What separates glitz from brilliance? Hard to say, easy to know.

It was clear and simple tonight in Davies Hall that there is absolutely
nothing meretricious about the Michael Tilson Thomas of today.

There was a time, not long ago -- in LA, in Buffalo, in London -- when he
could have become the Andrew Lloyd Webber of the symphonic world.  Instead,
in the past four years, at the head of the San Francisco Symphony, MTT has
grown into a Bernsteinesque dynamo, doing everything well.

He is still all over the place, but now all the places feel right.  He
programmed and pulled together a fabulous Stravinsky festival; tonight,
his introduction to the Sympony in C was brief and illuminating, before he
conducted it and the Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra superbly; sat down
with Peter Serkin for a riotous four-hand encore of the Gallop; took a part
of the narrator in "The Soldier's Tale" to advise Patrick Stewart on the
climactic card game with the Devil.

I don't know if he ran a valet service for limousines after the concert,
but if he did, I am sure it would be super fast and efficient.

(On the educational front, there is an unbeatable combination in San
Francisco, between MTT's mini-lectures and "little talks" from the podium
and Michael Steinberg's gripping program notes.)

There may be those who prefer their conductors demure and distant.  I, for
one, had enough of remote, unseeing demigods.  The manner and method MTT
brings to the job today makes for a happy place:  musicians and audiences
(even the critics) bask in the light of energy that -- for now -- brings
excellence to all things great and small.

Janos Gereben/SF
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