CCMusic.com

SONY CLASSICAL’S MONUMENTAL MTT MEGAB0X

• 80 CD-set with hard cover bound booklet

The Complete CBS, RCA and Sony Classical Recordings

He was Leonard Bernstein’s most famous protégé, and it’s convenient to draw parallels between two prodigiously gifted pianists, composers and charismatic explicators who became the leading American conductor of their respective generations. Like his mentor from the East Coast, Michael Tilson Thomas, born and bred on the West Coast, has been an eloquent champion of Mahler, Gershwin, Ives and Copland; he is also equally at home in the standard European repertoire, Broadway musicals and jazz; and he is a passionate, eloquent teacher – in the 1970s he took over Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts. MTT – as he is affectionately known almost everywhere by now – has become one of the world’s best-loved musical figures and most successful recording artists, with a dozen Grammys to his credit. Sony’s 80-CD box set now, for the first time, collects the entire discography he amassed for RCA, CBS and Sony Classical between 1973 and 2005.

Born into an artistic family in Los Angeles in 1944 – his paternal grandparents Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky were founding members of the Yiddish Theatre in America – by the age of 19 he was already conducting premières of works by Boulez, Copland, Stockhausen and Stravinsky. He assisted Boulez at the Ojai Festival in California, in 1969 was appointed assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony under William Steinberg, was music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic from 1971 to 1979 and principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1981 to 1985. He founded and directed the Miami-based New World Symphony, which gave its first concert in 1988, and that year, he became principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. In 1995, he assumed the career-defining post of music director of the San Francisco Symphony, turning an already top-class ensemble into America’s most boldly adventurous orchestra. “If Leonard Bernstein was 20th-century American music’s greatest missionary,” wrote Gramophone, “then Michael Tilson Thomas is its 21st-century acolyte.”

Right from the start, MTT’s recordings for CBS showed off his dedication to the music of his homeland. 1974 brought Stanley Silverman’s “multi-media pop-opera extravaganza” Elephant Steps: A Fearful Radio Show – New York Times: “[It] earned rave reviews, and so did its actor-conductor. Michael Tilson Thomas found himself a hero in East Coast contemporary music circles” – and John McLaughlin’s Apocalypse with the Mahavishnu and London Symphony Orchestras, whose producer George Martin, of Beatles fame, regarded it as “one of the best records I have ever made”. Along with recordings of Orff’s Carmina burana (“A terrifically exciting performance … aided by playing of characteristic brilliance and transparency from the Cleveland Orchestra” – ClassicsToday; Grammy winner for “Best Choral Performance” and nominee for “Album of the Year”); and, with the LSO and Ambrosian Singers, seldom performed late choral music by Beethoven (“On all counts very well worth adding to your collection” – Gramophone), the 1970s also saw his pioneering recordings of the complete works of Carl Ruggles, with the Buffalo Philharmonic (“For collectors of 20th-century American music … a landmark from the moment that CBS Masterworks released it in 1980” – New York Times).

Talking about George Gershwin in an interview, MTT disclosed that he “has occupied a vitally important place in my life. From my childhood, his music, interpretations, wise-cracks and wise-words were transmitted to me by my father…a piano student of Gershwin and by my uncle Harry who played and wrote music with him in his early years.” In 1976, Thomas stood the musical world on its head by recording Rhapsody in Blue with the composer as soloist (via a 1924 piano roll) matched to his conducting of the Columbia Jazz Band: “Nobody who is concerned with Gershwin’s music will be able to do without this record” (Gramophone). Dating from the same time is an album of Broadway overtures: “Thomas and the Buffalo Philharmonic have put together a group of stunning performances that are almost perfectly recorded and fill a real gap in the catalogue” (Gramophone).

