San Francisco Classical Voice

IN Music News THIS WEEK:
March 1, 2005
SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT

SF Symphony 2005-'06, By the Numbers

By Janos Gereben

Announcing its next season, the San Francisco Symphony once again showed its penchant for numbers, especially anniversaries, and particularly those with round figures. At a press conference Monday, Michael Tilson Thomas (currently proclaimed as 60 in age, with 10 years under the belt as music director here) referred to preparations to celebrate the orchestra's centenary . . . which won't come about until 2011!

SFS president John D. Goldman and executive director Brent Assink called attention to Davies Hall's 25th anniversary, and the 12 million listeners who have attended concerts there. SFS is also making certain that its next season marks Mozart's 250th and Shostakovich's 100th birthdays. There will be 56 programs, in 155 performances, in addition to eight chamber music concerts, and 11 in the Great Performers series. The relatively small number "7" is the total both for works by living composers and for works by American composers (Peter Lieberson appearing on both lists); there are 16 works to be performed by the Symphony for the first time (ranging from Haydn to Russia's Sofia Gubaidulina, the only female composer of the whole season); and 19 soloists will make their SFS debuts.

Subscription series of six concerts are priced from $180 to $612. Thirteen community concerts will be given for an estimated 24,000 SF Unified School District students, and 12 "Concerts for Kids" serve more than 35,000 children throughout the Bay Area . . . and so on. Picking up on the theme, Classical Voice inquired about numbers describing the Symphony's finances. The total budget is "north of $50 million," Goldman said, and a deficit is expected, perhaps a substantial one, judging by the body language on the dais. For the last two reported periods, the Symphony's expenses totaled $50.1 (FY 2004) and $51.5 (FY 2003), respectively, representing a surplus of $674,000 last year, against a deficit of $136,000 the year before.

Complete program information for the season will be available at a later date on http://www.sfsymphony.org/, but meanwhile, here are some highlights:

The season-opening gala on September 7 will feature the music of Tchaikovsky, and Yo-Yo Ma as the soloist in the Shostakovich Cello Concerto.

At the end of the season, (while MTT is "taking a sabbatical") James Conlon will lead a festival during June, 2006, called "Romantic Visions of Paradise and the Abyss," to include Zemlinsky's opera Ein florentinishe Tragödie, excerpts from his Der Zwerg, the Verdi Requiem, Liszt's Dante Symphony.

Visiting orchestras include the National Symphony, with Leonard Slatkin and Itzhak Perlman (October 23); the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, with John Eliot Gardiner, January 15 and 16, in two Mozart programs; the Moscow Philharmonic, with Constantine Orbelian conducting a program of Russian opera, sung by Dmitri Hvorostovsky; the London Philharmonic, with Kurt Masur (March 12); the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with Esa-Pekka Salonen, performing Lutoslawski's Symphony No. 4, and Stravinsky's Firebird.

For the next lunar new year, SFS will tour Asia. followed by appearances in Carnegie Hall. The Davies Hall anniversary will be marked by a community open house in December, and a free concert on January 31, 2006.

The Symphony is launching two new audience-building programs: "Friday 6.5," a rather strange designation for six Friday concerts, each beginning at 6:30 p.m., offering selections from the week's subscription concerts and introductions to the work by the conductor — a kind of open rehearsal in the evening; and "Concert Concierge," a Web service to provide "personalized event recommendations."

Among singers coming to Davies Hall: Patricia Petibon, Richard Troxell, Christopher Maltman in November's Carmina Burana performances, David Robertson conducting. Anthony Dean Griffey, Michelle De Young, Tigran Martirossian, Ayk Martirossian; Olga Trifonova, Paul Groves in Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex and Le Rossignol, Dec. 8-10, MTT conducting. Christine Brandes, Jane Irwin, Steve Davislim, Randall Scarlata in Haydn's Scena di Berenice and the Mozart Coronation Mass, March 8-11, Martin Haselböck conducting.

The SFS Chorus appears in Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13 "Babi Yar," March 30 through April 1, Mstislav Rostropovich conducting. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, in the Rückert Lieder, April 13-15, MTT conducting.