SFS: the Memorial Concert for MTT

2008 photograph of Michael Tilson Thomas by Jbitman (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

I find it somewhat interesting that both Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) and I made moves to the Bay Area around September of 1995. MTT had just concluded his tenure as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and became the eleventh Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). I had the less glamorous position of Group Leader for research in multimedia at the newly-formed Fuji Xerox Palo Alto Laboratory. Mind you, since 1991 I had been working on video classification research at the Institute for Systems Science in Singapore, meaning that both MTT and I had made “transnational” trips to the Bay Area!

In that context, I felt well-prepared for last night’s Special Event entitled A Concert for MTT. This involved a rich diversity of compositions, primarily from the twentieth century (the one exception being the world premiere performance of a composition by Mason Bates completed earlier this year). At the other end of the time-line, the earliest composer on the program was Charles Ives, represented by two of the movements from his 1913 New England Holidays symphony. The podium was shared by two conductors, both with close associations to MTT, Teddy Abrams and Edwin Outwater. Jenny Wong led the SFS Chorus; and four pianists contributed to the occasion (in order of appearance): Yuja Wang, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, John Wilson, and Jeremy Denk. (Abrams also performed four-hand with Wang for two movements from a sonata by Francis Poulenc.) There was also a selection of popular songs sung by Audra McDonald accompanied by Bruce Forman on guitar, but I am afraid that her command of pitch was not what it used to be in the MTT days. Far more satisfying was Renée Fleming’s account of Richard Strauss’ “Morgen!,” which she took as her encore with SFS this past Thursday afternoon.

In other words, the program for the evening unfolded as a "mixed bag.” Personally, my greatest frustration was the final offering (before the encore), the choral selection from Aaron Copland’s opera The Tender Land, entitled “The Promise of Living.” In the absence of any text titles, it was virtually impossible to grasp just what that “promise” was! Fortunately, Copland faired much better with that encore, which definitely is one of the twentieth-century war horses, the concluding “Hoe-Down” from Copland’s “Rodeo” ballet, composed for Agnes de Mille. On the other hand, I could not have been more delighted with the nod to John Cage, Lou Harrison’s orchestration of the last three of the five movements of Cage’s Suite for Toy Piano. The other memorable orchestral offering was the Andante moderato movement from Gustav Mahler’s sixth symphony in A minor, conducted by Outwater.

Finally, I found myself wondering whether last night was the first time Meredith Monk’s music was performed in Davies. The Chorus got to perform on its own to present “Panda Chant II.” This is one of the movements from one of Monk’s major works, The Games, which she composed in 1983. Monk has always had her own unique approach to composition; but, under Wong’s direction, the Chorus made this brief eccentricity a high point of the evening.