In This Program
The Concert
Sunday, March 9, 2025, at 2:00pm
Radu Paponiu conducting
Wattis Foundation Music Director
San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Symphony No. 35 in D major, K.385, Haffner (1782)
Allegro con spirito
Andante
Menuetto
Finale: Presto
Gabriela Lena Frank
Elegía Andina (2000)
Intermission
Richard Strauss
Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Opus 59 (1911/45)
Entrance of the Rose Cavalier and Duet
Ochs-Waltzes
Tenor Aria
[Breakfast Scene]
Trio
[Closing Duet]
Arturo Márquez
Danzón No. 2 (1994)
The Youth Orchestra concerts are supported by
Additional sponsorship for Youth Orchestra concerts is provided by The Hearst Foundations, National Endowment for the Arts, and Alexander M. & June L. Maisin Foundation.
Program Notes
Symphony No. 35 in D major, K.385, Haffner
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born: January 27, 1756, in Salzburg
Died: December 5, 1791, in Vienna
Work Composed: 1782
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings
Duration: About 17 minutes
The Haffner Symphony was written in Vienna, but it is tied to Mozart’s earlier Salzburg life. Sigmund Haffner would not think it inappropriate that the town he served as mayor and where he made his fortune as a wholesale merchant named a street for him, but the visitor to Salzburg who smiles upon seeing the enameled sign that says Sigmund‑Haffner‑Gasse does so because the name conjures up music, Mozart’s music.
Haffner, who had come from Imbach in the Tyrol, had been a useful friend to the young Mozart and particularly to his father, Leopold, sometimes providing introductions and letters of credit as the two journeyed about Europe. He died in 1772. Four years later, his daughter Marie Elisabeth—Liserl—married Franz Xaver Späth, a shipping agent, and for a garden party on the wedding day, July 29, 1776, the bride’s brother, another Sigmund Haffner, commissioned a festive music. That is the Haffner Serenade, K.250.
In 1782, the Haffners again had cause to celebrate. The young Sigmund—he was exactly Mozart’s age—was ennobled and took the name of von Imbachausen. This time, too, he wanted music by Mozart. Leopold forwarded the request to Vienna. The timing could hardly have been worse. Mozart was, as he wrote to his father on July 20, “up to my eyeballs in work.” He had students. Complications threatened his imminent marriage to Constanze Weber on August 4. The Abduction from the Seraglio had just had a hugely successful premiere at the Burgtheater, and by the 28th he had to arrange the score for wind instruments, “otherwise somebody else will beat me to it and get the profits. And now I’m supposed to produce a new symphony! . . . [But] for you, dearest father, I’ll make the sacrifice. You will for sure get something from me in every mail—I’ll work as fast as possible—and so far as haste permits, I’ll write well.”
What he sent to Salzburg between July 27 and August 7 was not, however, the Haffner Symphony we now know, but another serenade with introductory march and two minuets. We encounter the piece again in a letter of Mozart’s dated December 21. He has decided to play it at his Lenten concert in Vienna and asks his father to send the score along from Salzburg, a request he has to repeat a couple of times. By February 15, though, it has arrived because he writes: “The new Haffner Symphony has positively amazed me, for I had forgotten every single note of it. It must surely produce a good effect.” It did.
Mozart had converted the Haffner from party music to symphony by dropping the introductory (and closing) march and one minuet. He also enriched the sound by adding two flutes and two clarinets to his original wind group. The new winds have, however, nothing independent to do. They only double what is there already, but the doublings, particularly the ones an octave above or below, are cannily done and make a fine effect. They also occur only in the first and last movements. Mozart’s most provocative alteration, though, is in striking out the double bar with repeat signs at the end of the first movement’s exposition.
The Music
The Haffner’s first movement is unusual and striking indeed. We have already seen that this Allegro “amazed” him when he got it back from Salzburg after not having thought about it for six months. Part of his shock—and delight—will have come from seeing a score in which he had done something unprecedented for him, namely to build an entire movement where the first idea is virtually never absent and in which no other idea of comparable weight or profile is introduced. Part of the necessity behind the convention of the repeat is that of better acquainting the listener with the material to be developed and then interestingly recapitulated. With the one theme already so dominant, the necessity disappears, and convention can go with it.
