Charles Ives arr. Henry Brandt – The Alcotts (Piano Sonata No. 2 – Concord)

John Adams – Absolute Jest (ft, the St. Lawrence String Quartet)

Hector Berlioz – Symphonie Fantastique

Aaron Copeland – Rodeo (Saturday Night Waltz)

The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and their Musical Director, Michael Tilson Thomas are amongst the heavyweights of the classical musical world. 70-year old Tilson Thomas has a musical pedigree longer than your proverbial arm: an accomplished musician, musical director, composer and conductor. In short, a maestro. The SFSO meanwhile are rated amongst the world’s leading orchestras.

So, with a concert of such promise in store, where were you Birmingham?

Friday evening’s performance at Symphony Hall had more than a scattering of empty seats, yet the audience that was there had the pleasure of a performance that will certainly live long in the memory.

At first sight the evening’s programme may seem to have contained a rather unexpected mix. Two contemporary American pieces in Charles Ives’ The Alcotts (Piano Sonata No. 2 – Concord) and John Adams’ Absolute Jest for Orchestra and String Quartet comprise the first half, with the ever-popular Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz in the second.

In a pre-concert interview on the Symphony Hall website, Michael Tilson Thomas put the evening’s programme into some perspective. Ives is a speciality of his and he talks of the composer’s work as predicting the entire future of American music. In The Alcotts, (Henry Brant’s orchestration of the third movement of Ives’ Concord Sonata), we have music which Tilson Thomas ardently believes expresses the very best of the American spirit, the reason that he wanted to present it.

If Ives work involves a prediction of the future of American music, it is only fitting that it be followed by a relatively new work from one of the giants of 20th/21st century composition. The relationship between the SFSO and John Adams is close and Absolute Jest was commissioned by the SFSO in honour of their 100th anniversary in 2012.

Adams inspiration for Absolute Jest was suggested by Tilson Thomas’s performance of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella and the composer famously describes the piece as perhaps the longest scherzo ever written. Its premiere, in March 2012, elicited a mixed response, with some expressing a degree of disgust at his lifting of quotes from the scherzos of Beethoven’s late string quartets.

In a recent interview Adams defended his position (as if he really needed to), pointing out that there is nothing new about one composer internalising the music of another and suggesting that all composers are scavengers, noting that Ives quotes from Beethoven’s fifth Symphony in The Alcotts before adding: “Each composer has to invent his or her own voice; we’re staring into the void every time we start a new piece. To be a composer now is therefore a little more existentially risky than it used to be.”

But how does Berlioz fit into tonight’s programme? Michael Tilson Thomas says simply that the Symphony Fantastique is in his bones. So much so that he has even spent time examining Berlioz’s original score in Paris with its many layers of revision. The piece is generic and for Tilson Thomas interesting in that it contains so many eccentricities that are specific as to how Berlioz indicates the actual phrases. Colour is the key word here as Tilson Thomas talks of his approach to it being colouristic and gestural.

So to Symphony Hall. Shortly after 7:30pm Tilson Thomas takes to the podium, a slight and rather unassuming figure, though belying his 70 years. Following a single bow to the audience he then turned to his orchestra to commence proceedings.

The Alcotts was short and simple, a truly beautiful piece, opening gently with the quote from Beethoven’s Fifth, and then expanded with exquisite harmonies, all in a single key. The pulse of harp, horns and strings created a rhythm that was sustained throughout with a hymn-like quality. The spirituality that Tilson Thomas had spoken of was clearly there. There too, were the beginnings of Piston, Copland, Harbison, Rorem and even – somewhere I am sure – John Adams. Six minutes in duration, it was all over too quickly and I longed for more.

Next up was Absolute Jest featuring the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Tilson Thomas has described the work as, “a profound piece” and the combination of a string quartet and full orchestra is unusual.

I was interested to both hear and see how this would all work. The St. Lawrence String Quartet (who also hail from San Francisco area) marked themselves out immediately by their choice of dress, the three gentlemen each wearing brightly coloured shirts with only the single lady member of the quartet, Lesley Robertson, in more formal attire. Geoff Nuttall, on violin, in particular, had a stunning blue shirt that I am sure more than one member of the audience would have liked to own. They certainly created a contrast with the SFSO and a feeling of informality, as if they were about to rehearse rather than perform, but what a breathtaking performance it was.

With the quartet grouped around Tilson Thomas’ podium the work commenced. A throbbing of deep strings opened, setting a pace that was to become more frenetic and furious. It was a piece that took you up and moved you forward, with the St. Lawrence String Quartet continually weaving in and out of the fabric of a work that was maintained by the orchestra with continual shifts in tempo and texture.

Tilson Thomas of course, kept it all under control, maintaining an intimacy with the string quartet as if they were the only ones on stage. He conducts with such simplicity of gesture and economy of movement that I wondered how such a slight figure could be responsible for generating so much musical power.

Absolute Jest was never predictable and builds and builds with irrepressible energy. The St. Lawrence Quartet toe tapped and swooped, Nuttall’s violin playing was almost manic, with laser light speed. In a recent interview, Nuttall and cellist Christopher Costanza talked of Absolute Jest being a blast and how they hang on for the ride and of how the act of connecting with the audience is fundamental to their performance. They certainly connected this evening as they took three encores from an enraptured audience at the end.

The second half of the evening belonged to Berlioz and his Symphonie Fantastique. Tilson Thomas has likened the work to a cartoon, with the bass line stalking the treble line throughout. He makes the interesting observation that with Berlioz damnation is always in a major key, a happy tune, and asks what this says about the composer.

The Symphonie Fantastique, subtitled ‘Episode in the Life of an Artist’, is one of the most original works of the 19th Century. It unfolds around a series of visions experienced under the influence of opium and tells the tale of an artist’s self-destructive passion for a beautiful woman. It is a symphony of obsession, dreams, tenderness, ecstasy and despair and the story was rooted in Berlioz’s own despair and love for the English actress, Harriet Smithson.

Berlioz pushed sonic boundaries and in this performance Tilson Thomas explored all the colours, as he promised he would and was at his most animated of the entire evening, clearly feeling the piece flow through his bones, whilst his orchestra produced a polished and muscular performance from start to finish, proving why they are amongst the world’s best. They play with incredible heart and colour and you wonder if they are capable of making a harsh sound. There was delicacy, subtle evocations, waltzes, storms, distant thunder and a final march to the scaffold. What visions, what dreams, what drama!

After three rousing encores and shouts of ‘Bravo’ from the audience, Michael Tilson Thomas took to the podium once more to lead his charges through The Saturday Night Waltz from Copland’s Rodeo. A fitting final unfurling and waving of the Stars and Stripes, from this unassuming maestro and his orchestra.