Tilson Thomas conducts Beethoven

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra hosted guest conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and pianist Jeremy Denk this weekend in works of Mahler, Beethoven and Brahms that felt familiar yet oddly fresh (or bizarre, depending on one’s point of view). The program comprised Mahler’s Blumine, a freestanding work originally used as the second movement of his First Symphony; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.