“What a Swell Party This is!”

Photograph of Michael Tilson Thomas made during the filming of Keeping Score on September 1, 2008 (photograph by Jbitman, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

Tickets for last night’s San Francisco Symphony (SFS) performance in Davies Symphony Hall were sold out before I could write my monthly preview article on the April schedule at the end of last month. Many readers probably know by now that the program was a celebration of the 80th birthday of Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT). Those familiar with him will probably not be surprised that he appeared on the program as conductor, composer, and arranger. Nevertheless, he spent most of the evening sitting in a chair set up at the front of the stage, just to the right of the podium with Joshua Robison at his side.

His appearances as conductor served as “bookends” for the entire program. Both involved the full forces of the SFS ensemble. The program began with Benjamin Britten’s Opus 34 “The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra,” given the more formal subtitle “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell.” I have had a long-standing love affair with this music ever since I took a semester in Orchestration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (The professor had known Britten before he moved to the United States.) The final selection was Ottorino Respighi’s “Feste Romane” (Roman festivals), the last of his three Roman symphonic poems, preceded by “Fontane de Roma” (fountains of Rome) and  “Pini di Roma” (pines of Rome).

Soloists included two mezzos with many past experiences with MTT. Sasha Cooke sang “Immer wieder” from his Meditations on Rilke, which she had previously performed for its world premiere. She was also joined at the piano by John Wilson for a performance of his song “Grace.” She sang his duet “Not Everyone Thinks That I’m Beautiful” with Frederica von Stade in an orchestration of MTT’s score provided by Bruce Coughlin. Wilson also accompanied von Stade in a performance of “La flûte de Pan” from Claude Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis. Tenor Ben Jones sang two MTT songs, “Drift Off to Sleep” and “Answered Prayers,” in orchestrations by MTT working with Bruce Coughlin. Finally, on the more “pops” side, there were two performances by vocalist Jessica Vosk. She sang MTT’s “Sentimental Again,” which he orchestrated in partnership with Larry Moore. This was preceded by one of the funnier songs Frank Loesser wrote for Guys and Dolls, “Take Back Your Mink,” for which she was joined by members of the SFS Chorus prepared by Director Jenny Wong. The Chorus also performed the Finale from Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms.

MTT shared the podium with Teddy Abrams and Edwin Outwater, who, in turn, divided the selections on the program roughly equally. Abrams led the one remaining work that did not involve vocal performance. This was the overture to Khantshe in Amerike, a Yiddish musical by Joseph Rumshinsky. MTT originally arranged that overture for The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, which he first performed in Carnegie Hall in 2005.

As might be expected, there was an encore. All four of the vocal soloists were joined by the chorus and orchestra in another Bernstein selection. This one was “Some other time” from the musical On the Town with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. After Respighi’s roaring thunder, this provided just the right calming influence for leaving Davies in a good mood.