Orchestra tremors in San Francisco
OrchestrasMusicians were informally told yesterday that Esa-Pekka Salonen will not renew his contract as music director.
If that is the case, he will leave next year.
The Finn has no problems with the musicians. He’s just not getting on well with the organisation and he had attractive opportunities elsewhere.
I heard through the grapevine that the next SFS maestro will be an Asian woman like the SF Opera. I wouldn’t mind if it’s Elim Chan. It may look woke on paper but she’s got the merits so it’s all right.
As we all know from Eun-Sun Kim’s appointment as was reported on SD last year, unsatisfying conductors come in all shapes and sizes. Race-motivated decisions notwithstanding however, Elim Chan would make lots of concert goers happy, including the influential Chronicle critic Josh Kosman who has raved about her previous guest appearances with the Symphony.
Just last week I was talking to musicians of her orchestra in Antwerp who explained that the reasons behind her contract there being cut short went well beyond her public comments about it (which never made any sense anyway).
Zero people know who the next MD will be. Board is malicious and management incompetent. There is no plan except administrative arson.
They played horribly under her. I sincerely hope it’s karina canellakis or ruth reinhardt – SFS was on fire under these two women.
Critics seem to like her, but as a member of aajot is orchestra, she’s terrible. Can’t run a rehearsal to save her life and has zero ideas on phrasing or how to fix any issues. Just keeps running the piece. Her baton movements are minimal and like a high school band director at best. Only in concert does she attempt to put on a show. She is not deserving of the “acclaim” some give her and has not even come close to earning her stripes yet.
well tough, the people that dislike her will just have to put up or shuddup. Or they can start their own conductorless band.
God bless anybody who has ears and have the courage to be truthful.
Do you hate Elim Chan or what? It looks like you love to bring her up fully expecting people to dunk on her. No these orchestras are not looking at Chan as their next music director. The very notion is laughable. She is somewhat effective in popular Romantic works (think Planets, Scheherazade, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth) and these have been her main touring vehicles for years already. Fine as an occasional guest but painfully limited as a potential MD.
Elim Chan’s contract in Antwerp was cut short for a reason beyond her public statements.
Yeah…Woke women run the city of SF so well…down.
Let the harps be played.
Sad, because their partnership is most likely the one that produces the best results now in America. They were fantastic on their European tour, better than the other US orchestras. I have no horses in this race, so my opinion is absolutely objective, based solely on the concerts I’ve attended. If you feel the urge to downvote, question your ego and emotional involvement in any one orchestra. Sometimes golden days are in the past, and the quality doesn’t live up to the name anymore (looking at you in particular, Boston…)
Actually, you might get downvoted for writing “my opinion is absolutely objective,” which is a contradiction in terms. (I believe the word you wanted was “impartial.”)
And I’m inclined to agree with you about the Salonen-SFS partnership, for whatever that’s worth.
Objective as opposed to subjective, i.e. not influenced by personal feelings
You are very wrong: personal opinions are by definition subjective; only facts are objective. Even if one has a rather unique ability of separating one’s opinions from one’s feelings (which in itself is a highly doubtful proposition), one’s personal opinions about the quality of musical performances still depends on many purely subjective personal factors such as: physical ability to hear, mental ability to process what one is hearing, one’s musical literacy, one’s knowledge of music in general and the piece being performed in particular, one’s listening experience including its lifetime totality and especially the part of it that more recently precedes the performance in question, one’s location while listening, one’s personality including temperament, one’s emotional state at that particular moment – and so on and so forth (as Maestro EPS himself used to be fond of saying). All that and more make one’s opinions of performing quality highly subjective. Believing otherwise is astonishingly naive and in fact undermines the validity of a person’s opinion that might otherwise be relatively valid.
Dear Not American,
You’re welcome to your own opinion. But as someone who lives in Boston and hears the BSO 10x a season or more and knows quality from crap, I disagree strongly with your assessment that the BSO is living off of past glories. I’m not afraid to be critical if there’s a reason to be, but you seem to be hearing something very different from the BSO than I am. And unlike you, I’m hearing the orchestra regularly.
