Michael Tilson Thomas

Mahler’s Adagietto: Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra

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From 1988 to 1995, Michael Tilson Thomas served as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, succeeding Claudio Abbado. His first association with the ensemble came in 1970 when he stepped in as a last minute replacement for Gennady Rozhdestvensky. In a recent obituary published by the London Symphony Orchestra, violinist Sarah Quinn recalls, I first worked with MTT nearly 30 years ago, when I was a nervous student sitting at the …

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Remembering Michael Tilson Thomas

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American conductor, composer, and pianist Michael Tilson Thomas passed away at his home in San Francisco last Wednesday following a battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. He was 81. Known widely as “MTT,” Tilson Thomas served as music director of the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years. He is credited with elevating the orchestra’s stature and championing adventurous new music. The grandson of Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, stars of New …

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The 2021 Classical Grammys

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The 63rd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony took place in Los Angeles Sunday evening. Here are excerpts from the winning albums in the classical categories: Best Orchestral Performance “Ives: Complete Symphonies” — Gustavo Dudamel, conductor (Los Angeles Philharmonic) This album features the four numbered symphonies of Charles Ives. The “New England Holidays” is not included. We sense an exciting artistic progression from the relatively conservative Symphony No. 1, completed in 1902 in response …

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Ives’ “The Housatonic at Stockbridge”: The Eternal River of Time

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On a June weekend in 1908, Charles Ives and his wife, Harmony Twichell, vacationed in the rolling Berkshire Hills. A hiking trip led the newly married couple by the Housatonic River near Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Ives recalled, We walked in the meadows along the river, and heard the distant singing from the church across the river. The mist had not entirely left the river bed, and the colors, the running water, the banks …

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Carl Ruggles’ “Toys”: An American Art Song Miniature

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Carl Ruggles (1876-1971) was one of the great American maverick composers of the twentieth century. A prickly and eccentric New Englander, he found kinship with such contemporaries as Henry Cowell, Edgard Varèse, and Charles Ives. His musical style, described as “dissonant counterpoint,” reflects the kind of brash and adventurous Yankee individualism we hear in Ives. Ruggles worked painstakingly slowly, sitting at the piano and playing each chord repeatedly to determine if it would …

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“Short Ride in a Fast Machine”: MTT and the San Francisco Symphony

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You know how it is when someone asks you to ride in a terrific sports car, and then you wish you hadn’t? This is how John Adams explains the title of his 1986 orchestral fanfare, Short Ride in a Fast Machine. It’s an exhilarating five-minute musical joyride that rests just on the edge of terror. Given its popularity, Short Ride in a Fast Machine must be one of the few pieces written in the last fifty …

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Gershwin and Ravel Share the Blues

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Maurice Ravel and George Gershwin came face to face in New York on the evening of March 7, 1928. The occasion was a soirée hosted by the mezzo-soprano Éva Gauthier in celebration of Ravel’s fifty-third birthday. This was Ravel’s first and only trip to the United States. During a four month, twenty city tour which included an appearance at Carnegie Hall, the French composer introduced American audiences to Rapsodie espagnole, the Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2, and La valse. He …

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