Anton Bruckner never heard his Sixth Symphony performed in full, but he proudly described it as his “boldest symphony.” Still overlooked today, it is awash in beautiful themes and imaginative twists and turns. Opening this program led by Esa-Pekka Salonen, pianist Conor Hanick premieres an SF Symphony commission by Samuel Adams, known for his expressive, innovative, and genre-bending music.
Samuel Carl Adams’s No Such Spring, a San Francisco Symphony commission heard this week in its world premiere, manifests the composer’s thinking about direct communication without falling back on conventions. At first glance, the prominence of the solo piano part in tandem with orchestra, together with the piece’s three-movement design, might suggest the concerto format. But Adams resists such typecasting. “My intention was first and foremost to create a virtuosic symphonic work with the piano acting as the orchestra’s inner voice.”
Anton Bruckner began his life as a symphonist at age 42, after careers as a schoolteacher and organist, and as he went, leaned more and more toward the monumental. In that progression his Symphony No. 6 is a step off the main road, and is less often performed. Bruckner himself, in fact, never heard it played in its entirety—but its beauties can take listeners aback, particularly those of the Adagio, which are unsurpassed in his work.
Program
No Such Spring
[San Francisco Symphony Commission, World Premiere]
THE FEBRUARY 23 CONCERT IS PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
The world premiere of Samuel Adams’s No Such Spring is sponsored by Michèle and Larry Corash.
Conor Hanick’s appearance is supported by the Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for Guest Artists.
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.
Piano
Pianist Conor Hanick is regarded as one today’s most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old. He has recently performed at the Gilmore Festival, the New York Philharmonic, Caramoor, Cal Performances, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the Park Avenue Armory, and has performed with the Seattle Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Orchestra Iowa, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut on a chamber music concert in 2015.
A fierce advocate for the music of today, Mr. Hanick has premiered more than 200 pieces and collaborated with composers ranging from Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, and Steve Reich to the leading composers of his generation, including Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Tyshawn Sorey, Matthew Aucoin, and Christopher Cerrone. In the 2022–23 season, Mr. Hanick appears with soprano Julia Bullock at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in Messiaen’s Harawi and performs recitals at the Library of Congress, Hancher Auditorium, Ensemble Music Society of Indianapolis, and the 92nd Street Y. With the American Modern Opera Company, Mr. Hanick served as an artistic director of the Ojai Festival in 2022. He is the director of solo piano at the Music Academy of the West and serves on the faculties of the Peabody Institute and the Juilliard School.
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