After adventure, the Andante and Minuet come as stuff for relaxation. It is courtly, enchanting Salzburg party music in excelsis. The Finale is naughty and conspiratorial, full of surprising extensions and diversions, and as effervescent as the von Haffners’ champagne.
—Michael Steinberg
Elegía Andina
Gabriela Lena Frank
Born: September 1972, in Berkeley, California
Work Composed: 2000
Instrumentation: 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets, 2 horns, timpani, percussion (glockenspiel, triangles, slapstick, suspended cymbal, temple blocks, woodblock), and strings
Duration: About 12 minutes
Gabriela Lena Frank often explores her multicultural heritage through her compositions, opening broad possibilities since her mother was of Peruvian-Chinese ancestry and her father of Lithuanian-Jewish descent. Many of her works incorporate poetry, mythology, and native musical styles that she has studied in South America. “There’s usually a story line behind my music—a scenario or character,” she said.
A graduate of Rice University in Houston and the University of Michigan, where she earned her doctorate in composition, Frank has been a composer-in-residence at the Philadelphia Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and Detroit Symphony, as well as with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and Aspen Music Center. She is deeply committed to social causes. In 2017 she established the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and in 2020 she was honored with the Heinz Award for “weaving Latin American influences into classical constructs and breaking gender, disability, and cultural barriers in classical music composition.” It surprises many to learn that Frank, who is also a virtuoso pianist, achieved her expertise despite being born with near-profound hearing loss.
Nearly all of her compositions relate to Latin American sounds and traditions, including her much-performed Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout and her first opera, El último sueño de Frida y Diego (The Last Dream of Frida and Diego), which San Francisco Opera produced in 2023. She has provided this comment about Elegía Andina:
Elegía Andina is dedicated to my older brother, Marcos Gabriel Frank. As children of a multicultural marriage . . . , our early days were filled with Chinese stir-fry cuisine, Andean nursery songs, and frequent visits from our New York–bred Jewish cousins. As a young piano student, my repertoire included not only my own compositions that carried overtones from Peruvian folk music but also rags of Scott Joplin and minuets by the sons of Bach. It is probably inevitable then that as a composer and pianist today, I continue to thrive on multiculturalism.
Elegía Andina (Andean Elegy) is one of my first written-down compositions to explore what it means to be of several ethnic persuasions, of several minds. It uses stylistic elements of Peruvian arca/ira zampoña panpipes (double-row panpipes, each row with its own tuning) to paint an elegiac picture of my questions. The flute part was particularly conceived with this in mind but was also inspired by the technical and musical mastery of Floyd Hebert, principal flutist of the Albany [New York] Symphony Orchestra. In addition, as already mentioned, I can think of none better to dedicate this work to than to “Babo,” my big brother—for whom Perú still waits.
—James M. Keller
Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Opus 59
Richard Strauss
Born: June 11, 1864, in Munich
Died: September 8, 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany
Work Composed: 1911 (Suite—1945)
Instrumentation: 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (3rd doubling English horn), 3 clarinets (3rd doubling E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet), 3 bassoons (3rd doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (triangle, cymbals, tambourine, ratchet, snare drum, and bass drum), harp, celesta, and strings
Duration: About 21 minutes
In 1909, Richard Strauss was, with Puccini, the most famous and the richest composer alive. He had written a string of orchestral works, many of which had become indispensable repertoire items; he had emerged as an important song composer; and latterly, with Salome and Elektra, he had made his mark in the opera world, and in a big way.
In 1903 he had seen Max Reinhardt’s Berlin production of a new adaptation of Sophocles’s Electra by the then 28-year-old Viennese poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It interested him as possible operatic material, but not until 1906 did he ask von Hofmannsthal for permission to set the play. It was the prelude to an extraordinary working friendship that lasted through a further half dozen projects until the poet’s death in 1929. Their collaboration really began with Der Rosenkavalier. Drawing on a broad range of sources, von Hofmannsthal provided a libretto that, Strauss said, virtually set itself to music.
