The San Francisco Symphony’s Music Director, Michael Tilson Thomas. Image: via Facebook.
The San Francisco Symphony is a beloved institution in the Bay Area, and has been cultivating culture there for more than 100 years. Not only does the Symphony offer fantastic programming for music-loving adults, it also organizes programs designed to make classical music accessible to people of all ages and musical backgrounds, and even does community outreach work to ensure that music is an integral part of school for young children.
The San Francisco Symphony is supported by a prominent Board of Governors that includes philanthropists, businesspeople, and strong advocates of the arts. Carol Casey, Dean Cash, and Perry Pelos are among the current Governors, with Sakurako Fisher and Gail L. Covington acting as leading Officers. Life governors include REDF founder George R. Roberts, James C. Hormel, Mrs. Charles R. Schwab, and Andrew S. Berwick, Jr.
This weekend, the San Francisco Symphony is hosting a “Beethoven Marathon,” as an homage to the legendary composer. “On a chilly December evening in 1808, Viennese concert goers huddled into the Theater an der Wien to hear new works of Beethoven,” describes the Symphony of the original even that has inspired this forthcoming “Marathon.” On Saturday, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas will recreate that historic concert, featuring the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Choral Fantasy, and the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies.
If you’re thinking to yourself that a musical marathon sounds exhausting, you can rest assured that there are not one, not two, but three intermissions scheduled to help provide a respite to concert-goers and musicians alike.
Reports SFGate’s Joshua Kosman, “The San Francisco Symphony’s Beethoven Festival is about to reach its midpoint with a re-creation of the composer’s insane four-hour concert of December 1808. But first, Michael Tilson Thomas and the orchestra are wisely easing audience into it by introducing parts of the program on the installment plan,” of the Symphony’s approach to showcasing such a tremendously powerful, prolific body of work. Earlier this week, the San Francisco Symphony offered half of the music in a shorter installment, which earned rave reviews.
Kosman writes, “It featured what is already the clear front-runner to emerge as the high point of the weekend’s festivities: soprano Karita Mattila’s roof-rattling, gut-wrenching, luxuriant account of the concert aria ‘Ah! perfido.’” If you put this degree of artistry in the middle of any sort of musical event of any size, you can immediately count the evening a success.”
If that mid-week performance is any indication of what’s to come this weekend, the concert-goers are in for a profound experience.
Learn more about the San Francisco Symphony by visiting www.sfsymphony.org.