MTT leads a semi-staged performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio, May 27, 2004

2003–04

FOR THE CURIOUS

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In festivals with MTT, music is heard in novel contexts. “I’m always interested in exploring what I don’t know and connecting the dots in a different way,” MTT says. “I try to encourage and provoke those same qualities in the audience.” In spring 2004, MTT programs the music of Beethoven alongside those of his now-neglected contemporaries in the season’s curiosity-inspired Beethoven’s Vienna: Scenes from a Musical Revolution festival.

MTT and Lisa Vroman perform during the Beethoven’s Vienna festival, May 2004

A MUSIC REVOLUTION: 

BEETHOVEN’S VIENNA FESTIVAL  

MTT and the San Francisco Symphony enter the musical world that gave birth to the revolutionary Eroica Symphony with Beethoven’s Vienna: Scenes from a Musical Revolution, an expansive festival that boasts stunning semi-staged performances of Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio; an engaging symposium on the music of early 19th-century composers, famed in their day but since neglected; and an intriguing musical journey concert exploring the breadth of the composer’s musical styles. Woven throughout the festival are aspects of Beethoven’s seminal work, the Symphony No. 3, Eroica.  It’s too good to experience only once: An acclaimed Keeping Score episode emerges from this uniquely framed festival.

Michael Tilson Thomas
Gramophone

Michael Tilson Thomas backstage with Keeping Score director Gary Halvorson

Michael Tilson Thomas with musician (and future conductor) Teddy Abrams

PREMIERES

Colin MatthewsReflected Images 
(World premiere, San Francisco Symphony commission)  

Debussy (orch. Robin Holloway)En blanc et noir 
(World premiere, San Francisco Symphony commission) 

MUSICIAN APPOINTMENTS

Benjamin Freimuth (clarinet) 

Leor Maltinski (violin)

Recordings

American Tour

Violinist Gil Shaham was the featured soloist on the March 2004 National Tour. 

Gil Shaham, MTT, and the SF Symphony onstage at Carnegie Hall, 2004 

Kansas City, MO, Music Hall 

Urbana-Champaign, Il, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts 

Cleveland, OH, Severance Hall 

Boston, MA,  Symphony Hall 

New York, NY, Carnegie Hall 

Philadelphia, PA, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts 

Newark, NJ, New Jersey Performing Arts Center 



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