired by Anne Carson’s essay ‘The Anthropology of Water’, which re-imagines the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.…Something about the practice of composing for orchestra, and writing a violin concerto, felt at times like a musical analog to this pilgrimage.…So, what does it mean for a contemporary artist to make this same journey, and how do these artifacts left behind by other artists inform our own course?…These were thoughts in my mind as I composed this concerto for my dear friend Pekka Kuusisto.” 
 
While Franz Schubert experienced personal setbacks in 1816, notably the failure to land a teaching job in Laibach (now Ljubljana) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's frosty non response to receiving a package of his songs, his powers as a composer continued to grow. The Schubert who wrote the Symphony No. 5, though a very young man whose twentieth birthday was still four months away, was an experienced and thoroughly professional composer. In every way, this symphony is a brilliant achievement, beginning with the breath‑stoppingly original opening gesture.
 
From notes by Michael Steinberg and Bryce Dessner

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.