MTT & EMANUEL AX

November 17, 18 & 19, 2022

Overview

Experience Johannes Brahms as a brooding twenty-something in a concert led by Michael Tilson Thomas. The Serenade No. 1, first written for a small ensemble, retains the intimacy of chamber music while harnessing the power of the full orchestra. Then, Emanuel Ax returns to the Symphony for Brahms’ First Piano Concerto, a turbulent piece that transforms youthful angst into wiser understanding.

At A Glance

Johannes Brahms’s Serenade No. 1 in D major and his Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor were his first two orchestral works. Both were completed in 1858, when Brahms was working in Detmold, the capital of Lippe, a tiny principality where Prince Leopold III maintained a small but excellent orchestra. When Clara Schumann moved from Düsseldorf to inconveniently distant Berlin, she recommended that the 24-year-old Brahms succeed her as piano teacher to the ladies of the court. He also conducted a chorus and organized chamber music concerts.

For Brahms, Detmold provided an agreeable setting in which to compose, to expand his knowledge of the repertory, and to gain experience as a conductor. It also offered a chance for some emotional cooling off, something he needed after his friend and mentor Robert Schumann’s tragic death in 1856 and in the aftermath of a love affair with Agathe von Siebold, a gifted young singer he had met in Göttingen. Schumann’s death also put the situation with his beloved Clara into an alarming new light. It was a turning point in their relationship, though not the one for which he must have hoped. They pulled apart, and it took some time before they settled into a loving, nourishing friendship.

All this time, both these pieces were developing in Brahms’s head. The process of composition was marked by the his ambition, his inexperience, his almost overpowering feeling for the past, and his trembling sense of his own audacity at inserting himself into history as a successor of Beethoven.

Artists

Michael Tilson Thomas

Conductor

Emanuel Ax

Piano

San Francisco Symphony

Program

Johannes Brahms

Serenade No. 1 in D major

Johannes Brahms

Piano Concerto No. 1

LEAD SUPPORT FOR THIS CONCERT SERIES IS PROVIDED BY JOACHIM BECHTLE IN LOVING MEMORY OF HIS WIFE NANCY.

THURSDAY MATINEE CONCERTS ARE ENDOWED BY A GIFT IN MEMORY OF
RHODA GOLDMAN.

MTT & EMANUEL AX

Conductor

Michael Tilson Thomas is the Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, conductor laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra, and cofounder and artistic director laureate of the New World Symphony. He is a 12-time Grammy Award winner and has conducted the major orchestras of Europe and the United States.

Born in Los Angeles, he studied conducting and composition with Ingolf Dahl at the University of Southern California and as a young musician worked with artists including Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland. In his mid-20s, he became assistant conductor—and later principal guest conductor—of the Boston Symphony. He subsequently served as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and principal conductor of the London Symphony.

In 1987 he cofounded the New World Symphony, a postgraduate orchestral academy in Miami Beach dedicated to preparing young musicians of diverse backgrounds for leadership roles in classical music. He has worked with more than 1,200 NWS fellows, many of whom have gone on to major musical careers.

MTT became Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony in 1995, ushering in a period of significant growht and heightened international recognition for the orchestra. He led the Symphony in championing contemporary and American composers alongside classical masters, and as Music Director Laureate, he has returned to conduct the orchestra each season.

His discography includes more than 120 recordings, and his television work includes series for the BBC and PBS, the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts, and numerous televised performances. “Michael Tilson Thomas: Where Now Is” aired on PBS’s American Masters series in fall 2020.

Throughout his career, he has been an active composer, with major works including From the Diary of Anne Frank, premiered with narrator Audrey Hepburn, and Meditations on Rilke. Both appear on SFS Media’s Grammy Award-winning recording of his music. In 2023, Yuja Wang released a recording on Deutsche Grammophon which included his You Come Here Often?
He is an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, a member of the American Academies of Arts and Sciences and Arts and Letters, a National Medal of Arts recipient, and a 2019 Kennedy Center honoree.

Three major recording projects were released in 2024 in celebration of his 80th birthday: Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas on Pentatone; The Complete Columbia, CBS, and RCA Recordings on Sony Classical; and Complete Deutsche Grammophon & Argo Recordings on DG Eloquence.