Hertz helped to refine the orchestra and arranged for the Victor Talking Machine Company to record it at their new studio in Oakland in early 1925.

Monteux succeeded to the point where NBC began broadcasting some of its concerts and RCA Victor offered the orchestra a new recording contract in 1941.

Fiedler also conducted the orchestra at free concerts in Sigmund Stern Grove in San Francisco and the Frost Amphitheater at Stanford University.

One of his innovations was an annual tradition on New Year's Eve, "A Night in Old Vienna", which was devoted to music of Johann Strauss and other Viennese masters of the nineteenth century.

A special concert series devoted to Romeo and Juliet, as interpreted by Hector Berlioz, Peter Tchaikovsky, and Sergei Prokofiev and Leonard Bernstein's symphonic dances from West Side Story, inspired DG to record the same music with Ozawa.

He introduced a number of innovations, including presenting partially staged versions of La vida breve by Manuel de Falla and Beatrice and Benedict by Berlioz.

Though considered to be not as flamboyant as Ozawa, de Waart maintained the orchestra's high standards, leading to additional recordings, including its first digital sessions.

He conducted the orchestra's first performances in the newly constructed Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in September 1980, including the nationally televised gala.

He recognized the continuing shortcomings of Davies Symphony Hall's acoustics, helping push for a major renovation, completed in 1992, contributing a substantial amount of money to the cause.

[14] In March 2024, Salonen announced that he would be leaving the San Francisco Symphony when his contract expires in 2025, stating that "I do not share the same goals for the future of the institution as the Board of Governors does.

The May 15 – June 17, 1973, tour saw then-music director Seiji Ozawa and Niklaus Wyss conduct the orchestra in 30 concerts in 19 cities in Europe and the Soviet Union.

Edo de Waart and David Ramadanoff led an American tour from October 20 – November 2, 1980, giving 10 concerts in 7 cities.

Other composers who have led the Orchestra include Ernst von Dohnányi in 1927, Ottorino Respighi in 1929, Arnold Schoenberg in 1945, Darius Milhaud in 1949, Manuel Rosenthal in 1950, Leon Kirchner in 1960, Jean Martinon in 1970, and Howard Hanson.

Besides visiting composers, some legendary conductors have led the Orchestra, including Artur Rodziński, Walter Damrosch, Sir Thomas Beecham, John Barbirolli, Andre Kostelanetz, Lorin Maazel, Leonard Bernstein, Guido Cantelli, Victor de Sabata, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell, Charles Münch, Paul Paray, Rafael Kubelík, Daniel Barenboim, István Kertész, Karl Richter, Antal Doráti, Leonard Slatkin, Andrew Davis, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Yevgeny Svetlanov, Simon Rattle, Kurt Masur, Neeme Järvi, Kiril Kondrashin, Eugene Ormandy, Georg Solti, Alex Shkurko, Michael Kamen, Christopher Hogwood and Bruno Walter.

Some of the many soloists who have appeared with the orchestra include violinists Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, Yehudi Menuhin, Midori, Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern, Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham, and Efrem Zimbalist; pianists Vladimir Horowitz, Horacio Gutierrez, Vladimir de Pachmann, Peter Serkin, Rudolf Serkin, Ruth Slenzynska, Patricia Benkman, Ozan Marsh, Yuja Wang, and André Watts; and organists Alexander Frey and Paul Jacobs.

The Orchestra now plays almost exclusively in Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall at Grove Street and Van Ness Avenue, which opened in September 1980 with a gala concert conducted by Edo de Waart, televised live on PBS and hosted by violinist/conductor Yehudi Menuhin.

The early recordings, for the Victor Talking Machine Company, included music by Auber and Richard Wagner, conducted by Alfred Hertz.

In 1928, the orchestra made a series of recordings at Oakland's Scottish Rite Temple on Madison Avenue near Lake Merritt, now the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California.

During the 1925–30 recordings, Hertz conducted music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Léo Delibes, Alexander Glazunov, Charles Gounod, Fritz Kreisler, Franz Liszt, Alexandre Luigini, Felix Mendelssohn, Moritz Moszkowski, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Schubert and Carl Maria von Weber.

Commercial recordings resumed in June 1972 with Seiji Ozawa for Deutsche Grammophon in the Flint Center at De Anza College in Cupertino, California.

These recordings featured solo performances from hornist David Krehbiel, concertmaster Stuart Canin, trumpeter Don Reinberg, and violist Detlev Olshausen.

One of de Waart's sets of digital recordings was devoted to the four piano concertos of Sergei Rachmaninoff, featuring pianist Zoltán Kocsis.

There were special tributes to three American composers, Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, and George Gershwin, on the occasion of what would have been his 100th birthday.

SFS Media has garnered eight Grammy awards,[18] the most current for its recording of John Adams’ Harmonielehre and Short Ride in a Fast Machine and seven for its recordings of MTT and the SFS performing all nine of Gustav Mahler's symphonies, the Adagio from the unfinished Tenth Symphony, and his songs for voice, chorus and orchestra.

In 2014, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony released a live recording on the SFS Media label of the first-ever concert performances of Leonard Bernstein’s complete score for the musical West Side Story featuring a Broadway cast including Cheyenne Jackson (Tony), Alexandra Silber (Maria), and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus.

In November 2014 on their SFS Media label, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony released Masterpieces in Miniature, a collection of short orchestral works by Mahler, Debussy, Schubert, Dvořák, Sibelius, Ives, and featuring Pianist Yuja Wang in Litolff’s Scherzo from Concerto symphonique No.

5 and Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture, followed by another release in August 2015 – a live audio recording of Absolute Jest and Grand Pianola Music by John Adams.

The album contains the first-ever recording of Absolute Jest, originally commissioned by the SF Symphony and premiered in 2012 during the orchestra's American Mavericks festival.

In October of the same year, the label released "Debussy: Images, Jeux & La plus que lente", which was subsequently nominated for a 2018 Grammy award in the category of Best Orchestral Performance.

In 2001, the San Francisco Symphony gave the world premiere of Henry Brant's Ice Field, which later won that year's Pulitzer Prize for Music.