Tag Archives: Sasha Cooke

LOVE FEST FOR MTT

LOVE FEST FOR MTT: April 26, 2025

San Francisco knows how to throw a Love Fest. For Michael Tilson Thomas’s 80^th birthday, nothing better than the best of the best could do. MTT, as he is called, is now Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra, and co-founder and artistic director laureate of the New World Symphony. He has won 12 Grammy Awards and conducted all the major orchestras in Europe and the US. However, San Francisco thinks of MTT as ours. His active participation in the life of the SF Symphony and through that his treating the City as home; that’s why the completely packed Davies Symphony Hall, even in the partial view seats, started teary and smiling and sharing stories before the concert began. San Francisco loves MTT, and we believe he loves us, too.

MTT has been living with a brain tumor. Still, he has come back to conduct first twice a year and then once a year. If you are wondering how he could conduct, his ability to conduct is still there. No question. What is gone is the physicality of his former conducting. There were the jumps, the great reach to the roof, both arms crossing together from left to right and then indicating one section or player with his baton. Oh, there were also the deep knee bends. He danced with force.

The first time MTT conducted the SF Symphony they played Mahler’s 9^th. He became the Music Director in 1995. We need to remember that MTT’s Mahler concerts were so well known and admired that MAHLER was written on the side of Muni Buses.

Mayor Daniel Lurie names this day, MTT day, and awards him for the whole city.

MTT conducted two lengthy pieces, one at the beginning of the birthday program and another at the end. The opening was Benjamin Britten’s, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, Opus 34 (1946). It is also called The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. While it might have educational aspects, it is, as Michael Steinberg wrote, “the work is very much worth playing for its sheer musical pleasure.” The music’s theme comes from Purcell’s revival of Abdelazar, or the Moor’s Revenge, a play by Aphra Behn. The music first identifies one section of instruments – maybe strings or percussion and the others. Then, Britten puts the orchestra back together in a fugue; he has themes for each section. The instruments play them one at a time and then together. It is happy, playful music which is not at all superficial; it brings music that bows and smiles. Wonderful choice.

Benjamin Britten, composer (1913 – 1974)

MTT also conducted Overture from Khantshe in Amerike, by Joseph Rumshinsky (arr. MTT), a composer originally from Lithuania and then lived in New York. He came to the US in 1904 because Boris Thomashefsky, MTT’s grandfather, asked him to come. Rumshinsky aided the Yiddish Theater and created it as a source of fine operettas. MTT produced The Thomashevskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater. Its premiere was at Carnegie Hall, 2005. I was thrilled to be in the audience for his presentation of The Thomashevskys on the Davies Symphony Hall stage. It was fun and touching with MTT’s music and music from the early 20thc.

Sasha Cooke, mezzo soprano
The next section of the celebration presented seven songs, five of them by MTT. Of the two that were not his were Claude Debussy’s La flute de Pan from Chansons de Bilitis (1897), sung by Frederica von Stade, mezzo soprano, John Wilson at the piano. Frank Loesser’s Take Back Your Mink, from Guys and Dolls (1950). The singers were stars. Three of them, Ben Jones, tenor; Jessica Vosk; and Sasha Cooke, mezzo soprano, got their career starts with help from MTT. Frederica von Stade and MTT have worked together since 1970. In Take Back Your Mink, the SF Symphony Chorus women added lively singing, dancing, and swinging somethings not mink. MTT’s songs are tender, sometimes ironically funny, personal in ways that most everyone thinks. The titles tell it: “Not Everyone Thinks That I’m Beautiful” (1985); “Drift Off to Sleep” (1982); Answered Prayers, 1974. The songs were a special way to know more of MTT. Unlike some other conductors who write music, Michael Tilson Thomas very rarely put his own work on an SFS program; it was his songs I most wanted to hear.

The after intermission concert started with a beautiful MTT song titled “Grace.” (1988) Sasha Cooke and Frederica von Stade gave the song thoughtfulness and shading of emotions. Very lovely. John Wilson on piano. The SFS Chorus, directed by Jenny Wong, reached into the heart of the music by Leonard Bernstein, the Finale from Chichester Psalms (1965). As Bernstein and MTT were good friends, it was the right selection for this birthday.

