During the quarter century of Michael Tilson Thomas’s wondrous tenure as music director of the San Francisco Symphony, he conducted hundreds of concerts that were broadcast, televised, and recorded, winning 11 Grammy Awards, including six for his interpretations of Gustav Mahler.
Those recordings are a clear indication of MTT’s tremendous range, yet performances with the SF Symphony make up less than one-fourth of the career-spanning 80-CD collection to be released on Dec. 6 in advance of the conductor’s 80th birthday on Dec. 21.
“The Complete CBS, RCA, and Sony Classical Recordings” is the title of this set that collects performances by MTT with orchestras around the world. The 80 CDs traverse 400 years of music, and there’s a heavy emphasis on contemporary and American works.
Further below, you can find a few examples of the variety and richness of the collection, which begins with John McLaughlin’s Apocalypse, featuring the Mahavishnu Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), and ends with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1, featuring soloist Kazune Shimizu and the LSO again.
During his teenage years in Los Angeles, as music director of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra, MTT conducted works by Pierre Boulez, Aaron Copland, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Igor Stravinsky. In his 20s, he got his first taste of the international stage, assisting at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany and working with Boulez at the Ojai Music Festival in California before being appointed assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra under William Steinberg.
As music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1970s, principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the 1980s, and principal conductor of the LSO from 1988 to 1995, MTT consistently featured American and contemporary composers.
Following his tenure in San Francisco, MTT has continued to guest-conduct some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including, most recently, the New York Philharmonic in its season-opening concerts, Sept. 12–15.
Education has always been at the forefront of MTT’s activities, from leading Young People’s Concerts with the NY Phil to founding Miami’s New World Symphony to, during his SF Symphony years, creating the documentary series Keeping Score.
Among the contents of the 80-CD box set:
Discs 8 and 9 feature all-Carl Ruggles programs with the Buffalo Philharmonic.
Disc 15 includes two recordings of the 1947 version of Stravinsky’s Petrushka — the first with Seiji Ozawa conducting the Boston Symphony and MTT at the piano, the second with MTT conducting London’s Philharmonia Orchestra.
Discs 43 and 44 are Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca with the Hungarian State Orchestra.
Disc 52 has Leoš Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass and Sinfonietta with the LSO.
Disc 66 pairs two works by Hector Berlioz, the standard Symphonie fantastique with the LSO and its “sequel,” the seldom-heard Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie (Lélio, or the return to life), with the SF Symphony.
Disc 69 highlights performances with the New World Symphony of works by Stravinsky, John Adams, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Darius Milhaud, Paul Hindemith, George Antheil, and David Raksin.
For many, of course, the natural question at this point is where to get a CD player.
MTT also has a long association with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he is still active — participating in readings with the SFCM Orchestra and leading master classes as part of his position as distinguished professor.
The SFCM-acquired record label Pentatone will also mark MTT’s 80th birthday by releasing a box set of the conductor’s compositions, titled Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas, on Oct. 4
Among the pieces in that set: From the Diary of Anne Frank, Street Song, Meditations on Rilke, Shówa/Shoáh, Agnegram, Whitman Songs, Poems of Emily Dickinson, and Urban Legend.