To summarize baldly: Der Rosenkavalier is about an aristocratic married lady in her early 30s, wife of Field Marshal von Werdenberg, who loses her younger lover (who is also her cousin) when he falls in love with a bourgeois girl his own age. But of course there is more to it than that—it is about what Flaubert called “sentimental education,” the incalculable powers of love and passion, social climbing, the subtle messages of language, the mysterious passage of time, grace under fire. Not least, it is about gorgeous singing and fragrant orchestral textures.
An impoverished country cousin, Baron Ochs, comes to the Marshall’s wife, the Marschallin, as she is known in Viennese patois, for advice. He has arranged to become engaged to Sophie von Faninal, the sweet young daughter of a nouveau riche army contractor who is as eager to benefit from Ochs’s title as Ochs is to get hold of some of the Faninal money. Custom—and this is entirely an invention of von Hofmannsthal’s—demands that the formal proposal of marriage be preceded by the presentation to the prospective bride of a silver rose: can she suggest a young man of suitable background and bearing to take on the role of the rose-bearing knight, the “Rosenkavalier”? She suggests Octavian, her cousin-lover. He and Sophie fall in love at first sight. By means of a series of degrading tricks, the projected Ochs-Faninal alliance is undermined, and the Marschallin and Ochs renounce Octavian and Sophie respectively, the former with sentimental dignity, the latter in an atmosphere of rowdy farce.
The Suite
We hear the Prelude, which depicts the boiling passion between Marschallin and Octavian; Octavian’s presentation of the rose to the blushing Sophie; the waltz in which Ochs declares that women find him irresistible; the three simultaneous soliloquies of the Marschallin, Octavian, and Sophie, just after Octavian, not without an angry nudge from the Marschallin, has found the courage to cross the stage from his old love to his new; the final duet of Octavian and Sophie; and, for a bang-up finale, another of Ochs’s waltzes.
The first Rosenkavalier Suite came out as early as 1911 and was credited to N. Nambuat (presumably there was a Mr. Taubmann who worked as an arranger for Otto Farstner, the opera’s original publisher). The score of the suite played at this concert, which bears the copyright date of 1945 and was first played by the New York Philharmonic under Artur Rodzinski on October 5, 1944, credits no arranger. Rodzinski himself probably had a hand in the arrangement, and possibly Leonard Bernstein, then the orchestra’s assistant conductor, did too. It was published with the blessing of the composer, then desperately in need of income after World War II.
—M.S.
Danzón No. 2
Arturo Márquez
Born: December 20, 1950, in Álamos, Sonora, Mexico
Work Composed: 1994
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (cymbal, claves, guiro, snare drum, tom-toms, and bass drum), piano, and strings
Duration: About 10 minutes
Arturo Márquez studied composition in Mexico City and Paris before receiving his master’s degree at the California Institute of the Arts in 1990. One of Mexico’s best-known composers, his awards include grants from the Fulbright and Rockefeller foundations. By the time he was 40, Márquez began to move away from his earlier avant-garde style to a more populist approach, as exemplified by his seven danzones, inspired by a Cuban ballroom style.
Márquez composed Danzón No. 2 in 1994, and it became widely popular in 2007 when Gustavo Dudamel took it on tour with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra. As commentator Jeffrey M. Edgmond has written, the piece “features swaying sensuality, sharp effervescence, and a big finish.”
—J.M.K.
About the Artists
Radu Paponiu
Radu Paponiu was appointed Wattis Foundation Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra at the beginning of this season. He recently completed a five-year tenure as associate conductor of the Naples (Florida) Philharmonic and a seven-year tenure as music director of the Naples Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. He has also served as music director of the Southwest Florida Symphony, assistant conductor of the Naples Philharmonic, and as a member of the conducting faculty of the Juilliard Pre-College.
