Michael Tilson Thomas is laying down his baton in San Francisco next June after 25 seasons on the job, and in the process, he has been stepping up his activities in his old hometown, Los Angeles. If the Kennedy Center ceremonies amounted to a late-career culmination of sorts for MTT, Copland’s Symphony No. The hot Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov and MTT were a compatible team in Rachmaninoff’s underperformed Piano Concerto No. Trifonov could summon dark Slavic colors out of the piano, float like a butterfly or turn on the thunderous, if occasionally blurred, octaves. Tilson Thomas caressed his way into the next passage with exquisite control.

Source: Los Angeles Times December 14, 2019 00:33 UTC