Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony will take audiences down Memory Lane — though few are alive to remember — to showcase music from San Francisco’s early days.
The program, Barbary Coast & Beyond: Music from the Gold Rush to the Panama-Pacific Expo-sition, will be performed on May 10, 11, and 12. With guest soloists Laura Claycomb, Cameron Carpenter, Vadim Gluz-man, and Anton Nel, the Symphony will include music from the Gold Rush era. That’s 1848. The program concludes with music from the 1915 Exposition, S.Fs own World’s Fair, to demonstrate that the city destroyed by the earthquake and fire rose from the ashes.
Pianist Anton Nel will play Gottschalk’s Grande Tarantelle. Organist Cameron Carpenter will perform a work written by Camille Saint-Saën in honor of the Exposition, “Hail! California.” Soprano Laura Claycomb will sing a collection of songs from California’s early days.
The Symphony’s 100th birthday will be observed with the third movement from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 6, which was included in the Symphony’s 1911 debut. Special honors will go to historical figures Luisa Tetrazzini and Fritz Kreisler, who performed benefit concerts following the 1906 quake and fire. Each program concludes with a sing-along of “Oh My Darling Clementine” and the inevitable “California, Here I Come.”
Barbary Coast & Beyond: Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Avenue (at Grove), 8 p.m. Thursday–Saturday, May 10–12, $35–$145, 415-864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org
