Esa-Pekka Salonen & Daniil Trifonov
February 21, 22 & 23, 2025
Concert Extras
Saturday, February 22 from 6:30pm–7:00pm: A preconcert talk with Xavier Muzik and Benjamin Pesetsky will be presented from the stage. Free to all ticketholders.
Sunday, February 23 from 1:00pm–1:30pm: A preconcert talk with Xavier Muzik and Benjamin Pesetsky will be presented from the stage. Free to all ticketholders.
Sunday, February 23 from 1:00pm–1:30pm: A preconcert talk with Xavier Muzik and Benjamin Pesetsky will be presented from the stage. Free to all ticketholders.
Program
Xavier
Muzik
Strange Beasts
San Francisco Symphony Commission and World Premiere
Sergei
Prokofiev
Piano Concerto No. 2
Igor
Stravinsky
The Rite of Spring
Sponsors
Lead support for this concert series is provided by The Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for Guest Artists.
These concerts, a part of The Barbro and Bernard Osher Masterworks Series, are made possible by a generous gift from Barbro and Bernard Osher.
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
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.
Daniil Trifonov
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Piano
Daniil Trifonov is a solo artist, champion of the concerto repertoire, chamber and vocal collaborator, and composer. He won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Solo Album in 2018 with Transcendental, the Liszt collection that marked his third title as a Deutsche Grammophon artist. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in January 2014 as a Shenson Young Artist.
This season, Trifonov undertakes season-long artistic residencies with both the Chicago Symphony and Czech Philharmonic. He also opened the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s season, and tours Europe with the Bamberg Symphony and Montral Symphony. His latest album, My American Story on Deutsche Grammophon, pairs solo pieces with concertos by George Gershwin and Mason Bates.
Trifonov’s Deutsche Grammophon discography includes the Grammy-nominatedlive recording of his Carnegie recital debut; Chopin Evocations; Silver Age, for which he received Opus Klassik’s Instrumentalist of the Year/Piano award; the Grammy-nominated double album Bach: The Art of Life; and three volumes of Rachmaninoff works with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, of which two received Grammy nominations and the third won BBC Music’s 2019 Concerto Recording of the Year. Named Gramophone’s 2016 Artist of the Year and Musical America’s 2019 Artist of the Year, Trifonov was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2021.
During the 2010–11 season, Trifonov won medals at three of the music world’s most prestigious competitions: third prize in Warsaw’s Chopin Competition, first prize in Tel Aviv’s Rubinstein Competition, and both first prize and grand prix in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition. He studied with Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
This season, Trifonov undertakes season-long artistic residencies with both the Chicago Symphony and Czech Philharmonic. He also opened the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s season, and tours Europe with the Bamberg Symphony and Montral Symphony. His latest album, My American Story on Deutsche Grammophon, pairs solo pieces with concertos by George Gershwin and Mason Bates.
Trifonov’s Deutsche Grammophon discography includes the Grammy-nominatedlive recording of his Carnegie recital debut; Chopin Evocations; Silver Age, for which he received Opus Klassik’s Instrumentalist of the Year/Piano award; the Grammy-nominated double album Bach: The Art of Life; and three volumes of Rachmaninoff works with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, of which two received Grammy nominations and the third won BBC Music’s 2019 Concerto Recording of the Year. Named Gramophone’s 2016 Artist of the Year and Musical America’s 2019 Artist of the Year, Trifonov was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2021.
During the 2010–11 season, Trifonov won medals at three of the music world’s most prestigious competitions: third prize in Warsaw’s Chopin Competition, first prize in Tel Aviv’s Rubinstein Competition, and both first prize and grand prix in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition. He studied with Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
