Arts & Events

It came as a surprise when Essa-Pekka Salonen announced last week that he would not extend his tenure as Music Director at San Francisco Symphony beyond the 2024-25 season. Salonen cited as his reason that there were differences between him and the Symphony’s Board of Governors over future directions for the Symphony. 

Back in 2018 when it was announced that Essa-Pekka Salonen would take over the helm of San Francisco Symphony in 2020, I was not entirely pleased. My choice to succeed MTT was another Finnish conductor, Susanna Mallki. While recognizing Salonen’s credentials, I was not pleased by his stated intentions to offer mixed-media visuals to Synphony concerts. This had already been a sore spot for me during Michael Tilson Thomas’s tenure at SF Symphony, and I had deplored MTT’s sophomoric infatuation with mixed-media visuals accompanying classical music. 

Once Salonen took over at SF Symphony, thankfully, most of his efforts to add mixed-media visuals were done at the Symphony’s Soundbox, a venue for contemporary digital innovations. Meanwhile, Salonen’s programming for the Symphony at Davies Hall continued to combine respect for the traditional repertoire and new works. By far the high point of Salonen’s tenure here, in my opinion, was his production in June 2023 of Kaijja Saariaho’s opera Adriana Mater, which happened to be presented here just days after Saariaho’s death. Salonen had a long-standing friendship and professional relationship with Kaija Saariaho, and he had conducted the premiere performance of her Adriana Mater in Paris back in 2006. As for Salonen’s other offerings of new music at SF Symphony, his own compositions were uninspiring, witness his strained Violin Concerto written for Leila Josefowicz or his vapid Cello Concerto written for Yo-Yo Ma. 

While Salonen’s unimpeachable skill as a conductor was in ample evidence here, perhaps especially in works by his fellow Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, Salonen’s programming failed to lure SF audiences to consistently attend post-pandemic concerts. Indeed, the pandemic itself, whose onset came shortly after Salonen took over at SF Symphony in 2020, may have been a major factor in causing the rethinking of the Symphony’s Board of Governors about Salonen’s ambitious plans for an expanded future. Now that Salonen has announced he will not extend his tenure here beyond 2025, SF Symphony faces a daunting challenge in replacing him. My choice, once again, would be Susanna Mallki. But Mallki is Associate Conductor at Los Angeles Philharmonic, and with Gustavo Dudamel leaving LA Phil to assume the post at New York Philhamonic, Susanna Mallki may be the favorite to succeed Dudamel at LA Phil, and thus it may be difficult to pry her away from that prestigious orchestra with whom she has long been affiliated. 

If Mallki cannot be induced to come here, there is one other female conductor I would nominate as our future music director, and that is Karina Canellakis, whose guest performances here in recent years have been inspiring, even thrilling. She will again lead theSF Symphony as GuestConductor on April 18-20 in a program of Strauss and Ravel. Audiences, as well as the Symphony’s Board of Governors, may well treat these performances as an audition.