San Francisco Symphony

Mondays at 10:00 pm

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony onstage at Davies Symphony Hall (Photo: Stefan Cohen)

Weekly concerts recorded live at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco

Since its beginning in 1911, the San Francisco Symphony has been known for innovative programs that offer a spectrum of traditional repertory and new music. Today, the orchestra’s artistic vitality, recordings, and groundbreaking multimedia educational projects carry its impact throughout American musical life. Under Michael Tilson Thomas, music director from 1995 to 2020, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, music director since 2020, the orchestra has been praised for its musicianship, for innovative programming, for bringing the works of American composers to the fore, and for bringing new audiences into Davies Symphony Hall.

The San Francisco Symphony program is part of the WFMT Orchestra Series.

Upcoming Episodes
Recent Episodes

Man conducts animatedly with audience in backgroudn

Guerrero Conducts Pines of Rome

June 15, 2026, 10:00 pm

Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero brings out all the technicolor glory of Ottorino Respighi’s vivid Roman postcards: Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome. Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka is equally dramatic, placing us amid the hurly-burly of a Russian carnival where a trio of magical puppets comes to life. Kicking off the concert is Kaija Saariaho’s astronomical Asteroid 4179: Toutatis.

Violinist Isabelle Faust (Photo: Felix Broede)

Salonen Conducts The Firebird

June 22, 2026, 10:00 pm

Igor Stravinsky’s wild Russian folk-fable of a ballet The Firebird, retains the power to shock and enthrall into its second century. Kicking off this program conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen is Magnus Lindberg’s 2002 Bach-inspired piece Chorale. Alban Berg’s famed Violin Concerto— played here by Isabelle Faust— functions both as an elegy for a surrogate daughter who died too soon, and ...

Salonen Conducts Sibelius 7

June 29, 2026, 10:00 pm

Bookended by two spectacular Richard Strauss tone poems, Esa-Pekka Salonen leads Rewilding, the SF Symphony’s first commission from Gabriella Smith, reflecting her passion for conservation and ecological reform. Jean Sibelius’s final symphony, the Seventh, distills symphonic form to its bare essentials.

Alsop Conducts Music of the Americas

June 8, 2026

Conductor Marin Alsop guides the SF Symphony through an exhilarating journey that spans the United States, Venezuela, and Mexico. Gabriela Ortiz’s playfully seductive Antrópolis sets the stage while the Venezuelan composer and pianist Gabriela Montero performs her Piano Concerto No. 1, “Latin”. Paired fanfares by Aaron Copland and Joan Tower join with Samuel Barber’s primal and propulsive Symphony No. 1.

woman in dark dress hold conductor's baton

Chan Conducts All-Tchaikovsky

June 1, 2026

Elim Chan leads selections from Tchaikovsky’s ethereal and primal fairy tale, Swan Lake. Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, Pathétique, inhabits a mood of exquisite longing. He called it “the best thing I ever composed or shall compose.”

Esa-Pekka Salonen & Yuja Wang

May 25, 2026

Esa-Pekka Salonen takes the podium for Debussy’s Images, a work that outlines a vivid realm of ancient dances, sun-splashed Spanish ballads, and intoxicating orchestral colors. Yuja Wang brings her dramatic flair and interpretive finesse to two piano concertos: Maurice Ravel’s dark and intense Piano Concerto for the Left Hand and Einojuhani Rautavaara’s post-modern Piano Concerto No. 1.

Blomstedt Conducts Schubert & Brahms

May 18, 2026

Conductor Laureate Herbert Blomstedt leads two treasures of the German symphonic tradition, both indebted to earlier masters. Schubert spoke about the “haunting” influence of Mozart when he wrote his Fifth Symphony. Brahms worked on his First Symphony for more than 20 years, fretting obsessively about living up to Beethoven’s example.

Fauré’s Requiem

May 11, 2026

Conductor Kazuki Yamada leads the SF Symphony and Chorus in Fauré’s tenderly radiant and humane Requiem – an underrated stunner. Pianist Hélène Grimaud performs Ravel’s sprightly Piano Concerto in G major.

Enigma Variations

May 4, 2026

Conrad Tao stars in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a work the composer valued above all his other piano compositions. Under the baton of Nicholas Collon, the program opens with Thomas Adès’s Three-piece Suite from his cheeky chamber opera, Powder Her Face. Edward Elgar’s famed Enigma Variations closes the program with an assortment of melodies depicting his friends.

Salonen Conducts Beethoven’s Pastoral

April 27, 2026

Principal Cello Rainer Eudeikis takes center stage in Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto conducted by the composer. Bookending the concerto are two works inspired by the natural world: Beethoven’s unapologetically pictorial Sixth Symphony and Debussy’s swelling, sparkling oceanic triptych La Mer.

Salonen Conducts Brahms 4

April 20, 2026

Sayaka Shoji takes on Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, a work that revels in dusky enchantments, diabolical dances, and frisky folk tunes. Brahms’s fourth and final symphony, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, draws on a lifetime of experience and immersive study.

Nico Muhly in his composing studio, digital keyboard, sheet music, and large computer monitor on his desk, smiling, leaning on his right elbow; wearing black coat over grey-blue t-shirt.

