Radu Paponiu

Radu Paponiu is a conductor scheduled to appear with the San Francisco Symphony across several programs, including Brahms's Fourth Symphony, Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, and a program pairing Gabriella Smith with Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony. These dates suggest a conductor comfortable with both core symphonic repertoire and family or contemporary programming.

In the Brahms 4 program, listeners can expect Thomas's short, playful "Agnegram" alongside Kodály's folk-inflected "Dances of Galánta," before Brahms's Fourth Symphony, a work built on a descending scale pattern that returns in transformed guises through its four movements, closing with a set of variations modeled on Baroque form. The Peter and the Wolf date is a narrated work where each character, the bird, the duck, the cat, the wolf, is given its own instrument and melodic tag, making it a common entry point for younger listeners. The later program mixes Gabriella Smith's "Tidalwave Kitchen," a newer orchestral work, with Ravel's gentle fairy-tale suite "Mother Goose" and Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony, a wartime-era piece known for its weighty brass writing and rhythmic drive.