Esa-Pekka Salonen's final concerts show what San Francisco Symphony stands to lose

San Francisco Chronicle​

13-06-2025

Mahler's Second Symphony, the 'Resurrection,' is a piece with a clear and consistent story to tell. Things fall apart, and then they're reborn in a new and different guise.
Could there be a more appropriate work — or at any rate a more sweepingly optimistic one — to mark the end of Esa-Pekka Salonen's brief tenure as music director of the San Francisco Symphony?
A huge and appreciative audience filled Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday, June 12, to hear an incendiary performance of Mahler's Second, and they got what they came for. Under Salonen's baton, the orchestra sounded superb — bristling with demonic energy one minute, subsiding into tender reverie the next.
There were glorious vocal contributions as well from soprano Heidi Stober and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, and from the San Francisco Symphony Chorus under the invigorating leadership of Jenny Wong.
But the evening's agenda obviously extended far beyond the specifics of Mahler or this particular symphony. Patrons were also there to offer a loving, bittersweet farewell to the musician whose presence has made Davies an artistic destination for the past five years and helped hone this orchestra to its current state of excellence.
Salonen announced his departure in March 2024, citing differences with Symphony leadership.The final Mahler concert on Saturday, June 14, will mark his last day as music director.
Emotions were apparent from the moment Salonen walked onstage to tumultuous applause. They were all the more evident afterward, as conductor and soloists were called back for bow after bow, in a torrent of appreciation that didn't seem to want to end.
Salonen, a man not given to displays of feeling, was visibly moved.
And why not? The Symphony's board and management may not have fully understood what it means for an orchestra to have a music director of Salonen's caliber. But its patrons and musicians have never been in doubt on this point.
In particular, the close-knit relationship between Salonen and the members of the orchestra continues to pay dividends. Speaking to the attendees of Thursday morning's open rehearsal, Salonen paid tribute to the orchestral musicians, calling the ensemble one of the best in the world and urging patrons, after he's gone, to 'protect this orchestra.'
Thursday's concert, the first of three, would have been an emotional affair even if the music had been something as dry-eyed and stoic as something by, let's say, Stravinsky. But the 'Resurrection' Symphony grabs you by the throat from the opening measures, and doesn't let go until the final moments of celestial transfiguration some 80 minutes later.
The huge opening movement is a funeral march, more or less, but it's one attended by sudden thunderclaps, glowering skies and an almost apocalyptic sense of doom. What we're hearing, in other words, is not simply the death of an individual but the wholesale destruction of a world order.
The music's ferocity and sense of knife-edge danger came through in every moment of the performance. Salonen would give a downbeat, and the strings would explode in savage fury. Timpanist Edward Stephan beat his instrument with no hint of mercy. The brass leaned into their roles as the bullies of the orchestra, launching sonic grenades into the hall. And yet all of it was executed with utmost precision, like a terrifying attack dog kept safely on the leash.
After that monstrous salvo, it can take the remainder of the symphony for audience members to feel fully comfortable again in their own skin. The delicate little serenade that follows, one of Mahler's many tributes to his great forebear Schubert, offered a welcome respite. Salonen took the scherzo at a winningly quick tempo, even if he missed a bit of the music's sardonic bite.
But those two movements were simply a prelude to the radiant apotheosis that followed.
In 'Urlicht,' the short and exquisite song that constitutes the symphony's fourth movement, Cooke gave one of the most richly luminous performances I've ever heard from her, cloaking the melodic line in a vocal sonority of dark velvet.
And finally, in the choral movement that gives the piece its subtitle, we got the transformation we'd been waiting for since the symphony's opening jolt. 'Arise!' the chorus sang, in hushed harmonies that landed like balm. 'Yes, you will arise, my dust, after a brief rest … You are sown to bloom again!' The music illustrated this homily, slowly gathering force to arrive at the piece's thunderous conclusion.
It was hard to avoid feeling this as a metaphor for the sorrow and turmoil that have engulfed this organization over the past year, since it became clear that the San Francisco Symphony could not make itself a congenial home for an artist of Salonen's extraordinary caliber.
Joshua Kosman is the Chronicle's former classical music critic.