SFS Principal Violist Jonathan Vinocour had a hometown performance in Princeton where he got his degree from... in chemistry Photo by Oliver Theil
Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony concluded their national tour Saturday night in Miami, where MTT's other residence and orchestra are located. He is founder/director of the New World Symphony, and is spending a substantial part of each year with the organization, but this is the first time in 19 years that he led the San Francisco orchestra back to the Sunshine State.
Before that, since last week's report, it was Princeton and Carnegie Hall. The Adams-Prokofiev-Ravel program was broadcast live on WQXR as part of the Carnegie Live series, to be syndicated nationally later this year. The broadcast can be streamed for the next couple of week.
Earlier on the tour, Boston greeted MTT in another homecoming with an article in The Boston Globe recalling his California roots:
As a boy, Michael Tilson Thomas would often take the train up the California coast from Los Angeles, where he was born, to visit his mother’s family in San Francisco. He fell in love with the northern city’s fog, the Palace of Fine Arts, the world around the opera and symphony. “Lots of the scenes that you see in [Alfred Hitchcock’s] Vertigo are exactly what I was experiencing,” he said during a phone interview. “That was very much my family’s world.”SFS violinists in a happy mood
That early relationship to the Bay Area made the fit instinctive when Thomas began guest conducting stints with the San Francisco Symphony at the age of 29. (His first performance with them featured Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.)
And, he added, “it felt very natural” when the invitation to become the orchestra’s 11th music director came two decades later. “They always had a really daring spirit, I would say, which was certainly in concord with my spirit.”
After the orchestra tour, the musicians return for two Thanksgiving weekend concerts (see next item), while MTT is celebrating his 70th birthday at special performances in Vienna, Budapest, and elsewhere. He will have his birthday gala on Jan. 15 in Davies Symphony Hall, appearing as conductor and pianist in Liszt's Hexameron for Six Pianos and Orchestra, with Emanuel Ax, Jeremy Denk, Marc-André Hamelin, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Yuja Wang.
MTT will also go on an anniversary tour next spring with the London Symphony Orchestra, giving concerts in San Francisco on March 22 and 23. On the first night, the program is terrific: Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" from Peter Grimes, Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1 (with Yuja Wang), and Sibelius' Symphony No. 2. The second night is pretty good also: Colin Matthews' Hidden Variables, Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F Major (with Wang), and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5. The remarkable week continues with Semyon Bychkov conducting SFS in Bruckner's Symphony No. 8 on March 25-27.