Leonard Bernstein in 1973. (Photo by Allan Warren/Creative Commons)

One more terrific, long piece to close the show; it was MTT conducting Roman Festivals (1928), by Ottorino Respighi. The movements are four festivals. Each one has a different energy and a different sound, rhythm, character. I had never heard it before and enjoyed it very much. The different movements included: Games at the Circus Maximus, The Jubilee, The October Festival, and The Epiphany.

Planning a program is an art. Our Maestro made wise choices for what he would conduct. Excellent music that might not be the “usual” thing, two long pieces which had interesting changes of emotion and rhythm, and, most of all, demonstrated that despite his condition, MTT, you’ve still got it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MTT!

Photos by Stefan Cohen, courtesy of SF Symphony

SF Symphony & Michael Tilson Thomas: BRILLIANT!

The San Francisco Symphony started the New Year and their music director Michael Tilson Thomas’s 25th and final year with a brilliant concert. The ovations given to MTT promise that his devoted audience will not let him go easily. Among his many gifts, Maestro MTT is a magician of the art of program design. January 5 – 12, SFS and MTT presented Overture to Benvenuto Cellini, Opus 23, (1837) by Hector Berlioz; Meditations on Rilke (2019), by Michael Tilson Thomas; selections from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1892-1898), by Gustav Mahler; and La Valse (1920), by Maurice Ravel. Each work was performed with zest, deep feeling, flawless musicianship. There was a distant but worthy relationship between Meditations on Rilke and Des Knaben Wunderhorn that increased the audience’s appreciation of both. Do you have a great-uncle who is related only by marriage to someone who is your great-aunt living in another state, but you are crazy about him? It’s that kind of relation.

Hector Berlioz (1801-1869) French

The Overture to Benvenuto Cellini premiered in Paris, in 1838. The Overture was a hit, but the opera for which it was written was not. The story goes that all composers wanted to have their music performed there; regrettably, performances there were famous for being sloppy and under rehearsed. “The Overture was extravagantly applauded,” wrote Berlioz, “the rest was hissed with exemplary precision.” What a grand disappointment! The Overture in the SFS’s rousing performance on January 12 was full of musical interest from gorgeous melodies to a lively allegro. There is a melody for the woodwinds that represents Harlequin at a carnival. In fact, the Overture has so much character and rhythmic variation that it could be heard as a compact opera in itself. Far from a lightweight curtain opener for the evening, this Overture deserves the fine performance it received. Hearing it again will reward the listener with more insight to its structure and colors and great enjoyment.

Michael Tilson Thomas (born December, 1944) American, born in California

MTT has composed other works in which a text is the inspiration or accompaniment for the music. These include Three Songs to Poems by Walt Whitman (1999); Poems of Emily Dickinson (2002); and From the Diary of Anne Frank (2018) for narrator and orchestra. The premiere performances of Meditations on Rilke at Davies Symphony Hall, Jan. 5 -12, created a great event. In addition to the SFS, mezzo-soprano, Sasha Cooke, and bass-baritone, Ryan McKinny embodied the Rilke poetry which became exciting and lovely songs as MTT created them. The singers were a great pair for these songs. The composer-conductor tells that these songs came about by reflecting on events in his father’s life. A fine pianist, his father and friends got stuck without money in Oatman, AZ. His father filled the cafe-bar’s need for a piano player. His playing merged classical works, Gershwin and Irving Berlin songs with performances of requests such as the Bear Fat Fling. It is not 100% clear how that experience in the 1930s relates to MTT’s choice of poems by Rilke for his new songs, except that the Rilke works do resonate with sounds originating in contemporary classical music, maybe a bit of Mahler, perhaps a reference to Schubert, but over all Michael Tilson Thomas. This work was a huge favorite with the audience and has dazzling musical complexities woven in among the moods and melodies that unite it.