Salonen Conducts Nico Muhly

April 13, 2026

Season Premiere: Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the world premiere of Nico Muhly’s Baroque-inspired Piano Concerto, performed by Alexandre Tharaud. Also on the program: Paul Hindemith’s raucous Ragtime, based on a theme by J.S. Bach; Edward Elgar’s inventive transcription of Bach’s Fantasia & Fugue in C minor; and Hindemith’s Symphony Mathis der Maler.

Esa-Pekka Salonen & Yefim Bronfman

July 7, 2025

Season Finale: Composed over four turbulent years, Robert Schumann’s only piano concerto, here performed by Yefim Bronfman, features a lustrous intermezzo, blazing bravura passages, and encoded tributes to the composer’s wife, muse, and finest interpreter. Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, the “Romantic,” was his first major composition to earn real applause. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts.

woman in blue and white patterned dress leans against brown wall

Ravel’s Mother Goose & Schoenberg’s Erwartung

June 23, 2025

Ravel’s enchanting Mother Goose characters come to vivid life in a performance conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Schoenberg described his monodrama Erwartung as a nightmare, a moment of psychological trauma enacted in slow motion. As The Woman, soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams leaps and plunges between emotional extremes: hopeful and terrified, enraged and miserable.

Gustavo Gimeno conducting in a dark shirt in front of a dark shirt

Inspirations: Film/Classical

June 16, 2025

Drama abounds in Shostakovich’s score for The Great Citizen, a fictionalized biopic about a Bolshevik hero. In his Third Symphony, Prokofiev recycles music from his yet-to-be-staged supernatural opera, The Fiery Angel. Walton’s searing and sumptuous Viola Concerto polarized early listeners but ended up launching his career. Gustavo Gimeno conducts with Principal Viola Jonathan Vinocour as soloist.

Salonen: All Sibelius

June 9, 2025

A Sibelius deep dive conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen: Finlandia is an anthem for a nascent nation still fighting for its very identity after a century of Russian rule. The Violin Concerto, here performed by Lisa Batiashvili, was a vehicle for Sibelius to channel all his virtuoso ambitions. The First Symphony would be Sibelius’ international breakthrough. With deft touches of Tchaikovsky ...

Esa-Pekka Salonen & Julia Fischer

June 2, 2025

Joining Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, violinist Julia Fischer makes her long-awaited return to the San Francisco Symphony in Brahms’ Violin Concerto. Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, tenor Nicholas Phan, and baritone Luca Pisaroni—all regular collaborators with the San Francisco Symphony—sing in Stravinsky’s cheeky neoclassical ballet Pulcinella, which the composer called “the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible.”

MTT Conducts Mahler 5

May 26, 2025

Featuring many of his most rapturous melodies, the Fifth Symphony finds Mahler at his most joyous and life-affirming. It’s the ideal vehicle for Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas, whose decades-long devotion to the Austrian visionary yielded the acclaimed Mahler recording project on SFS Media.

Dudamel Conducts Brahms 2

May 19, 2025

Conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s program opens with Gabriela Ortiz’s Kauyumari, which refers to a magical blue deer, sacred to the Huichol people of Mexico. In the one-movement concerto Odisea, commissioned by Dudamel for Jorge Glem, Venezuelan composer Gonzalo Grau highlights his country’s national instrument, the versatile, four-stringed cuatro. On the surface Johannes Brahms’ Second Symphony seems like a sunny summer idyll, ...

Portrait of Lauren Snouffer, chin resting on right palm, fingers touching her right cheek, dark background.

California Festival: From the Edge

May 12, 2025

Composer Gabriella Smith conjures the spaces and sounds of California in the organ concerto Breathing Forests, performed here by James McVinnie. Igor Stravinsky depicts a festive, folk-inflected Slavic wedding in his ballet Les Noces, augmented by Steven Stucky’s orchestration. Stravinsky’s Octet for Winds and Brass, a uniquely scored neoclassical work, was inspired by a late-night dream. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts.

California Festival: To the Edge

May 5, 2025

In kínēma, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s lyrical imagination takes flight via five cinematic scenes for solo clarinet and chamber orchestra, performed here by Principal Clarinet Carey Bell. Emerging Black Composers Project winner Jens Ibsen grew up in the Bay Area, where he soaked up samba, soul, R&B, and progressive metal along with the music of Ghana and the African diaspora—all influences you ...

Beethoven 9

April 28, 2025

Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas is joined by soprano Angel Blue, mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford, tenor Ben Bliss, and bass Dashon Burton with the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus to perform Beethoven’s dramatic Symphony No. 9, which celebrates the bonds of humanity and the glory of the creator in its triumphant “Ode to Joy.”

Esa-Pekka Salonen & Emanuel Ax

April 21, 2025

In Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn, Brahms travels in time, using ancient musical forms to explore possible futures. In Beethoven’s Second Symphony, anarchic glee subverts Classical elegance. Between the two big Bs, precisely in the present, Esa-Pekka Salonen debuts his longtime friend Anders Hillborg’s witty and colorful new Piano Concerto, performed with genial sophistication by soloist Emanuel Ax.

Through the Night with Peter van de Graaff