Beethoven's "Eroica"

Founder and artistic director laureate of the New World Symphony, music director laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, and conductor laureate of the London Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas has won 11 GRAMMYs for his recordings and is the recipient of the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors. A towering presence in the United States and around the world, he coaxes unforgettable performances from orchestras and finds discovery and beauty in every note.

Tilson Thomas opens the program with a musical amuse-bouche, his playful Agnegram, and then leads Ravel’s enchanting Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. Commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, a concert pianist who had lost his right arm in the First World War, this work is more than a novelty; it’s fascinating to watch and utterly delightful to hear, a heady mix of American blues and jazz in concerto form. Hear it performed by an acclaimed pianist who has played it frequently, each time revealing new discoveries in the work: “His crystalline performance was dynamically alert, rhythmically incisive, and sensitively integrated with the delicate textures of Ravel’s bravura orchestration” (Musical America).

Tilson Thomas closes with Beethoven’s mighty “Eroica” Symphony, a paean to the heroic in all of us.