Set includes:

 

 

"I feel, therefore I am." For Hector Berlioz, and for the Romantic Movement, those were more than words; they were a song of the heart. But with the unprecedented outpouring of emotion in his Symphonie fantastique Berlioz almost overpowered Paris. This orchestral sonic spectacular, written to win the heart of a beautiful actress, demanded sacrifice from its author and his audience. Join Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony as they follow Berlioz to the brink and beyond in this program.

 

 

Keeping Score: Ives’s Holidays Symphony

Ranging from tender sentiment to savage chaos, the music of early 20th-century composer Charles Ives explores an essentially American riddle: how can we survive the relentless assault of our own success? It was an enigma Ives embodied himself. He believed that we should all be brave enough to go it alone – yet he earned his living in insurance! In this Keeping Score program, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony unwrap the layers of Ives’s Holidays Symphony to reveal a surprising musical portrait of New England.

Keeping Score: Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5

Shostakovich may have secreted a subversive cipher beneath the surface of his life-saving Symphony No. 5.. This is all the more shocking since another bad review from Stalin’s totalitarian forces could have meant a sentence to the Gulag or worse. This Keeping Score program investigates the arresting symphony that would either redeem Shostakovich or doom him. Did he dare hide a kernel of musical criticism in what appears to be a paean to the Motherland? Join Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony as they explore the hidden language of this masterwork.