SF Symphony Youth Orchestra's Season Gets Underway

The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (SFSYO) and Wattis Foundation Music Director Christian Reif open their first season together on Sunday, November 13 at 2pm in Davies Symphony Hall, with the SFSYO’s 2016 Concerto Competition winner, Jason Moon, performing Sibelius’s Violin Concerto with the Orchestra. The concert opens with Henze’s Maenad’s Dance from The Bassarids, and the Orchestra performs Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor to conclude the performance.

Photo Credit: Stefan Cohen

Reif leads the SFSYO musicians in three additional concerts this season, including a December 11 holiday concert performance of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, featuring Grammy Award-winning singer and Rock and Roll Hall-of-Famer Linda Ronstadt as guest narrator.

On March 5, 2017, the Orchestra performs a pair of symphonies: Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G major and Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C major, Jupiter, with Barber’s Second Essay for Orchestra completing the program. On May 14, 2017, Reif and the young musicians conclude their season with a performance of Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 2, Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler, and Brahms’s Symphony No. 4 in E minor.

“I love the music of Hans Werner Henze, because of its power and energy and his imaginative musical voice,” Christian Reif says of the first program’s repertoire. “I thought it would be a great way to start the season, because he’s one of the great German composers of the 20th century, and I want to share his music—music from my home—with these students. Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler is also one of the pieces that is dearest to me. It’s a phenomenal work, with music from his opera of the same name. It gets played far too rarely.”