Michael Tilson Thomas - Gathering Note

The Chicago Symphony’s concerts this weekend are dedicated to Michael Tilson Thomas, who died on April 22nd at his home in San Francisco. He was 81. Like so many others, I became unmoored by the news. Not because I knew him personally, but because so many of the concerts I remember most vividly from the last 30 years were his.

Friday’s reminder came by way of Karina Canellakis, who led the CSO through Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.5. The performance kept pulling me back to a night in Seattle in 2009, when MTT was conducting the San Francisco Symphony on a West Coast tour. That Tchaikovsky was something. Rope-a-dope with the audience’s emotions. Canellakis, to her credit, played the same game.

What made Tilson Thomas rare was how exuded curiosity and love for his craft. He never seemed to be going through the motions. Through his illness, he continued to make music. That commitment was visible long before his diagnosis. When he took the podium, you felt it was safe to surrender to the music. The ride would be worth it. It was through MTT that I fell in love with Ives, gained a much deeper appreciation for Mahler’s symphonies, and embraced Cowell, Ruggles, and Scelsi.

Lesley Stahl’s recent interview with Michael Tilson Thomas for CBS Sunday Morning doesn’t break new ground, but it’s compelling all the same. There’s a short version—about nine minutes—and a longer, more expansive cut. What makes it essential viewing is the context: MTT is in the final stages of a battle with brain cancer, a disease that will almost certainly claim him.

In April, he gave what will likely be his final public concert. An event that marked the culmination of a spirited, defiant race against time and illness. I made a point to attend two of his more recent Mahler performances, of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. Time was clearly running out then for MTT, and for the singular magic he could conjure from an orchestra.

He remains witty, insightful, and profoundly committed to music. But there’s a new vulnerability. His speech is sometimes halting, his phrasing occasionally searching, words sometime hover just out of reach. That fragility only deepens the emotional impact of seeing one of the great musical minds of our time reflect on a career that helped shape American orchestral life at the end of the 20th and during the first quarter of the 21st Centuries.

Tag: Michael Tilson Thomas

Remembering the legacy of Michael Tilson Thomas

The final notes of a musical giant