These concerts, a part of The Barbro and Bernard Osher Masterworks Series, are made possible by a generous gift from Barbro and Bernard Osher.
Thursday matinee concerts are endowed by a gift in memory of Rhoda Goldman.
Esa-Pekka Salonen & Hilary Hahn
May 29 & 30, 2025
June 01, 2025
Overview
A blazingly beautiful all-Beethoven program: First, Hilary Hahn performs the Violin Concerto, a work of singular scope, vision, and majesty. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 isn’t performed as often as his other symphonies, but it’s every bit as beguiling. Bubbling over with Haydnesque wit and dance-derived hooks that wouldn’t seem odd in a Mozart opera, the Fourth might be Beethoven's most underrated symphony.
Concert Extras
Thursday, May 29 from 1:00pm–1:30pm: A preconcert talk by Laura Prichard will be presented from the stage. Free to all ticketholders.
Exhibit: Composing the World. Head to Davies Symphony Hall’s First Tier lobby for an immersive exhibit exploring how composers Gabriella Smith and Xavier Muzik turn inspiration into sound. On display through June 26.
Exhibit: Composing the World. Head to Davies Symphony Hall’s First Tier lobby for an immersive exhibit exploring how composers Gabriella Smith and Xavier Muzik turn inspiration into sound. On display through June 26.
Sponsors
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Conductor
Esa-Pekka Salonen is known as both a composer and conductor. He is 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 of the Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. As a member of the faculty of the Colburn School, he directs the pre-professional Negaunee Conducting Program. Salonen co-founded, and until 2018 served as the Artistic Director of, the annual Baltic Sea Festival.
Highlights from Esa-Pekka Salonen’s 2023–24 San Francisco Symphony season include world premieres from Jesper Nordin, Anders Hillborg, and Jens Ibsen; projects by Collaborative Partners Pekka Kuusisto and Carol Reiley; the launch of the inaugural California Festival; a tour of California; and a program of Ravel and Schoenberg featuring choreography by Alonzo King and staging by Peter Sellars.
Salonen also conducts many of his own compositions around the world this season. Among them are Tiu, a new work commemorating the 20th anniversary of Walt Disney Concert Hall, premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Karawane, also with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Salonen’s Sinfonia Concertante for Organ and Orchestra with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra; and kínēma with the San Francisco Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra.
Salonen has an extensive and varied recording career. Releases with the San Francisco Symphony include recordings of Bartók’s piano concertos, as well as spatial audio recordings of several Ligeti compositions. Other recent recordings include Strauss’s Four Last Songs, Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin and Dance Suite, and a 2018 box set of his complete Sony recordings. His compositions appear on releases from Sony, Deutsche Grammophon, and Decca; his Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, and Cello Concerto all appear on recordings he conducted himself.
Highlights from Esa-Pekka Salonen’s 2023–24 San Francisco Symphony season include world premieres from Jesper Nordin, Anders Hillborg, and Jens Ibsen; projects by Collaborative Partners Pekka Kuusisto and Carol Reiley; the launch of the inaugural California Festival; a tour of California; and a program of Ravel and Schoenberg featuring choreography by Alonzo King and staging by Peter Sellars.
Salonen also conducts many of his own compositions around the world this season. Among them are Tiu, a new work commemorating the 20th anniversary of Walt Disney Concert Hall, premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Karawane, also with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Salonen’s Sinfonia Concertante for Organ and Orchestra with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra; and kínēma with the San Francisco Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra.
Salonen has an extensive and varied recording career. Releases with the San Francisco Symphony include recordings of Bartók’s piano concertos, as well as spatial audio recordings of several Ligeti compositions. Other recent recordings include Strauss’s Four Last Songs, Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin and Dance Suite, and a 2018 box set of his complete Sony recordings. His compositions appear on releases from Sony, Deutsche Grammophon, and Decca; his Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, and Cello Concerto all appear on recordings he conducted himself.
Hilary Hahn
![]()
Violin
Three-time Grammy Award–winning violinist Hilary Hahn melds expressive musicality and technical expertise with a diverse repertoire guided by artistic curiosity. She is a prolific recording artist and commissioner of new works, and her 23 feature recordings have received numerous international prizes and acclaim. She is currently a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and has been an artist in residence with the Chicago Symphony and New York Philharmonic, a visiting artist at the Juilliard School, and a curating artist for the Dortmund Festival. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in October 1999 as a Shenson Young Artist.
Hahn has related to her fans naturally from the very beginning of her career. Her social media initiative, #100daysofpractice, has transformed practice into a community-building celebration of artistic development. Since Hahn created the hashtag in 2017, fellow performers and students have contributed more than one million posts. A former Suzuki student, she released new recordings of the first three books of the Suzuki Violin School in 2020. In 2019, she released a book of sheet music, In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores, which includes her own fingerings and bowings and performance notes for each work.
In recent seasons, Hahn has received the Avery Fisher Prize, was named Musical America’s 2023 “Artist of the Year,” received the 2021 Herbert von Karajan Award, and was awarded the 11th Annual Glashütte Original Music Festival Award, which she donated to the Philadelphia-based music education nonprofit Project 440. Hahn was the 2022 Chubb Fellow at Yale University’s Timothy Dwight College; she also holds honorary doctorates from Middlebury College and Ball State University, where there are three scholarships in her name.
Hahn has related to her fans naturally from the very beginning of her career. Her social media initiative, #100daysofpractice, has transformed practice into a community-building celebration of artistic development. Since Hahn created the hashtag in 2017, fellow performers and students have contributed more than one million posts. A former Suzuki student, she released new recordings of the first three books of the Suzuki Violin School in 2020. In 2019, she released a book of sheet music, In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores, which includes her own fingerings and bowings and performance notes for each work.
In recent seasons, Hahn has received the Avery Fisher Prize, was named Musical America’s 2023 “Artist of the Year,” received the 2021 Herbert von Karajan Award, and was awarded the 11th Annual Glashütte Original Music Festival Award, which she donated to the Philadelphia-based music education nonprofit Project 440. Hahn was the 2022 Chubb Fellow at Yale University’s Timothy Dwight College; she also holds honorary doctorates from Middlebury College and Ball State University, where there are three scholarships in her name.
©2025 San Francisco Symphony | Privacy Statement & Terms and Conditions
