Obra: The Seasons

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, joined by cellist Gautier Capuçon, presented modern, post-war masterworks in their first of two nights in Stern Auditorium.

Similarities between Johann Sebastian Bach and John Cage don't exactly leap out at you. Both have an interest in numbers, it's true: Bach's music is obsessively, perhaps mathematically patterned, and Cage proportioned much of his music according to strict ratios and numerical schemes. But even this similarity is very much an abstract one: can you hear it in the pieces? No, not really.