Marie Jacquot is scheduled to make her San Francisco Symphony Orchestral Series debut November 13–15, on a program that pairs a late-Romantic rescue myth with a violin concerto the orchestra has barely touched.
The weekend also brings the symphony its first performances of Augusta Holmès's Andromède, according to BroadwayWorld's account of the November programming. Violinist Sayaka Shoji joins for Ottorino Respighi's Concerto gregoriano, and the bill includes selections from Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.
Two European Posts, One Guest Week
Jacquot has been principal conductor of the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen since the 2024/25 season. With the start of the 2026/27 season she takes up the chief conductorship of the WDR Sinfonieorchester, the orchestra's own profile says.
That puts the San Francisco dates inside the season of the Cologne appointment, not in some earlier chapter of the résumé. BroadwayWorld's listing already identifies her with both the Royal Danish Theatre and the WDR Symphony Orchestra.
The same WDR profile describes a repertoire that includes championed works by Holmès, alongside Marc-André Dalbavie and Kristine Tjøgersen. The local firsts are specific to San Francisco; the composer's name is not new to the conductor's public record.
A Poem Finished in 1883
Holmès composed Andromède in 1883. It was not premiered until January 14, 1900, Bru Zane Mediabase records — seventeen years between the writing and a first hearing.
The poem tells the story of Cassiopeia's daughter Andromeda and her rescue from a sea monster by Perseus. BroadwayWorld's shorter gloss is the same myth: a symphonic poem about the daughter of Cassiopeia. San Francisco is coming to it late, but not as late as the nineteenth century did.
Respighi, Last Heard Here in 1931
Shoji's concerto has a longer local gap. Program notes carried on Encore+ identify March 1931 as the symphony's first and only previous performance of Respighi's Concerto Gregoriano, with Issay Dobrowen conducting and Jascha Veissi as soloist.
The November announcement calls the score expressive and inspired by the music of early Christianity. Ninety-five years after that March date, Shoji is the next violinist the orchestra has scheduled for it. One prior soloist is not a tradition. It is a footnote.
Prokofiev on the Marquee
The concerts are billed under Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, and the program includes selections from the ballet. That is the familiar title on the November listing. Holmès and Respighi are the pieces the symphony has not made routine.
Three performances are set, November 13 through 15. By Sunday night the orchestra will have given Andromède its first local hearings and added a second documented performance of the Respighi to a history that, until now, stopped in March 1931.
