Prokofiev’s tale of a boy and his animal friends’ bravery is brought to life with a guest narrator. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra performs this classic musical fable, along with other seasonal and holiday favorites.

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Peter And The Wolf

Davies Symphony Hall

MainStage 2: Celebration and Hope

First United Methodist Church-Palo

First Congregational Church of Berkeley

San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center

Conductor James Gaffigan and violinist Ray Chen return on a thrilling program that combines lyricism and athleticism, fireworks and finesse. Samuel Barber wrote only one Violin Concerto, but it’s such a dazzling doozy that you can’t blame him for quitting while he was ahead. Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony was composed at the height of the Second World War but its appeal is universal. As conductor Serge Koussevitzky effused: “It is magnificent! It is yesterday, it is today, it is tomorrow.

James Gaffigan & Ray Chen

Orff’s profane and profound pseudo-medieval cantata Carmina burana is the banger of all choral bangers: No one who has heard the opening movement “O Fortuna” even once, whether live or on a film soundtrack, could question its eternal-earworm status. Also on the program: A new piano concerto by John Adams, featuring pianist Víkingur Ólafsson and conductor David Robertson, a responsive and nuanced interpreter of Adams’s eclectic soundscapes.

Carmina Burana & Adams’ Piano Concerto

Decades after his death, Richard Strauss enjoyed a posthumous comeback thanks to his searing and cerebral tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra. The indelible opening trumpet fanfare is instantly recognizable from its use in films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barbie. Equally colorful works by Hector Berlioz and Claude Debussy add Gallic flair before the program hurtles to its heart-racing conclusion with John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine

Also Sprach Zarathustra

Conductor Laureate Herbert Blomstedt brings his eloquent exactitude to two treasures of the German symphonic tradition, both indebted to earlier masters. In a diary entry that Schubert wrote around the time he composed his Fifth Symphony, he raved about the “haunting” influence of Mozart. Brahms worked on his First Symphony for more than 20 years, in fitful bursts, followed by bouts of recrimination and revision. Like Schubert, he fretted obsessively about living up to Beethoven’s example.

Blomstedt Conducts Schubert & Brahms 

Estonian-American conductor Paavo Järvi’s return to Davies Symphony Hall delivers passion and pyrotechnics aplenty with Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2, which showcases the Berlin-based Russian-American pianist Kirill Gerstein. Mahler's Seventh Symphony opens with a slow and shadowy first movement and closes with a euphoric, tempo-switching, Mozart-quoting rondo finale that has always been hater bait, but who cares? Let the boring killjoys blabber on about incoherence while the rest of us bask in its brilliant sunshine.

Järvi Conducts Mahler 7

Welcome the Year of the Snake with the San Francisco Symphony! Our annual Lunar New Year event draws upon Asian traditions, past and present, in a celebration of music and community.

Lunar New Year

The overlapping sound worlds of Stravinsky and Debussy outline a vivid realm of rhythm, revelry, and rip-roaring fun. The two composers shared a love for ancient dances, sun-splashed Spanish ballads, intoxicating orchestral colors, and the human body in motion. The endlessly inventive Yuja Wang brings her dramatic flair and interpretive finesse to this unusual program, ingeniously designed by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen to flow as seamlessly as a ballet.

Esa-pekka Salonen & Yuja Wang

A riot broke out at the 1913 premiere of The Rite of Spring—musical modernism’s Big Bang—and more than a century later, the ballet remains a thrilling provocation. Many leading pianists have avoided Sergei Prokofiev’s fiendishly difficult Second Piano Concerto, but it gives Daniil Trifonov plenty of opportunities to demonstrate his otherworldly talents. Opening this electrifying concert is an exciting new work by Xavier Muzik, the third winner of the Emerging Black Composers Project

Esa-pekka Salonen & Daniil Trifonov

This programme will be performed side by side with students from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as the culmination of a Music Residency with ASMF and Music Director Joshua Bell. Programme to be announced soon.

San Francisco Conservatory Of Music Residency With Joshua Bell

Settle in as the world’s most electrifying artists and ensembles converge at Davies Symphony Hall. Joshua Bell and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields return to Davies Symphony Hall for a program of favorites.

Joshua Bell & Academy Of St Martin In The Fields

It’s not Rachmaninoff’s fault that songwriters swiped his best hooks—like the sighing and songlike slow movement of his Second Symphony—and turned them into soft-rock earworms. If you’re going to steal, you might as well steal from the best. Conductor Robin Ticciati and debuting pianist Francesco Piemontesi make their case for Beethoven’s alluringly strange, strangely alluring Piano Concerto No. 4.

Ticciati Conducts Rachmaninoff

MainStage 3: String Serenades

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church

Discover the jaw-dropping artistry of next-gen talents as the 100 musicians of the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra come together to explore repertoire standards and new works alike.

San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra

Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake is a fairy tale made flesh: tender and violent, ethereal and primal. Thanks to Tchaikovsky’s music, you can watch the enchanted swans glide across the moon-dappled lake of your mind, no ballerinas needed. Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony inhabits a mood of exquisite longing. He called it “the best thing I ever composed or shall compose.

Chan Conducts All-tchaikovsky

Sit back, relax, and experience the best band in town at Teen Night. Dress up, dress down, and come as you are for a fun night out that is not your parents’ concert.

Teen Night

Settle in as the world’s most electrifying artists and ensembles converge at Davies Symphony Hall. A Bay Area favorite, the Israel Philharmonic returns to Davies Symphony Hall under the direction of Lahav Shani.

Israel Philharmonic

Brahms was dismayed by the lukewarm response to his sole Violin Concerto, but now it’s impossible to imagine the Romantic violin repertoire without it. Juraj Valčuha and Gil Shaham return for a luminous reading of the ultimate sleeper hit. Shostakovich’s intensely passionate, profoundly ambivalent Symphony No. 10 brims over with real-life references—ranging from a portrait of the late Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to musically coded proxies for the composer himself and the object of his hopeless midlife crush.

Juraj Valčuha & Gil Shaham

Marin Alsop guides the SF Symphony through an exhilarating journey that spans the United States, Venezuela, and Mexico, following the crosscurrents and commonalities of the countries’ many musical traditions. 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 to bring it all back home.

Orchestral events in San Francisco, CA

Peter And The Wolf

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MainStage 2: Celebration ...

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra

James Gaffigan & Ray Chen...

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Carmina Burana & Adams’ P...

San Francisco Symphony

Also Sprach Zarathustra

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Blomstedt Conducts Schube...

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Järvi Conducts Mahler 7

San Francisco Symphony

Lunar New Year

San Francisco Symphony

Esa-pekka Salonen & Yuja ...

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Esa-pekka Salonen & Danii...

San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco Conservator...

Academy of St. Martin in the Fields

Joshua Bell & Academy Of ...

San Francisco Symphony

Ticciati Conducts Rachman...

San Francisco Symphony

MainStage 3: String Seren...

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra

San Francisco Symphony Yo...

San Francisco Symphony

Chan Conducts All-tchaiko...

San Francisco Symphony

Teen Night

San Francisco Symphony

Israel Philharmonic

San Francisco Symphony

Juraj Valčuha & Gil Shaha...

San Francisco Symphony

Alsop Conducts Music Of T...

San Francisco Symphony