Esa-Pekka Salonen leaves the troubled San Francisco Symphony with Mahler's call for 'Resurrection'

SAN FRANCISCO — Saturday night, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted his San Francisco Symphony successful a staggering show of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, known arsenic the “Resurrection.” It was a ferocious show and an exalted 1 of gripping intensity.

This is simply a symphony emblematic for Mahler of beingness and death, an urgent questioning of wherefore we are here. After 80 minutes of the highest highs and lowest lows, of falling successful and retired of emotion with life, of smelling the astir sensual roses connected the satellite successful a hunt for renewal, resurrection arrives successful a blaze of amazement.

Mahler has nary answers for the intent of life. His triumph, and Salonen’s successful his overpowering performance, is successful the divine glory of keeping going, keeping asking.

The assemblage responded with a stunned and tumultuous lasting ovation. The musicians pounded their feet connected the Davies Symphony Hall stage, resisting Salonen’s urgings to basal and instrumentality a bow.

It was nary longer his San Francisco Symphony. After 5 years arsenic euphony director, Salonen had declined to renew his contract, saying helium didn’t stock the committee of trustees’ imaginativeness of the future.

“I person lone 2 things to say,” Salonen told the assemblage earlier exiting the stage.

“First: Thank you.

“Second: You’ve heard what you person successful this city. This astonishing orchestra, this astonishing chorus. So instrumentality bully attraction of them.”

Salonen, who happens to beryllium a spot of a tech nerd and is simply a science-fiction fan, had travel to San Francisco due to the fact that helium saw the Bay Area arsenic a spot wherever the aboriginal is foretold and the metropolis arsenic a spot that thinks otherwise and turns dreams into reality.

Here helium would proceed the benignant of translation of the orchestra into a conveyance for societal and technological bully that helium had begun successful his 17 years arsenic euphony manager of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It was to beryllium a glorious experimentation successful arts and nine successful a metropolis presumably acceptable to reclaim its ain past glory.

He had the vantage of pursuing successful the symphonic footsteps of Michael Tilson Thomas, who for 25 years had made the orchestra a person successful reflecting the civilization of its clip and place. Salonen brought successful a squad of young, venturesome “creative partners” from euphony and tech. He enlisted designer Frank Gehry to rethink performance venues for the city. He enactment unneurotic imaginative and ambitious projects with manager Peter Sellars. He made fabulous recordings.

There were obstacles. The COVID-19 pandemic meant the cancellation of what would person been Tilson Thomas’ ain intrepid farewell solemnisation 5 years agone — a accumulation of Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” with a acceptable by Gehry and staged by James Darrah (the daring creator manager of Long Beach Opera). Salonen’s archetypal play had to beryllium streamed during lockdown but became the astir technologically imaginative of immoderate isolated orchestra.

Like arts organizations everyplace and peculiarly successful San Francisco, which has had a harder clip than astir bouncing backmost from the pandemic, the San Francisco Symphony had its stock of budgetary problems. But it besides had, successful Salonen, a euphony manager who knew a happening oregon 2 astir however to get retired of them.

He had go euphony manager of the L.A. Phil successful 1992, erstwhile the metropolis was devastated by earthquake, riots and recession. The gathering of Walt Disney Concert Hall was astir to beryllium abandoned. The orchestra built up successful the adjacent fewer years a shortage of astir $17 million. The audience, immoderate of the musicians and the property needed awakening.

Salonen was connected the verge of resignation, but the medication stood down him, believing successful what helium and the orchestra could become. With the opening of Disney Hall successful 2003, the L.A. Phil transformed Los Angeles.

And for that opening, Salonen chose Mahler’s “Resurrection” for the archetypal of the orchestra’s subscription bid of concerts. Rebirth successful this thrillingly monolithic symphony for a monolithic orchestra and chorus, on with soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists, was writ exceedingly large, transparent and loud. On Oct. 30, 2003, with L.A. weathering grounds vigor and fires, Salonen’s Mahler exulted a amended future.

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 successful Davies Symphony Hall connected Saturday.

(Brandon Patoc / San Francisco Symphony)

The San Francisco Symphony has not followed the L.A. Phil example. It did not enactment its religion and fund successful Salonen’s vision, contempt 5 years of excitement. It did not amusement the metropolis however to emergence again. Next play is the archetypal successful 30 years that appears to beryllium without a mission.

In Disney 22 years ago, Salonen drew attraction to the sheer transformative powerfulness of sound. At the aforesaid clip Tilson Thomas had turned the San Francisco Symphony into the country’s astir expansive Mahler orchestra, and it was lone a fewer months aboriginal that helium performed the Second Symphony and recorded it successful Davies Symphony Hall successful a luminously expressive account. That signaling stands arsenic a reminder of the hopes backmost past of a caller century.

Salonen’s much acute approach, not precisely aggravated but exceptionally determined, was different benignant of monument to the powerfulness of sound. In quietest, hardly audible passages, the aerial successful the hallway had an electrical consciousness of calm earlier the storm. The monolithic climaxes pinned you to the wall.

The chorus, which appears successful the last question to exhort america to cease trembling and hole to live, proved its ain inspiration. The medication each but cost-cut the singers retired of the fund until saved by an anonymous donor. The 2 soloists, Heidi Stober and Sasha Cooke, soared arsenic needed.

Salonen moves on. Next week helium takes the New York Philharmonic connected an Asia tour. At Salzburg this summer, helium and Sellars signifier Schoenberg’s “Erwartung,” a task helium began with the San Francisco Symphony. At the Lucerne Festival, helium premieres his Horn Concerto with the Orchestre de Paris alternatively of the San Francisco Symphony, arsenic primitively intended.

Saturday’s performance had begun with a ludicrous but illuminating announcement to “sit backmost and unbend arsenic Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts your San Francisco Symphony.”

Salonen, instead, offered a wondrous metropolis a wake-up call.