Guest Conductors Lead Spring Concerts At San Francisco Symphony

Guest conductors Karina Canellakis, Gustavo Gimeno, Marta Gardolińska, and Ryan Bancroft lead the San Francisco Symphony in four weeks of concerts at Davies Symphony Hall in April and May.

April 18–20: Canellakis Conducts Strauss & Ravel

On April 18–20, Karina Canellakis, Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, leads the San Francisco Symphony in Richard Strauss’ Don Juan, based on the play about the eponymous legend. Pianist Cédric Tiberghien joins Canellakis and the Orchestra to perform Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, originally commissioned by pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein was instrumental in expanding the repertoire for piano music written for the left hand.

Canellakis also conducts the Orchestra in Death and Transfiguration by Strauss, who intended “to represent the death of a person who had striven for the highest and most ideal goals, possibly an artist.” The program concludes with Ravel’s captivating La Valse, a cynical critique of the 19th-century Viennese waltz written in the aftermath of World War I. 

April 25–27: Gimeno Conducts Shostakovich & Prokofiev 

On April 25–27, Gustavo Gimeno, Music Director of the Luxembourg Philharmonic and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, conducts the first San Francisco Symphony performances of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Funeral March from The Great Citizen, a 1938 fictionalized biographical film about Russian politician Sergei Kirov. SF Symphony Principal Viola Jonathan Vinocour joins Gimeno and the Orchestra to perform William Walton’s Viola Concerto, a work originally performed by violist-composer Paul Hindemith that shares some of its expressiveness with Walton’s well-known film scores. Rounding out the program is Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 3, adapted from his opera The Fiery Angel.  

May 10–12: Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony 

On May 10–12, Marta Gardolińska, Music Director of Opéra National de Lorraine, and cellist Pablo Ferrández make their Orchestral Series debuts with the San Francisco Symphony. The program begins with Overture (Uwertura) by Grażyna Bacewicz, who wrote the piece during Germany’s occupation of Poland in 1943. Ferrández performs Edward Elgar’s melancholy Cello Concerto, written at a time when Elgar was contemplating the pain and loss caused by World War I.

Gardolińska and the Orchestra conclude the program with Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3, Scottish. After visiting the Palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh in 1829, Mendelssohn wrote in a letter, “The chapel close to it is now roofless, grass and ivy grow there [...] Everything round is broken and mouldering and the bright sky shines in. I believe I have found today in that old chapel the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.”

May 16–18: Ryan Bancroft & Joshua Bell 

On May 16–18, Ryan Bancroft, Chief Conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the Principal Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducts the San Francisco Symphony, making his Orchestral Series debut. He leads the Orchestra in the United States premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Alaraph ‘Ritus des Herzschlags’. Chin explains that the work is inspired by “heartbeat stars,” whose light curves are “similar to what a heartbeat looks like through an electrocardiogram when its brightness is mapped over time.”

Violinist Joshua Bell joins Bancroft and the Orchestra to perform Henri Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No. 5, the composer’s most well-known violin concerto. Bell also joins the Orchestra for the first San Francisco Symphony performances of Kevin Puts’ Earth, one of five movements in the suite “Elements,” which was originally commissioned by Bell in 2023 and features works by five acclaimed composers. Puts writes, “Beyond the fundamental sense of stability and endurance the element earth suggested to me, I hope the music also conveys a more spiritual reverence for the planet Earth itself.” Puts’ Earth replaces Jennifer Higdon’s Air, another movement from the work, on the program. Bancroft and the Orchestra end the program with Claude Debussy’s La Mer, which reflects the composer’s love for the unpredictability and ever-changing nature of the sea.  

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