As a guest conductor, Paponiu has appeared with the Romanian National Radio Symphony, Teatro Comunale di Bologna Orchestra, Transylvania State Philharmonic, Banatul Philharmonic, Louisiana Philharmonic, Rockford Symphony, Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony, California Young Artists Symphony, and National Repertory Orchestra. He has collaborated with soloists such as Evgeny Kissin, Yefim Bronfman, Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham, Midori, Vladimir Feltsman, Robert Levin, Charles Yang, Nancy Zhou, Stella Chen, and the Ébène Quartet.
Born in Romania, Paponiu began his musical studies on the violin at age seven, came to the United States at the invitation of the Perlman Music Program, and later completed two degrees in violin performance at the Colburn School. He went on to earn a master’s degree in orchestral conducting at New England Conservatory, where he studied with Hugh Wolff.
San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra
The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra is recognized internationally as one of the finest youth orchestras in the world.
Founded by the San Francisco Symphony in 1981, the SFSYO’s musicians are chosen from more than 300 applicants in annual auditions. The SFSYO’s purpose is to provide an orchestral experience of preprofessional caliber, tuition-free, to talented young musicians. The more than 100 musicians, ranging in age from 12 to 21, represent communities from throughout the Bay Area. The SFSYO rehearses and performs at Davies Symphony Hall under the direction of Radu Paponiu, who joined the San Francisco Symphony as Wattis Foundation Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra in the 2024–25 season. Jahja Ling served as the SFSYO’s first Music Director, followed by David Milnes, Leif Bjaland, Alasdair Neale, Edwin Outwater, Benjamin Shwartz, Donato Cabrera, Christian Reif, and Daniel Stewart.
As part of the SFSYO’s innovative training program, musicians from the San Francisco Symphony coach the young players each Saturday afternoon in sectional rehearsals, followed by full orchestra rehearsals with Radu Paponiu. Youth Orchestra members regularly meet and work with world-renowned artists: Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas, Herbert Blomstedt, Kurt Masur, John Adams, Yo-Yo Ma, Valery Gergiev, Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin, Wynton Marsalis, Midori, Joshua Bell, Mstislav Rostropovich, Simon Rattle, and many others have worked with the Youth Orchestra. Of equal importance, Youth Orchestra members are able to speak with these prominent musicians about their professional and personal experiences, and about music. The ensemble has toured Europe and Asia, given sold-out concerts in such legendary halls as Berlin’s Philharmonie, Vienna’s Musikverein, Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and won first prize in Vienna’s International Youth and Music Festival.
Youth Orchestra Donors
The San Francisco Symphony gratefully acknowledges the following donors who have made a recent contribution of $500 or more to the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra through December 29, 2024.
Vikrum Aiyer & Amber Parrish
Mrs. Laura Alster-Martin & Ms. Elaine Alster
Mr. Anthony Banks
Paul & Kathy Bissinger Oboe Chair in memory of William Bennett
Maggie & Less Chafen
Dr. & Mrs. Yanek S. Y. Chiu
Mr. Iain Cole
Vicki & David Fleishhacker
Elizabeth J. Folger
