Ever creative, ever enterprising, San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas has devised a new concert format which he and the Symphony will be introducing on Sunday afternoon.
MTT calls it a Discovery Concert the purpose of which is to explore Beethoven’s Symphony No 5, to find out what it is about this symphony that makes it stand out, not only among Beethoven’s other works, but also among works by other composers. MTT describes this symphony as “an extraordinary journey of the human spirit”, during which the composer seems to float the idea that even if we feel angry, happy, confused, “somehow or another we find our way toward joyousness, freedom, liberation”.
Tilson Thomas both conducts and leads this concert, which includes discussion, demonstrations at the piano, and projections illustrating other pieces of music, literature and art which provide a background to this work. It features orchestral and choral excerpts from other works – by Beethoven, Monteverdi and J S Bach – performed by the Symphony and members of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, director Ragnar Bohlin. In the second half of the concert, MTT and the Symphony give a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No 5 in its entirety.
The Discovery Concert by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus takes place at Davies Symphony Hall on Sunday, September 18, at 2.00 pm. Tickets are available at sfsymphony.org, by phone at 415-864-6000, and at the Davies Symphony Hall Box Office, on Grove Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street in San Francisco.