Dans la Deuxième Symphonie de Brahms, le chef américain cherche l'harmonie, la beauté sonore, l'équilibre, la clarté des textures et du dessin. L'Orchestre de Paris se couvre de gloire.
Poétique plus que métaphysique, le Mahler de Michael Tilson Thomas et du San Francisco Symphony a largement convaincu le public de la salle Pleyel ; l'excellence de l'orchestre et la beauté des voix ont compensé sans peine l'apparente sobriété de l'interprétation pour transporter les auditeurs.
Michael Tilson Thomas had a spectacular debut with Montreal's Orchestre Symphonique. George Li's performance of Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1 was breath-taking.
In a program including both modernist and neoclassical works, Michael Tilson Thomas and the SFO emphasized the common traits characterizing Stravinsky's entire ouevre.
Michael Tilson Thomas, Sasha Cooke, and choristers from the Pacific Boychoir and San Francisco Chorus come together in a phenomenal performance of Mahler's all-encompassing Third Symphony.
In his first Cleveland Orchestra engagement since 2006, MTT offered a powerful Russian evening of Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky and a Prokofiev concerto with Daniil Trifonov.
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.
MTT and the CSO were energetic partners from Stravinsky's obscure Scènes de ballet to Prokofiev's familiar Romeo and Juliet, and a Saint-Saëns cello concerto with Gautier Capuçon served as a sumptuous interlude.
The San Francisco Symphony wound up its Asian tour in Tokyo with a program (Sheng, Shostakovich, Mahler) and soloist (pianist Yuja Wang) well calculated to generate strong audience response.
Yuja Wang’s blazing Shostakovich First Piano Concerto and MTT’s stellar Firebird blended into a cohesive narrative at Davies Hall that showed us how successful performances can coincide with successful programming.
Bernstein's On the Town is luxuriously cast, crisply played, and impressively danced in a much-more-than-semi-staged production at the San Francisco Symphony.
Michael Tilson Thomas, leading the San Francisco Symphony in an invigorating performance of works by both Schubert and Mahler, emphasized the idea of repetition as an evolution rather than a lie.
San Francisco Symphony presents Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in all its glory. The addition of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony filled out the program, but seemed very much an afterthought.
Provocative and abstract Copland paired with resolute Schumann proved to be a tastefully refreshing combination; especially when coupled with the seasoned chemistry of MTT and the SFS.
Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the CSO in a bracing account of Sibelius' Second Symphony, while Emanuel Ax sparkled in an elegant take on Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto.
Although Michael Tilson Thomas's reading of Mahler's First Symphony left a little to be desired, Jeremy Denk joined them for an utterly convincing reading of Cowell's Piano Concerto.
Ahead of its US tour with Michael Tilson Thomas, the London Symphony Orchestra flexed its muscles in a display of orchestral strength on home turf in the Barbican.
Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas deserves credit for this excellent semi-staged version of Britten's Peter Grimes performed with the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall.
Michael Tilson Thomas brings together the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the ladies of the London Symphony Chorus and choristers of St Paul's Cathedral in an astounding performance of Mahler's great Symphony no. 3.
Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a programme of Russian music with star soloist Evgeny Kissin, whose Tchaikovsky concerto partially fulfilled expectations, but not more.
Perhaps the strongest aspect of Michael Tilson Thomas and Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s rendition of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony was their ability to heighten the piece’s contrasts, offering a vibrant depiction of the symphony’s raw emotional qualities.
Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony have made a partnership from playing with expectations, and this first of two Carnegie Hall concerts this season was yet another example of their craft.In a programme of Beethoven, Copland, and Steven Mackey, perhaps the most amazing subversion here was that by far the most interesting performance came in a Mozart piano concerto.
In a radio speech given by Sir Thomas Beecham to celebrate Jean Sibelius’ 90th birthday in 1955, the conductor praised the Finnish composer’s tenacity in pursuing his personal musical vision – even if that meant, as Beecham sardonically noted, that the music would go “rather over the head of [...] the public and [...] musical press”.
Seeing a classical concert at the Hollywood Bowl is always an event. While (to put it kindly) it is not the ideal acoustic for classical music, the iconic venue is surrounded by glowing hills and always seems to have perfect weather.
Concluding their concert run in the Barbican, Michael Tilson Thomas, Yo-Yo Ma and the London Symphony Orchestra presented a programme of works by Copland, Shostakovich and Britten. The musicians’ partnership was undoubtedly a successful one, with a completely sold-out Barbican.
Tonight’s The Rest is Noise concert, featuring the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas and Yefim Bronfman, took on one of 20th-century music’s biggest questions. Anyone who has been following this huge concert series – or indeed the accompanying BBC documentary The Sound and the Fury – will no doubt be acquainted by now with Arnold Schoenberg and his angry, radical ways.
Faced with ageing audiences, dwindling funding and slashed budgets, many fine orchestras feel besieged at home these days, let alone being able to embark on costly tours overseas – all the more reason why the San Francisco Symphony’s ambitious tour of six cities in Asia is a cause for celebration.
Bravo to Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony for blowing the dust off of some of the boldest innovators America has produced. As part of a mini-festival at Carnegie Hall of 20th- and 21st-century composers who stretched musical and formal boundaries (to put it mildly), the program on Tuesday night was packed with rarely-played wonders.
For last Sunday’s concert, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony chose a programme with a distinctly Eastern European flavour spanning almost a century and a half. They began with Liszt’s Prometheus, an overture to a set of choral pieces Liszt wrote for a festival celebrating the life and works of German literary philosopher Gottfried von Herder in 1850.
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.