I am a regular subscriber as well since 2011. When I first arrived in the region, I was horrified by how poorly played BSO was at the time. It’s getting better now. But, before the retirement of the principal horn, every time he was on stage I was holding my breath that he wouldn’t ruin the performance. The string section were not much better either due to lack of versatility. As a former San Francisco symphony subscriber, it was a routine for them to play in different style for different work by different composer under different conductor, but, for BSO, it was quite a struggle. Now, with some personal changes and retirements, things look promising, as long as they can keep the core woodwind section intact. Let’s keep finger crossed.
Dear Doktor, I really hope so! The Prokofiev 5 they did with Nelsons was really abysmal….maybe they were just tired
LA here I come!
Chicago here I come!
Cleveland here I come!
Seriously, San Francisco is as a welcoming place for his experimental programming as he can hope for in the US, where else can he go and do it? He can’t possibly be thinking about returning to LA??
I think “in the US” is the key phrase there. He’ll stay mostly in Europe. I suspect he’ll settle down into composing and guest-conducting. But he’d be a good fit with the DSO Berlin.
Bravo to Norman for another evocative/provocative headline.
He’s strong for providing bad news after Rouvali who left Gothenburg and the doubts about Chailly.
He’s coming to Chicago in May to conduct Mahler. Final audition? I have no inside dope but I suspect the musicians would prefer an older, established conductor (and composer) to a kid who at any rate will have his hands full in Amsterdam.
Salonen as MD in Chicago: sounds like a dream! That would be superb.
My first thought too, and yet the CSO website says that he’s withdrawn from those performances as well. So obviously, wherever the aforementioned opportunities are, they aren’t in Chicago…
Now I’m concerned. I recently purchased tickets to see him conduct Sibelius’ 5th in Philadelphia in May. I just checked their site and there is no mention of him cancelling at this point.
Well, that might work out. He’s always seemed to like California so I assume he’s not leaving SF specifically to be available for the CSO, but it might work out. I agree the CSO – based on its history – would be more inclined toward an old Finn like him rather than a young Finn like Makela.
He withdrew from Chicago Mahler 2 as well.
CSO website says he has withdrawn.
He would be an outstanding choice for so many reasons. Who knew he’d even be a Chicago possibility?
He’s already cancelled those concerts. The city I speculate where he might spend more time is Paris.
Well if his intention was to spend more time in Paris, he should’ve signalled it sooner, because the Radio France orchestra just went to Jaap van Zweden.
There is still the Paris Opera, vacated by Dudamel!
What a grand game of musical chairs it would be if Salonen actually took over the Paris Opera. (He could write his first opera too.)
EPS has withdrawn from the Mahler performances for personal reasons according to the CSO’s website.
A “kid?” Essa-Pekka is 65 years old, with decades of experience with the world’s greatest orchestras, both as conductor and composer.
I believe the only “kid” mentioned in the comments was referring to Makela.
Yes of course, and the former kid’s first name is Esa-Pekka.
There are a few better than him! What a shame that organizations are focused on DEI instead of artistic excellence.
Of the top 20+ orchestras in the US, only one has a woman MD (Natalie Stutzman) and I think only one is Black. Given that women are 50+ percent of the world population and Black people (American and otherwise) make up a substantial population, one might conclude that US orchestras are intently focused on white male supremacy.
One certainly might if one is a complete moron.
As long as you keep parading the likes of Stutzman and Alsop as the pinnacle of women conductors, that’s unlikely to change. By most accounts from the musicians in Philly and Atlanta, NS is a disaster. I don’t give AF what the press says – they aren’t in the rehearsals, and they are not at all the concerts. A great orchestra can sound very good regardless of what is happening on the podium.
I think the “orchestra tremors” might indicate something bigger than simply Esa- Peka departing.
Salonen just won the Polar Music prize. That should make him feel better.
