Artelize - A Symphony of Stories: Exploring the San Francisco Symphony's Diverse 2025-2026 Season
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A Symphony of Stories: Exploring the San Francisco Symphony's Diverse 2025-2026 Season

The San Francisco Symphony's 2025-2026 season promises a dynamic blend of cultural narratives, visual storytelling, and musical transcendence. From live scores accompanying epic films to orchestral masterpieces addressing life's grand questions, this season captures the essence of human experience through a rich tapestry of sound. Explore with us as renowned conductors and performers illuminate works from composers like Mahler, Verdi, and Handel, offering a profound journey for audiences at the iconic Davies Symphony Hall.

May 1, 2025
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1. The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers
Lights, Camera, Music!: Watch favorite films on the big screen at Davies Symphony Hall as the scores are performed live by the SF Symphony. The second installment of Peter Jackson’s fantasy-adventure saga finds the Fellowship of the Ring facing new challenges in their quest to destroy the One Ring. Rated PG-13
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8 - 10 May, 2025
San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco, CA · Davies Symphony Hall

2. Salonen Conducts Mahler 2
At the euphoric climax of Maestro, Bradley Cooper channels Leonard Bernstein conducting Mahler’s Second Symphony. The Resurrection still matters because it moves us, and it moves us because it grapples with the Big Questions: Do our lives matter? Why must we suffer? Will we be healed? Reinforcing this theme of spiritual transcendence, Mahler wrote his own text for the finale: “Rise again…What you have conquered, will bear you to God!”
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12 - 14 Jun, 2025
San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco, CA · Davies Symphony Hall

3. Verdi Requiem and Gordon Getty
James Gaffigan returns to the San Francisco Symphony to conduct Verdi’s Requiem, one of the most powerful choral pieces ever written. A stellar group of soloists join him for this program, which also includes the San Francisco Symphony premiere of several choral works by Gordon Getty. Getty is a not just a longtime friend of the Symphony but is also one of San Francisco’s most celebrated composers.
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20 - 22 Jun, 2025
San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco, CA · Davies Symphony Hall

4. Handel’s Messiah
George Frideric Handel’s Messiah was an instant classic soon after its 1742 premiere and has been a holiday tradition around the world ever since. Through a dramatic series of arias, recitatives, and choruses, Handel offers a musical meditation on Christ’s birth, life, and resurrection—and his message of redemption. Jane Glover leads the SF Symphony and Chorus in this perennial favorite.
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5 - 6 Dec, 2025
San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco, CA · Davies Symphony Hall

5. Gardner Conducts The Planets
Violinist Randall Goosby returns to the San Francisco Symphony for an Edward Gardner–led program featuring Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto. Although Bruch lived to be 82 and produced an impressive catalogue of music, he never wrote anything as enduringly popular as his First Violin Concerto. It was an immediate hit, interspersing Hungarian-spiced licks with plenty of crowd-pleasing passagework. Gustav Holst had many esoteric interests, including astrology. The seven movements of The Planets, his best-known composition, range from the brutal rhythms and spooky effects of “Mars, the Bringer of War” to the dissonance and tolling bells of “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age,” and the closer, “Neptune, the Mystic,” which calls to mind an Impressionist painting of outer space.
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15 - 17 Jan, 2026
San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco, CA · Davies Symphony Hall

6. Honeck Conducts Mozart’s Requiem
Conductor Manfred Honeck presents his theatrical interpretation of Mozart’s magisterial swan song, literally composed on his deathbed. Honeck’s illuminating selection of dramatic readings, choral interpolations, and other enhancements bring new insights to the score. Also on the program is Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 93, written during the composer’s triumphant late-career stay in London. Haydn had never traveled outside his native Austria, but he took to his growing international fame like a natural. Who knows? Symphony No. 93 might inspire you to launch your own second act.
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Feb 26 - Mar 1, 2026
San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco, CA · Davies Symphony Hall

7. Labadie Conducts Bach’s Easter Oratorio
Canadian maestro Bernard Labadie, one of the leading interpreters of the Baroque and Classical repertoire, conducts the first-ever SF Symphony performances of Bach’s Easter Oratorio, a spectacular celebration of Christ’s resurrection. Bach was a devout Lutheran, but he wrote music for real human beings, not musical sermons for potential saints. Who wouldn’t feel the grief of a mother who has lost her son, the sorrow of his devoted disciples, or the anguish of one who found redemption in his love? And who wouldn’t share in their exultation when he returns? Bach’s vivid Magnificat depicts Mary’s response to the news that she will bear the son of God. Although the score calls for large forces by Bach’s standards, the magnificence of the Magnificat never supplants the mystery.
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9 - 11 Apr, 2026
San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco, CA · Davies Symphony Hall

8. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Lights, Camera, Music!: Watch favorite films on the big screen at Davies Symphony Hall as the scores are performed live by the SF Symphony. Rated PG-13
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Apr 30 - May 2, 2026
San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco, CA · Davies Symphony Hall

9. Gaffigan Conducts Beethoven 9
Beethoven wanted his Ninth Symphony—led here by James Gaffigan—to enact a journey of transformation, exploring themes of struggle and salvation, community and compassion. Although he wasn’t religious in the conventional sense, he found spiritual sustenance in his art. Even in our hyperpolarized times, Beethoven’s Ninth feels like a unifying force across the globe, a cultural common good. For its creator, who drafted, revised, and perfected his final symphony over more than 30 years, its meaning was urgent, immediate, vital: In those decades he saw the humanist ideals of the French Revolution trampled by repressive regimes.
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18 - 21 Jun, 2026
San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco, CA · Davies Symphony Hall

Conclusion
The San Francisco Symphony's 2025-2026 season offers a rich mosaic of performances that explore the human condition through a dynamic interplay of sound and story. Whether through the epic landscapes of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Mahler’s introspective symphonies, or the celestial movements of Holst’s 'The Planets,' each event is designed to engage the audience on multiple levels. As the symphony continues to blend tradition with innovation, audiences can look forward to a season that both challenges and inspires, reaffirming the timeless power of music to connect us all.
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2025 Artelize