Salonen Conducts The Firebird
May 23, 24 & 25, 2025
Overview
Igor Stravinsky’s wild Russian folk-fable of a ballet The Firebird, retains the power to shock and enthrall into its second century. Kicking off the program is the 2002 orchestral piece Chorale—based on the familiar Bach chorale “Es ist genug”—from Esa-Pekka Salonen’s longtime friend Magnus Lindberg. Alban Berg’s last completed score and probably his most famous, the Violin Concerto functions both as an elegy for a surrogate daughter who died too soon, and as a requiem for himself.Illustration by Owen Gildersleeve.
Concert Extras
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.
Program
Magnus
Lindberg
Chorale
First San Francisco Symphony Performances
Alban
Berg
Violin Concerto
Igor
Stravinsky
The Firebird
Sponsors
These concerts, a part of The Barbro and Bernard Osher Masterworks Series, are made possible by a generous gift from Barbro and Bernard Osher.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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Isabelle Faust
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.
Isabelle Faust
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Violin
After winning the Leopold Mozart Competition and Paganini Competition at a very young age, Isabelle Faust soon began to perform regularly with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, NHK Symphony, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Les Siècles, and Baroque Orchestra Freiburg. In addition to standard concerto repertoire, she has also performed Schubert’s Octet with historical instruments, Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat with Dominique Horwitz, and Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments with Anna Prohaskal; and given world premieres by Péter Eötvös, Brett Dean, Ondřej Adámek, and Rune Glerup. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in October 2014.
Highlights this season include performances with the Boston Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Bamberg Symphony, London Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. She was the 2024 artist in residence at Beethovenfest Bonn.
Faust shares a longstanding chamber music partnership with the pianist Alexander Melnikov, as well as in trios with Tabea Zimmermann and Jean-Guihen Queyras. Faust and Melnikov have released recordings of sonatas for piano and violin by Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, among others. Her chamber collaborations include historical interpretations of Schubert’s Cello Quintet and String Quartet No. 15 in G major with Antoine Tamestit, Anne Katharina Schreiber, Jean-Guihen Queyras, and Christian Poltéra.
Faust’s recordings have been praised by critics and awarded the Diapason d’Or, Gramophone Award, Choc de l’année, and other prizes. She was named Instrumentalist of the Year by Opus Klassik in 2024. Recent recordings include Britten’s Violin Concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony, works for violin and orchestra by Pietro Locatelli with Il Giardino Armonico, and works for solo violin by Biber, Matteis, Pisendel, Vilsmayr, and Guillemain. She has also recorded Bach’s sonatas and partitas, as well as violin concertos by Beethoven and Berg.
Highlights this season include performances with the Boston Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Bamberg Symphony, London Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. She was the 2024 artist in residence at Beethovenfest Bonn.
Faust shares a longstanding chamber music partnership with the pianist Alexander Melnikov, as well as in trios with Tabea Zimmermann and Jean-Guihen Queyras. Faust and Melnikov have released recordings of sonatas for piano and violin by Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, among others. Her chamber collaborations include historical interpretations of Schubert’s Cello Quintet and String Quartet No. 15 in G major with Antoine Tamestit, Anne Katharina Schreiber, Jean-Guihen Queyras, and Christian Poltéra.
Faust’s recordings have been praised by critics and awarded the Diapason d’Or, Gramophone Award, Choc de l’année, and other prizes. She was named Instrumentalist of the Year by Opus Klassik in 2024. Recent recordings include Britten’s Violin Concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony, works for violin and orchestra by Pietro Locatelli with Il Giardino Armonico, and works for solo violin by Biber, Matteis, Pisendel, Vilsmayr, and Guillemain. She has also recorded Bach’s sonatas and partitas, as well as violin concertos by Beethoven and Berg.
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