At the San Francisco Symphony it's new year, new stuff. The 1992 Ligeti violin concerto will be heard live in San Francisco for the first time ever tomorrow through Sunday. You may recall Ligeti from the soundtrack of 2001, A Space Odyssey or from the San Francisco Polyphony, an early 70s commission of the SF Symphony he wrote shortly after a six month stint as Composer in Residence at the farm. Ligeti (1923-2006) may be another dead European composer, but unlike them Wolfgangs and Ludwigs, he took the trouble to visit and write stuff for us.

If you clicked on the Space Odyssey link, you heard the 1966 Lux Aeterna, which brings us to the German violinist Christian Tetzlaff, born on that year, who will windmill his bow through the tricky score. Tetzlaff visits SF and all major stages regularly and can soothe our ears in both the classic and the modern repertoire. We had a bunch of question about the concerto, so we skyped him to his house near Frankfurt to find out more.