San Francisco Symphony

At age 6, Mozart charmed the Empress Maria Theresa with his mature artistry. At age 16, Mendelssohn wrote his first masterpiece. Throughout history, there have been children whose abilities exceed those of most others. One of these is the astonishing 16-year-old violinist María Dueñas. Making her San Francisco Symphony debut, she performs Mendelssohn’s masterful Violin Concerto. Written for a childhood friend and a fellow former prodigy, the Mendelssohn Concerto flows from its insistent opening to its gamboling finale with near perfection—a word often used in describing Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony. The last of Mozart’s symphonies, the Jupiter is filled with such radiance and majesty, someone named it after the king of the gods -- and it stuck. This week, the brilliant Polish-born, German-based conductor Marek Janowski makes his much-anticipated return to the San Francisco Symphony.