Teri Follett♪
Ms. Donalynne A. Fuller♪
Anonymous
Ms. Xinxin Guo
Mr. Jonathan Hayes
Randy Hensley & Allan Hurst
Hurlbut-Johnson Fund
Alan L.# & Carol M. Kaganov♪
Mr. Lee M. Baxter & Ms. Ursula Kaiser
Nicole C. Kelly
Lapporte-Frankel Family Philanthropic Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation
Ms. Jie Li
Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Liebes
Dr. C Lim
Mr. Stephan Loh
Sidne J. Long
Mr. Samuel Luckenbill
Alexander M. & June L. Maisin Foundation of the Jewish Community Federation & Endowment Fund
National Endowment for the Arts
The Bernard Osher Foundation
Mary Ann Peoples
Dr. Robert W. Popper
Mr. Jon Steinsson
Mr. & Mrs. Alex Wolf
Yee Family Trust honors Kum Mo Kim,
Violinist with the SF Symphony
♪Pierre Monteux Society member
#Deceased
San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra
First Violins
Ian Cheung, Co-Concertmaster
Euisun Hong, Co-Concertmaster
Madison Lin, Co-Concertmaster
Xinyan Shi, Co-Concertmaster
Lawrence V. Metcalf Chair
Thais Chernyavsky
Connor Chin
Hyesun Hong
Isaiah Iny-Woods
Ella Jeon
Harry Jo
Spencer Kogoma
Andre Lu
Aaron Ma
Henry Miller
Lisa Saito
Jenna Son
Luke Spivey
Joy Wang
Second Violins
Valery Breshears, Co-Principal
Sydney Li-Jenkins, Co-Principal
Asher Cupp
Udo Funke
Christina Hong
Maximilian Huang
Kayla Hwang
Constance Kuan
William Liang
Veronica Qiu
Carolyn Ren
Yujin Shin
Henry Stroud
Kate Vo
Lucy Wang
Junnosuke Yanagisawa
Katherine Yoo
Andrew Zhang
Violas
Andrew Hwang, Co-Principal
Bryan Im, Co-Principal
Rebekah Sung, Co-Principal
Harper Berry
Jamie Cheung
Timothy Cheung
Ethan Han
Jaydon Li
Haoching Liu
Charlotte Elise Lopez
Olivia Park
Yufei Shen
Kenji Sor
Nicole Targosz
Katherine Yang
Cellos
Starla Breshears, Co-Principal
Huisun Hong, Co-Principal
Benjamin Jiang, Co-Principal
Melissa Lam, Co-Principal
Irei Fromme
Gabriel Irazabal
Claire Law
Kenneth Ma
Seoyeon Moon
Claire Topper
Keiya Wada
Cara Wang
Basses
Alec Blair, Co-Principal
Raiden Tan, Co-Principal
Joshua Ahn
Shreyas Anand
Youmy Gonzalez
Haku Homma
Vera Kolodko
Jackson Pascual
Allison Prakalapakorn
Flutes
Sophia Bian
Diego Fernandez
Cadence Liu
Yuzuka Williams
Oboes
Gabriel Chodos
Nicholas Karr
Jesse Spain
Valerie Xu
Clarinets
Ryan Beiter
Subin Kim
Hanting Liu
Adam Thyr
Bassoons
Adam Erlebacher
Zach Noble
Chelsea Park
Aya Watanabe
Horns
Thomas Chang
Violet MacAvoy
Samay Sayala
Owen Sheridan
Nicholas Taylor
Trumpets
Kanon Homma
Logan Manildi
Mason Rogers
Trombones
Mason Chambers
Thomas Valle
Tuba
Sean Taburaza
Timpani & Percussion
Leo Chun
Gabriela Garcia
Jeffrey Lee
Matthew Pizzi
Naoto Watanabe
Alexander Xie
Harp
Jessica Cheung
Camille Chu
Keyboard
Dylan Hall
Radu Paponiu,
Wattis Foundation Music Director
Coaching Faculty
David Chernyavsky, violin
In Sun Jang, violin
Chen Zhao, violin
Adam Smyla, viola
Jill Brindel, cello
David Goldblatt, cello
Stephen Tramontozzi, bass
Catherine Payne, flute
Russ de Luna, oboe
Matthew Griffith, clarinet
Jerome Simas, clarinet
Justin Cummings, bassoon
Jesse Clevenger, horn
Jeff Biancalana, trumpet
Christopher Bassett, trombone & tuba
Jacob Nissly, percussion & timpani
Marty Thenell, percussion & timpani
Katherine Siochi, harp
Marc Shapiro, keyboard
Youth Orchestra Administration
Ron Gallman, Director of Education and
Youth Orchestra
Daniel Hallett, Associate Director,
Youth Orchestra Program
Katie Lee, Youth Orchestra
Administrative Apprentice
Charlotte Elise Lopez, Youth Orchestra
Library Apprentice
Lily Wang, Youth Orchestra
Library Apprentice
