Noted Russian-American music director Michael Tilson Thomas, returning
from his first Moscow concert appearances, led the San Francisco Symphony
tonight in a crackerjack of a program.

Leaving no stone unturned to showcase good - and usually neglected -
contemporary American works, MTT opened the concert in Davies Hall with the
69-year late local premiere of Ruth Crawford Seeger's Andante for Strings,
a transcription of her 1931 String Quartet.

Ruth Porter Crawford pretty much stopped writing music after her marriage
to Charles Seeger, musicologist and force of nature, father of Pete from
his first marriage, of Mike and Peggy from the marriage with Crawford.
It's a terrible waste that she stopped composing because the Andante is a
strong, original, haunting work, indicating - no, proving - a wonderful
ability to produce simple, straightforward, memorable music.

MTT continued the concert with one of the best of his in-concert
lecture-demonstrations, an extensive, passionate, illuminating run-through
of the Berg Violin Concerto.  Soloists and orchestra members usually
participate in such events reluctantly, but the conductor's enthusiasm
swept them along and the illustrated lecture had the same quality as the
performance that followed - and that is to say, music of the highest order.
Gil Shaham and the orchestra played with rare clarity, cohesiveness,
parsing the complex music in such a way that it truly "spoke" to the
audience.  With all the deep grief permeating the work, the performance was
dominated by joy stemming from understanding, acceptance, sheer beauty.

At 29, Shaham has been performing for two decades, and yet every time he
appears here (which is, luckily, on a regular basis), he plays as a fresh,
new talent, somebody you keep "discovering" again and again.  His powerful,
unaffected musical presence is testimony to the often-challenged theory
that prodigies can keep growing artistically as the years go by - Shaham
certainly does.

Beethoven's Sixth Symphony - in a performance shifting smoothly between
dynamic, lyrical, funny and sweeping portions - closed the concert that
turned out to be one of the most varied and satisfying of the season.

Janos Gereben/SF, CA
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