Conductor Elim Chan has been named the new music director of the San Francisco Symphony.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
In appointing Elim Chan as its next music director, the San Francisco Symphony has tapped the most inexperienced, unproven new artistic leader the organization has had in more than 40 years.
The choice could not have been wiser or more opportune.
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There are many ways in which Chan’s arrival represents a new step for the Symphony. Most obviously, she’s the first woman to occupy the music directorship in the orchestra’s 115 year history. She’s not quite the first Asian conductor to be chosen — Seiji Ozawa beat her to those laurels in 1970 — but she certainly represents an about-face from the all-white parade of music directors that has characterized most of the past century and more.
But among those distinctions is the noteworthy fact that Chan comes to San Francisco with a slimmer track record than any of her three predecessors.
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Esa-Pekka Salonen, then 62, was already one of the world’s leading conductors, with a glorious 17-year tenure at the Los Angeles Philharmonic on his résumé, when the Symphony pulled off the astonishing coup in 2020 of hiring him.
At 51, Michael Tilson Thomas was already an international celebrity with a huge discography and a glamorous profile when he arrived in San Francisco in 1995.
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Before that, the 58-year-old Herbert Blomstedt brought with him an unimpeachable (though largely European) reputation as well as a long and honorable artistic track record.
All three of these artists were hired with the expectation that they would bring their cachet, their extensive experience and their high profiles to the orchestra.
Chan’s is another story entirely.
Elim Chan conducts the San Francisco Symphony during a concert at Davies Symphony Hall in 2023. Chan, 39, has been named the orchestra’s new music director after a two-year search.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
At 39, she’s not quite the youngest music director in the orchestra’s history. Both Ozawa and his successor, Edo de Waart, edge her out by a few years. But she comes to San Francisco with a paper-thin résumé — a blink-and-you-missed it engagement with a little-known Swedish opera company and a shortened stint with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra that was largely overshadowed by the COVID-19 shutdown.
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She also has a slim discography consisting of just two recordings: a Chopin recording on Decca Records with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, and another with Antwerp on the Alpha Classics label featuring Elizabeth Ogonek, Prokofiev and Ravel.
She’s made just three guest appearances in Davies Symphony Hall, with a fourth scheduled for June 5-6. We don’t really know much about what she can or will do in San Francisco. It’s all a glorious gamble.
Could I be more excited? I could not.
Broadly speaking, there are two approaches an orchestra can take when making a leadership decision of this magnitude. One — let’s call it the Salonen Plan — is to go in hard for a big name, on the assumption either that your orchestra is a similarly A-list outfit (the Berlin Philharmonic can presumably snap up anyone it wants), or that it can be made to seem so by attracting an A-list music director.
Alternatively, the Chan Plan is to bring in promising but untested talent in the hopes that a new, fruitful relationship will blossom. The idea is that orchestra and conductor will grow into a symbiotic pairing that develops together. It’s a high-risk, high-reward strategy.
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Elim Chan leads the San Francisco Symphony during a concert at Davies Symphony Hall in 2023. Chan, who has been named the orchestra’s new music director, has a résumé that includes an engagement with a Swedish opera company and a stint with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
Sports devotees will have noticed by now that this choice is exactly analogous to those facing the managers of athletic franchises. Do you spend heavily to sign that home-run hitter in hopes of mounting a pennant drive this year? Or do you pull back and devote your resources to a rebuilding year?
In music as in sports, there’s no correct answer to these questions. It all depends on the circumstances.
When an organization is in a strong position, as the San Francisco Symphony was toward the end of Thomas’ magnificent 25-year tenure, it makes sense to capitalize on those successes by hiring a star as glittery as Salonen.
Conversely, when an organization is struggling to find its feet in the wake of a disaster like Salonen’s departure, the canny move can often be to start over and try to build your way out of the ashes.
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Sometimes, if you pick your shots accurately, the results can be triumphal. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, most notably, won this particular lottery twice in quick succession.
The Southern California orchestra appointed the little-known Salonen as its music director when he was barely 30, and named the 26-year-old wunderkind Gustavo Dudamel as his successor based on two guest appearances. Both went on to become two of the world’s leading orchestral figures.
Is Chan headed down the same path?
Listen, if I could predict that, I’d be playing the stock market. But from firsthand experience, I can attest that every indication so far suggests favorable odds.
Conductor Elim Chan, seen here with the San Francisco Symphony during a concert at Davies Symphony Hall in 2023, has been named the orchestra’s new music director.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
All three of Chan’s guest appearances in San Francisco have been powerhouses of technical rigor and expressive depth, from her introduction of Ogonek’s gorgeous “Moondog” in 2023 through her probing, thoughtful renditions of music by Tchaikovsky, Britten and Holst.
She’s a charismatic, ebullient presence both onstage and off. She seems to have won the confidence of the orchestra’s musicians, and to return their high opinion.
Clearly, this was precisely the moment for the San Francisco Symphony to be courting a prodigiously gifted conductor with a lot still to learn — and a lot to prove. Whatever the coming years may bring, the next chapter of the Symphony’s history promises to be exciting and unpredictable.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Elim Chan has released two commercial recordings.
Joshua Kosman is the Chronicle’s classical music critic emeritus.