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San Francisco Chronicle
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Michael Tilson Thomas takes his final bow with San Francisco Symphony
San Francisco Civic Center was awash in blue, from City Hall to Davies Symphony Hall, where various shades of the color could be seen throughout as fans donned the favorite color of San Francisco Symphony Music Director Laureate in honor of his 80th birthday. Every seat in the full house even had a blue bandana for attendees, who enthusiastically waved the souvenir in the air once Thomas walked onstage Saturday, April 26 — which San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie declared 'Michael Tilson Thomas Day' — to be feted for his 51 years and contributions to the classical music scene locally and beyond. The bandana featured a quote from Thomas himself, reading in part: 'There are two key times in an artist's life. The first is inventing yourself. The second, the harder part, is going the distance.' The lobby bar even served a special 'Bolinas Breeze' cocktail — made with vodka, limoncello (Thomas and Robison grow Meyer lemons) and Blue Curacao — named for the West Marin town where Thomas and his husband Joshua Robison have a home. 'I can't believe that now this is the culmination,' said John Goldman, a past president of the Symphony and friend of Thomas and Robison, who remembered that when the couple first came to the city his family would attend synagogue together. 'You can't think of the San Francisco Symphony without thinking of Michael Tilson Thomas. They are institutions joined together forever.' Thomas, one of the most acclaimed conductors of the past 50 years, joined the San Francisco Symphony as music director in 1995 and retired from the position in 2020, with his final season truncated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, Thomas revealed he was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive form of brain cancer, and underwent surgery and treatment at the UCSF Brain Tumor Center. In February, he announced that his brain tumor had returned, and that his 80th birthday concert would be his farewell to performing. 'There are treatment options, but the odds are uncertain,' Thomas shared in an email last month addressed 'Dear Friends.' 'Now is the time to wind down my public appearances.' It was a night of big feelings for many in attendance. Aly Geller of San Francisco wore a blue cardigan over a T-shirt she had made with a blue heart containing the words 'Thank you MTT' on the front and an excerpt of Gustave Mahler's Symphony No. 6 on the back, a piece he is renowned for conducting. 'I've loved him since I was in the sixth grade when he conducted the Ojai Music Festival,' said Geller. 'He made me fall in love with Mahler, he's such an amazing teacher to all of us.' The two act program was produced by Robison, general manager of MTT Inc., and featured new arrangements of works by Thomas as well as sentimental favorites from his long career, including Joseph Rumshinsky's Overture from 'Khantshe in Amerike,' (which has a familial significance for Thomas whose grandmother Bessie Thomashefsky played the title role in the play's world premiere in New York) and the finale of his mentor Leonard's Bernstein's 'Chichester Psalms.' Thomas' proteges Teddy Abrams and Edwin Outwater shared conducting duties with the maestro, who, if not at the podium, sat stage left during much of the evening. 'We saw Michael at his happiest. There's nothing like the joy he was expressing on that podium,' Abrams, music director of the Louisville Orchestra, told the Chronicle after the concert. 'He was where he was meant to be, on the stage sharing music.'
Boston Globe
27-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
BSO's Beethoven festival concludes with three hits and one miss
But though those numbers 1 through 9 may look neat when lined up, the symphonies didn't fit so into four programs. For example, Nos. 8 and 9 two were completed a decade apart. During that time, Beethoven's hearing loss intensified to the point where he was totally deaf, and he went through several periods of composing almost nothing, allegedly prompted by family troubles and chronic illnesses. Conversely, Nos. 5 and 6 were performed on different programs during the festival, despite receiving their world premieres on the same day. Perhaps there wasn't an easy way to sort the pieces by where they actually occurred on Beethoven's timeline, rather than simply by number, but it would have added meaning had the symphonies been put in more context. The program book, with notes by Beethoven biographer Jan Swafford, pulled significant weight in that regard. I will never truly be objective about Symphony No. 6, 'Pastoral.' It appears in some of my earliest memories, when my grandparents would put the final movement on the turntable and silence the looming grandfather clock in their living room to help me fall asleep at their house; when played well, to me it invariably sounds like what being loved and protected feels like. The BSO's 'Pastoral' on Tuesday night was achingly nostalgic, all clear water and golden light, a picture postcard of the Austrian countryside that Beethoven loved so much. The sweetness was almost oppressive, akin to a Thomas Kinkade painting, but lively accents kept it grounded enough. Principal clarinetist William Hudgins conjured waterfalls and leaping fish from his instrument, and the rustics' dance in the third movement began well-mannered before becoming satisfyingly rowdy. Advertisement Symphony No. 7, the most sublime and ecstatic of Beethoven's symphonic scores, was substantial but strangely bland, as if someone had forgotten to add salt to it. The issue wasn't speed; there was plenty of that, especially during the third movement. Tuesday's performance also included some fine solo work, especially from principal flutist Lorna McGhee, who added the fiery edges of a Celtic dance tune to the first movement's flute solo. Still, the orchestra as a whole seemed to be on cruise control. The missing ingredient seemed to be Lust — in the German sense, with a capital L, not as a deadly sin but as an appetite for life. Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Andris Nelsons leading the BSO in Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 on Jan. 18. Winslow Townson However, Friday afternoon's concert was an improvement. Symphony No. 8 was lithe and exhilarating, and Nelsons burgeoned with vitality on the podium as he drew out the piece's slapstick musical accents. In years past, when Nelsons would hang onto the podium's rail behind him, he seemed fatigued; these days, he still reaches for the rail, but in moments of high rather than low energy. At some points during the brief Symphony No. 8, it seemed to be the only thing keeping him from flying into the rafters. Advertisement The BSO performs the Symphony No. 9 yearly at Tanglewood as the closing event of the summer in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, but the Symphony Hall performance of the same piece proved itself an entirely different experience. The acoustics of Symphony Hall allow softer and subtler nuances of the sound to come through, and the orchestra reveled in those. The introduction of the 'Ode to Joy' theme in the low strings came after a pronounced silence, and it was whisper-quiet but no less solid, which allowed it to gradually gather momentum and power as the other instruments joined in. Transitions between sections were also fluid and graceful. The moment after the finale's jangling military march section was calibrated so that when the Tanglewood Festival Chorus re-entered in joyous full cry, it all but shook the ground. BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA At Symphony Hall, Jan. 21 and 24. A.Z. Madonna can be reached at
