After lifting the San Francisco Symphony to unprecedented heights for 25 years, Michael Tilson Thomas retired from conducting after an 80th birthday concert in Davies Hall. Beyond the memories held by legions of fans and musicians he worked with, MTT is still very much with us thanks to electronics.
His collaboration with the SF Symphony is preserved in many ways, from the great Mahler Project — the 17-disc Hybrid SACD set which includes the nine symphonies and other works — to many other recordings issued on the orchestra’s own SFS Media label, Keeping Score, an extraordinary series of videos combining research, lectures, and performances.
These are the Keeping Score programs:
– Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique
– Beethoven: Eroica
– Copland: the American Sound
– Ives: Holidays Symphony
– Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5
– Stravinsky: Rite of Spring
– Mahler: Origins
– Mahler: Legacy
– Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4
Video features about MTT range from interviews about the beginning of his career to the most recent CBS Sunday Morning interview after his retirement, which curiously omits any reference to his quarter century with SF Symphony.
Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas is a four-disc album of MTT’s compositions. Two other box sets of his recordings as a conductor have been issued by SONY and DG. In addition, SF Symphony maintains a large storehouse of audio and video recordings of the conductor’s concerts and stage performances, including of Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms and the gala “MTT 25: An American Icon.”
Among the many productions of his show, The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, MTT’s performance with New World Symphony is available for free on streaming.
Also of note, you can find on the web a recording of MTT’s TED talk, his own collection of music videos, a roundup of “the Essential MTT,” and a collection of two dozen videos on YouTube by and about MTT.