For what it’s worth (more trivia tidbit than significant factor), his son graduated from the University of Chicago, so it’s not like he doesn’t know Chicago on a personal level, also the U of C incidentally has a stellar composer faculty, a few of whom were CSO composers-in-residence pre-Muti, so if Salonen wanted to reproduce his formula of collaborative artists he has a local pool to draw from, which by the way he did NOT do in SF and the Bay Area, for which he was publicly and sharply criticized in the NYT by Berkeley resident and international composerJohn Adams.
OK, so NONE of those factoids would put butts in seats. He’d still face the same daunting obstacles in Chicago as he had in SF.
Anyway, he wasn’t LOOKING when SF approached him, they promised him something that they couldn’t cash.
Finally, it’s not like Salonen needs to work, he just has to keep collecting $100,000 prizes which he seems to get every other year!
Bravo Norman, 1 for 1, now let’s see if your prognostication about Chicago and Makela proves true.
I wonder what this means for Mr Cooper. He’s currently in LA but has won the principal position in SF…both orchestras are losing a music director, but LA is on much more solid ground financially. However, the opportunity of getting to be principal and effectively build his own section in SF must be alluring. Plus, then he wouldn’t have to deal with the notoriously difficult section in LA…
In what way is LA’s horn section “notoriously difficult”??
I’ve played guest principal horn in LA many times and have found the section a dream to work with. Not sure where you are getting your info.
What’s so alluring about building his own section on a sinking ship, already SF has cut back the number of concerts, already management is making the orchestra play more popular profitable concerts (think John Williams and Indiana Jones), already the cost of living in the Bay Area far exceeds their salary and they compete with tech millionaires for what little middle class housing there is.
Did I mention the crime around the symphony hall?
Salonen has the world at his feet – so he had no need to acquiesce to management on any issue. Not so with MTT, who bent over backwards to please management, as other MD positions weren’t being thrown his way. This orchestra’s management had thus become accustomed to a malleable MD, and miscalculated if they assumed Salonen would also be so.
He or Hrusa would be choice # one at the CSO. There’s serious chemistry with both. Heading to the CSO for the second week of Hrusa tonight. I’d be happy with the programming under either
I’m extremely disappointed.
I think we were so fortunate to have E-P S in San Francisco. However, I sort of thought it may not have been a good fit with all the leadership changes at SFS and the vision they want for the orchestra.
San Francisco Chronicle is quoting orchestra CEO Matthew Spivey that the orchestra is “in a very different place” than when Salonen was hired in 2018, due to “significant financial pressures” forcing cutbacks, e.g. “Soundbox” new music series, with more cuts planned , and that given these realities it’s “understandable” Salonen is leaving.
Too bad none of the hundred hometown billionaires (SF has more than any city but New York and Hong Kong) can peel off a little change for the local civic institutions. The storied century old San Francisco Art Institute was allowed to go bankrupt and close a few years back. Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve’s widow, together with a few friends, just bought its campus, which includes a spectacular Diego Rivera mural valued at $50 million, for $30 million. I guess that’s what the tech gurus mean by “effective altruism?”
Hmmm…I could see EPS considering a return to LA. The orchestra loves him, and I’m sure that the administration will allow him ample time to focus on composing (which was one of the reasons why he left the first time). With three venues (WDCH, Hollywood Bowl, Ford Theatre) I could see the LA Phil sweetening the pot with the offer of a New Music Festival of some kind for him as well. LAPA can essentially offer him the world if they want to – and they most likely will. Having said that, I don’t think it will take the world to get him to return to the orchestra with whom he has such a symbiotic relationship. Fingers crossed.
He will not return as a full-time MD. He said in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat that he is not looking for another job and the the SFS position is possibly the last one for him. That said with him free LA has more breathing room in their MD search. They don’t need to rush the process if they can persuade Salonen to help mind the house if a successor is not found to start immediately after Dudamel’s departure.
While everyone else the LA Phil has extended the position to have declined, EPS would make the perfect fit and hold the organization together as they fail to recruit a strong CEO and may have to accept their interim (who used to be EPS’s driver!)…..
I wish him to be the next MD @ Chicago
Maybe he’s sick of SF becoming a Dem-run, far-left basket-case.