Be the first to experience the much-anticipated creative partnership of SFS Music Director Designate Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony. Boundary-defying Salonen takes the podium in a multifaceted program that speaks to his extraordinary “pictorial impulse” (San Francisco Chronicle). Our journey begins with Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir's METACOSMOS, which ushers us into the exquisite space between beauty and chaos. Salonen and the Orchestra then bring their exceptional mastery of color and texture to two iconic tone poems: R. Strauss's cosmic battle on human evolution Also sprach Zarathustra, and Sibelius's superlatively scored and mystic, Four Legends of the Kalevala.