Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the San Francisco Symphony in a program for first responders, featuring string works by Jean Sibelius, George Walker, Carl Nielsen, Caroline Shaw, and Edward Grieg, at Davies Symphony Hall on May 6, 2021. Courtesy.

SAN FRANCISCO — The city moved into the yellow tier of California’s reopening plan on Thursday, which means indoor concerts officially returned as the San Francisco Symphony welcomed concertgoers back for the first time in more than a year, and for the first time with Esa-Pekka Salonen as music director. The symphony reopened at 35 percent capacity Thursday and Friday at Davies Symphony Hall for concerts primarily for first responders and other community leaders during the pandemic, with more concerts each Thursday and Friday through June.

“Being together and sharing live music is an amazing thing,” Salonen said to Friday’s audience, before, apropos, “Excuse me while I fix my mask.”

Beginning May 13 and 14, the symphony will be able to host at 50 percent capacity, which translates to 1,371 available seats. The first week’s program included the works of Nordic and American composers. It consisted of works written for strings, since brass and woodwind are still not allowed due to pandemic protocols. About 25 musicians represented the symphony, masked and distanced from each other, creating for a spartan appearance but a lush, full sound. Attendees, who needed to provide proof of full vaccination or negative COVID-19 test and wear masks, were also physically distanced throughout the concert hall. Yet none of that took away from the momentous occasion.

“The biggest difference really is a sort of exhale and joy, knowing that rather than having a microphone this close to your your head as you’re trying to execute something for online content, it’s going to actually have an acoustic, alive two-way communication with the audience and your colleagues on stage, which just hasn’t happened since over a year ago,” violist Matthew Young said following Thursday’s concert. “It’s been a hard year, not just for symphony musicians, for anyone who is aware of humanity in any way. And it it ain’t over yet. Joy and relief, though … are the two biggest new feelings that are welling up for me.”

Young said he echoed most of the musicians in that he was much more comfortable performing around people again than being filmed for digital content, which the SF Symphony has been focusing on over the past year as part of its SF Symphony+ streaming platform.

Salonen personally selected the the program for the two concerts, which included works by Jeans Sibelius, Carl Nielsen and Edvard Grieg, as well as Americans George Walker and Caroline Shaw. Notably, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Walker’s son, playwright Ian Walker (cofounder of San Francisco’s Second Wind Productions) was in attendance at Friday’s performance, and was called out by Salonen. Young said that the piece, “Lyric for Strings,” was not overtly dedicated to people who have lost family members to the pandemic, but its heartbreaking beautiful movements communicated a memorial or tribute to them.

The piece was important to concert attendee Kev Choice, Oakland jazz musician and hip-hop artist who has partnered with the SF Symphony several times during the pandemic. He said that while it didn’t matter to him what was performed as much as seeing the performance, the inclusion of a distinguished African American artist was especially poignant.

“To me, as an African American musician, that’s a very special thing,” Kev Choice said.

Like most of the people in attendance on Friday, which include not only first responders but symphony board members, donors and members of the general public, he was in a celebratory mood.

“I’m excited to see live music, especially at this level,” he said, adding he was also looking forward to supporting his symphony family. “I feel great. Everybody’s distanced, everybody had to get vaccinated. I had a test to get in, so I feel like it’s a safe environment.”

The sentiment was echoed by 19-year symphony board member Mary Falveym, who said she couldn’t miss coming out to the first in-person performances in about 14 months. She, like SF Symphony CEO Mark Hanson, said that the organization’s digital content is no substitute for live music.

“We are thrilled to have the orchestra and our audience back together and experience what is impossible to recreate through a digital form,” said Hanson, who personally welcomed and chatted with guests before and after the Friday performance. “As interesting as that content is, we’re reminded that being together and hearing the music performed live is extra special. … Everyone, I think, has found thee two nights really emotional. They had forgotten, in a way, the impact a group of musicians playing at this level can have on us. People are over the moon with joy, and are getting more and more comfortable being around one another again, outside of our individual pods.”

With the end of the pandemic in sight, Hanson said he is excited to not only continue but expand the SF Symphony+ program, which he said has proven to be a huge win to reaching audiences throughout the country and even other parts of the world; those not able to attend a show at Davies.

Young said the joy of performing in front of a crowd is likely to continue throughout these first performances.

“Seeing people in the audience, even with the masks on, you can see their eyes are smiling, and in some cases, a little moist,” he said.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.