San Francisco Symphony Puts Pop Into July

In Boston, during the mid-1960s, it was commonly accepted that there were three people in town who would never in their lives need to pay for a drink at one of that city’s taverns: Carl Yastrzemski, the slugging left fielder for the Red Sox; Bill Russell, the center for the Celtics’ perennial championship teams; and Arthur Fiedler, the indefatigable conductor of the Boston Pops.

Fiedler’s joyful introduction of popular classical repertoire over 50 years with the Boston and San Francisco Pops, as well as dozens of recordings, brought great music to the masses. Fiedler’s enthusiasm was so contagious and his reach so broad that his annual July 4th concerts at the Esplanade on the banks of the Charles became festive happenings that were broadcast nationwide. Whether in the audience or watching the concert on the television in your living room, it was impossible not to feel the transformative power of music when the Pops performed the 1812 Overture, which regularly culminated with fireworks exploding over Bean Town.

Thirty years after his death, Fiedler would no doubt approve of the San Francisco Symphony’s July “My Classic” concert series at Davies Symphony Hall featuring timeless classical music favorites. Two of these concerts, My Classic American Composers on July 2, and My Classic Tchaikovsky on July 3, even celebrate the Independence Day theme popularized by Fiedler.

Conductor James Gaffigan devotes the “My Classic American Composers” concert to works by Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin. The program features Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, a suite of orchestral music based on his score of the 1957 musical, and Music from the Film On the Waterfront, the only film score composed by Bernstein and one of his most satisfying orchestral works.

Pianist Gabriela Montero performs Gershwin’s masterpiece, Rhapsody in Blue, the work that combines elements of classical music with jazz and remains one of the most popular American concert works. The piece will be paired with An American in Paris, Gershwin’s equally popular tone poem elicited from his time spent in the French capital during the 1920s.

The "My Classic Tchaikovsky" concert includes musical excerpts from the Russian composer’s ballets Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. Inon Barnatan (read an interview), a recent winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, will perform the impassioned Piano Concerto No. 1. The program will conclude with the 1812 Overture, just as Arthur Fiedler would have had it.