In the 1980s with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, there was a live concert of Gershwin songs with Sarah Vaughan (“Sparkle and joyous spontaneity” – MusicWeb International) and an album of works with piano with MTT conducting from the keyboard; and in New York, he recorded two Gershwin musicals, Of Thee I Sing and Let ‘em Eat Cake: “Michael Tilson Thomas drives both scores along with total conviction … Aiding and abetting him is a splendid chorus … and three leads who are steeped in the performing tradition of the musical theatre” (Gramophone). And in 1997 a Gramophone reviewer proclaimed: “Michael Tilson Thomas and George Gershwin go together like bread and cheese … In the mini-avalanche of Gershwin centenary recordings this [San Francisco Symphony] set stands out … [with] an exquisitely poised understanding of the jazz influences on the opera [Porgy and Bess] … Tilson Thomas himself attacks the Second Rhapsody with glittering, humorous style … A piece as familiar as An American in Paris sounds freshly exciting.”

Similarly with Charles Ives: “If anyone has a hot-line to the cortex of Ives’s imagination, it’s Michael Tilson Thomas” (Gramophone Classical Music Guide). In the 1980s and 90s, he made acclaimed CBS recordings of Ives’s symphonies with the Chicago Symphony and Concertgebouw orchestras. With the San Francisco Symphony for RCA in 1999, he created “Charles Ives: An American Journey”, which the BBC’s reviewer called “a totally satisfying overview of Ives’s genius on one 65-minute CD. Songs, symphonies, psalms and tone poems … imaginatively sequenced as an organic whole.”

And Aaron Copland: MTT was still in his teens when he met him and began performing and premiering his music. He has said: “I have a very clear idea of him and his personality and his musical desires.” Of the numerous, diverse Copland recordings in this set, the most recent, and perhaps most indispensable, are two RCA albums with the San Francisco Symphony. “Copland the Modernist”, released in 1996, includes the Piano Concerto (with Garrick Ohlsson), Orchestral Variations, Short Symphony and Symphonic Ode: “A young man’s America, alternately monolithic and toughly contrapuntal … The performance knows just how good it is. Deep-set, blockbusting recording. A winner” (Gramophone). “Copland the Populist” (2000) features the composer’s “Big Three”: Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid and Rodeo “in performances of tremendous power and panache … Boasting some handsomely opulent, exhilaratingly expansive sonics, this is one corker of a release” (Gramophone).

Just a few further samplings of the countless riches in this set. Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, recorded with the San Francisco Symphony “easily withstands comparison to any of the great versions of the past … and it sounds better than any of them” (ClassicsToday). Debussy’s complete incidental music for Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien with the London Symphony Orchestra for Sony in 1997 “is as near an ideal performance as could be imagined” (Penguin Guide). Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with Joshua Bell and the Berlin Philharmonic for Sony in 2005: “No matter how many other recordings you possess or may have heard [this one] is a must” (ClassicsToday). Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 with the London Symphony Orchestra for RCA in 1997 is “among the very finest to have come along in years” (ClassicsToday). Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet (excerpts) with the San Francisco Symphony for RCA in 1995 is “stunningly good … For many listeners this hugely enjoyable disc will be the one Romeo & Juliet to have and hold” (ClassicsToday). Stravinsky’s Firebird, Rite of Spring and Perséphone with the San Francisco Symphony for RCA in 1996–98): “Tilson Thomas has long established his credentials as an excellent Stravinsky conductor … Now with his own orchestra (which plays fabulously throughout), he undertakes the ever-popular Firebird and Rite of Spring ballets, and brings them off stunningly” (ClassicsToday).

Finally, two further adventurous albums with the New World Symphony for RCA. New World Jazz (1997), including works by Adams, Antheil, Bernstein, Gershwin, Stravinsky, Milhaud and Hindemith, is “imaginatively programmed and impeccably realized by all involved” (Gramophone). And with music by contemporary American composer Steven Mackey, “Tuck and Roll” (2001) is “free-wheeling, genre-defying fun … [with] sensational playing … Michael Tilson Thomas is in his element in this sort of repertoire as many of his conducting peers are not – and it is good to see him following Leonard Bernstein’s lead in taking up composers younger than himself. I cannot imagine this music better performed or recorded”

MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS, COMPLETE COLUMBIA CBS AND RCA RECORDINGS