Rainier Maria Rilke (1875-1926)Bohemian (Czech)-Austrian

Rainier Maria Rilke is read by some to be a mystic and by others to be an existentialist poet trying to find peace in a time of anxiety and isolation. His work is lyrical and searching, such a fitting partner to MTT’s music. His consolation for his readers was “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to learn to love the questions.” The San Francisco Symphony promises the release of recordings of this and other MTT music later this year.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) born in Bohemia (now Czech Republic)

Four Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn provided a brief but satisfying venture into Mahler-land, a destination MTT has made his own. Sasha Cooke returned to sing the folk song styled works from a collection that was published in 1805. The Romantic movement embraced the music and stories of national or ethnic origins, even when it was written and arranged anew. The four songs performed by the SFS and Ms Cooke expressed the trials of living in the country, loss of love and loss of life. The songs might begin with a cheerful outlook but also were somber and alluded to barely hidden sadness. Ms Cooke delved into these emotions with understanding and appreciation for both the lyrics and the wonderful music. It was a performance revealing a root of the Romantic experience of life.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) French

La Valse, poeme choregraphique pour orchestre is such a fabulous, swirling piece that the listener feels as though she has been lifted up, repeatedly turned fast in the air, and, before long, danced so quickly and become so dizzy that she sails through the air forgetting that eventually she will fall. It is an emphatic, ever growing dance that dances itself. The room spins, but the dance does not care. Ravel originally planned a tribute to Johann Strauss. By 1920, after World War I and the destruction of much of a generation, the gracious image of waltzing was no more. The sound of this work becomes a terror. The ballroom where it takes place seems haunted by evil. It is a piece of music not to be missed, especially if the listener is willing to imagine himself in that scene and, by doing that, understand better the cost of war. Bravo, Ravel! Bravo, San Francisco Symphony!

San Francisco Symphony Soars with Schubert and Mahler

Schubert

It is possible that the SF Symphony has played as well as it did on April 9, 2016, on other occasions, but how could they have played better? It was an amazing, wonderful performance with every section playing at the top and San Francisco’s Music Director, Michael Tilson Thomas, conducting. The program itself might be matched for brilliance but hardly bettered: Symphony in B minor, the Unfinished, by Franz Schubert, and Das Lied von der Erde by Gustav Mahler. Written nearly a century apart, the two masterpieces made a powerful, emotion wrenching and heart lifting experience. While Schubert’s Symphony in B Minor is called Unfinished, it does not sound like it lacks anything. There are two movements. The first is enlivened by one of the most beautiful tunes every composed. The frequent short hand for why Schubert is so great is that glorious melodies seemed to well up in him faster than anyone could write them, certainly faster than someone who would live only 31 years (Thirty one years! Turn off the television right now. Do something. Go for a walk in a garden. Read. Listen to Schubert). Behind the beautiful tune there is darkness. Schubert breaks the melody; the suspension creates a dramatic halt of breath. Sadness darts behind the melody. There is a sense of mystery in the sadness. Perhaps Schubert stopped with these two movements because he realized he had said what he wanted to say with this music. Perhaps he could not decide where to go next, maybe because these movements are perfect as they are.

Gustav Mahler received a gift in 1907, the book The Chinese Flute translated into German. The Chinese poems inspired Mahler to write Das LIed von der Erde, The Song of the Earth. The collection includes the work of several poets of the Eighth Century. There are drinking songs, wistful songs longing for love, songs in which the poet tries to accommodate knowledge of human mortality in his delight in nature, such as in The Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow. These beautiful, perceptive, delicate and yet powerful poems reached across the centuries and continents to Mahler’s heart. It was a troubled heart at this time. An avid athlete, he had learned he had a heart ailment which would strictly limit his activities and surely kill him. He had also just lost a daughter, under 5 years old, to diphtheria and scarlet fever.

At this performance, the singers were mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and tenor Simon O’Neill. They both performed with power and sensitivity to the poetry. Their performances were a great match to the SF Symphony’s remarkable performance. Mahler’s music engulfed Davies Symphony Hall in love and wonder at life, whole hearted engagement with our earth despite our own limitations. The San Francisco Symphony was scheduled to perform this program at Carnegie Hall, April 14, with the same singers. Surely it was a concert to knock the socks off the New Yorkers. Pictures from top: Franz Schubert, Gustav Mahler, Simon O’Neill, Sasha Cooke.