If you've been to an SF Symphony concert and want to hear an artist or piece of music again and again, our rotating selection of Guest Artist recordings offers listeners a chance to pick up CDs connected to our ever-changing music season.
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Here is the perfect tool for learning the chorus parts from the most popular oratorio in the world - Handel's Messiah!
The reason is that for the first time ever, you are now able to hear the parts.
In previous recordings of the Messiah, the production and engineering obscured much of the inner detail of Handel's great work and made the individual parts difficult to hear. On this teaching CD, however, all the choruses are recorded with an important difference - the total number of singers is only sixteen, and the number of instruments is one 4-hand piano.
Companion audio CD to the acclaimed Keeping Score series.
Herbert Blomstedt conducted Beethoven's Eroica at Davies Symphony Hall from April 11th to 14th.
“On its very first page Beethoven threw his hat into the ring and laid his claim to immortality.” Thus H. L. Mencken on the Third Symphony. But there’s a big hole in that very first page, put there by a boiling-mad composer as he brusquely scraped off the dedication to Napoleon in response to the erstwhile First Consul’s having been proclaimed Emperor in May 1804. Beethoven retitled the work as Sinfoniaeroica, “composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.”
Herbert Blomstedt conducted Beethoven's Eroica at Davies Symphony Hall from April 11th to 14th.
Not all revolutions are political. Some overturn artistic conventions. Beethoven's Eroica challenged accepted artistic notions of music as a kind of decorative background and brought the listener along on a gripping voyage into the unconscious.
Beethoven spent three years writing the Eroica, which was an intimate and unflinching journal of his personal crises. The piece marked his emergence as an original master. In this DVD Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony invite you to discover the music of the Eroica and the circumstances surrounding its creation.
Retracing Beethoven's steps through Vienna's aristocratic ballrooms and Austria's rustic villages, MTT explores how Beethoven channeled hs fears of deafness, his admiration for Napoleon, and his obsession to prove himself the greatest composer of his time and to write a piece that forever changed what a symphony would be.
Bonus Features
Live performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, Eroica by the San Francisco Symphony and MTT shot in high definition, presented in 16:9 widescreen and 5.1 surround sound
Documentary includes optional closed-caption English subtitles
Following closely on the heels of the seven Grammy-Award winning Mahler recording cycle, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony present a hybrid SACD recording of two of Beethoven's most popular works, Symphony No. 5 and Piano Concerto No. 4.
Emanuel Ax, a frequent collaborator with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, is the soloist on Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. His performance of the slow movement was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as "dark and eloquent."
"The musicians of this Orchestra are playing at the highest level," said Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas recently. "I continue to be impressed by the power, richness, and sophistication of their sound whether performing repertoire by Beethoven or by American Mavericks such as Ives, Copland, or John Adams."
Michael Tilson Thomas will conduct Stravinsky'sRite of Spring at Davies Symphony Hall on June 19th and 20th.
In 1913, with Europe on the brink of war, a fashionable Parisian audience reacted with hostile frenzy to the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's new work, The Rite of Spring. The ballet's shocking music and dance provoked a riot that evening and soon afterwards was recognized as perhaps the most revolutionary piece of the 20th century. It still has that reputation today.
In this DVD, Michael Tilson Thomas and the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony take you from the salons of St. Petersburg to the villages where Stravinsky found inspiration in the earthly power of Russian folk music and dance. MTT then retraces Stravinsky's journey to the cultural crossroads of pre-war Paris. There, in collaboration with the great impresario Diaghilev and his star dancer Nijinsky, Stravinsky developed the shocking, erotic, and violent evocation of pagan Russia that became The Rite of Spring.
Nearly a century after this wild rainforest of sound was performed, The Rite of Spring remains as exhilarating and liberating as music can be. MTT and the San Francisco Symphony show you why.
Live Performance of Stravinsky'sRite of Spring and music from The Firebird by the San Francisco Symphony and MTT shot in high definition, presented in 16:9 widescreen and 5.1 surround sound.
Documentary includes optional closed-caption English subtitles
Companion audio CD to the acclaimed Keeping Score series.
MIchael Tilson Thomas will conduct Stravinsky's Rite of Spring at Davies Symphony Hall on June 19th and 20th.
Stravinsky’s early ballets The Firebird and The Rite of Spring are soaked in the folklore of the Russian people. Parisian arrivisteStravinsky, collaborating with flamboyant impresario Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo, brought out The Firebird in 1910. Supercharged with bewitching melodies and luscious orchestration, it established Stravinsky as the rising star of the Paris music scene. A few years later came The Rite of Spring and the audience riot that disrupted its premiere (“just what I wanted!” crowed Diaghilev.) The plot—a human sacrifice set in a prehistoric culture—reflected the contemporary “fauvist” movement, which employed sophisticated technique to create the illusion of primitivism. Stravinsky’s music, despite its barbed fauviste rhythms and dissonant harmonies, is shot through with Russian folk melodies that add a whiff of tradition to the full-throttle sprint that Aaron Copland declared to be “the most astonishing orchestral achievement of the twentieth century.”
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