Symphony maestro Thomas to step down
Music director says he will retire in 2020 after his 25th season
Michael Tilson Thomas will step down as music director of the San Francisco Symphony at the end of the 2019-20 season, marking the end of the longest and arguably most significant chapter in the orchestra’s 106-year history.
Since taking up the position of music director in 1995, Thomas has overseen a remarkable transformation that has vaulted the San Francisco Symphony to a central position among the top orchestras of the United States and given it a distinctive profile on the international stage.
The move, announced to the orchestra on Tuesday, Oct. 31, is scheduled to coincide with both the end of Thomas’ 25th season at the organization’s helm and his 75th birthday in December 2019. He will remain with the Symphony in the newly created post of music director laureate, conducting at least four weeks each year and undertaking a variety of special programming projects.
“I guess part of my decision was just a matter of thinking in round numbers,” Thomas said in a phone interview. “I’ve been very pleased to see the development of the music making in
the orchestra, and particularly the amazing quality of the new members coming in. So I’m taking this step with a lot of confidence in my colleagues, and a sense of satisfaction at the direction of this journey we’ve taken together.
“But in the big picture of my personal life, I’m looking forward to having less responsibility, and more time to devote to other projects — even ones not necessarily having to do with music.”
Thomas’ decision to step aside comes at a critical juncture for the Symphony, a time of softening attendance and growing financial uncertainty. Whoever succeeds him will need to maintain the high artistic and technical standards that have become part of the Symphony’s thumbprint, while also finding a way to attract a younger and more diverse audience — an imperative on which other organizations have made notable progress.
The nearly three-year lead time on the announcement will give the Symphony a comfortable cushion to find and engage Thomas’ successor — no doubt a welcome respite for an organization that also just underwent a shift in executive leadership.
“This is not an end, but an exciting transition for Michael and our institution,” said Mark Hanson, who took over as the orchestra’s executive director Sept. 1. “The lead time allows us to plan very exciting celebratory concerts, special events and tours during his final three years, and to be thinking well in advance about special projects that are particularly suited to his talents.”
Hanson said the search process would be “very comprehensive,” with input from musicians, board members and staff. The goal, he said, is to have a unanimous choice in place in time for a handoff in 2020.
Thomas has made an indelible mark on the orchestra itself as well as on its position and reputation in the world of classical music. He has expanded the Symphony’s repertoire to include a new emphasis on music by American and contemporary composers. He has brought the Symphony to a wider global audience through an ambitious regimen of touring and broadcasting. He has championed the cause of music education and outreach through the multimedia project “Keeping Score,” and created a lasting recorded legacy that includes, most notably, the Symphony’s landmark set of the complete Mahler symphonies.
Thomas has added theatrical music to the programming mix, with semi-staged performances of such works as Wagner’s “Flying Dutchman,” Britten’s “Peter Grimes” and Bernstein’s “On the Town.”
Through it all, Thomas has put his stamp on the orchestra’s performing style, taking an ensemble whose technical prowess had been heightened by his predecessor, Herbert Blomstedt, and infusing it with a spirit of spontaneity and expressive freedom.
“Michael is a very strong presence on the podium, but he’s not dogmatic,” principal oboist Eugene Izotov said by phone. “He has absolutely no fear of the unknown. The notes on the page might be the same, but the meaning and expression are different every time.”
“Michael Tilson Thomas embodies the personality and the spirit of San Francisco,” said board President Sakurako Fisher in a statement. “Striving for excellence in all that he does, creative and curious in nature, inclusive of all, and adventurous in his thinking.”
The relationship between Thomas and the Symphony extends back more than 40 years. He made his first appearance here as a guest conductor in January 1974, leading performances of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony that The Chronicle’s Robert Commanday hailed as “magnificent.”
Cellist Margaret Tait had just joined the orchestra and still recalls that first collaboration.
“It was vibrant, it was convincing, it was more youthful of course than what we do now,” she said. “And as music director, he was even more in command of the orchestra.”
Thomas’ career developed swiftly in the intervening years, with positions in Buffalo, N.Y., Los Angeles and London. Yet for all his visibility and cachet as an orchestral leader, the decision to hire him in San Francisco when Blomstedt stepped down was not an uncomplicated one. He had a reputation for fast living and, at times, for temperamental interactions with colleagues.
But to Nancy Bechtle, then the president of the Symphony board, he was clearly the best candidate for the job — youthful, a native Californian, and adventurous in his outlook.
“From the very first time I saw him, I thought he interpreted music better than anyone I’d ever seen,” she said. “And as soon as he was announced, the city went nuts.”
Thomas’ first season set the tone for the years to come. He opened with a new work commissioned from Lou Harrison, a Bay Area resident whose music had never appeared on a Symphony program, and continued with a season in which every program included a work by an American composer, past or present. That season concluded with a festival devoted to composers he’d dubbed “American Mavericks,” in which members of the Grateful Dead participated in a long free-form work by the late John Cage.
Music of American composers continues to preoccupy him — this month, he’ll conduct Ives’ Third and Fourth Symphonies with the orchestra — but at 72, Thomas is also increasingly focused on work of the standard repertoire. Next week, for example, sees the release of the orchestra’s superb recordings of the complete Schumann symphonies.
“In earlier days when I was guest conducting, very often I was asked to do a piece by Ives or Luciano Berio or Elliott Carter or someone like that,” Thomas said. “But now I’m becoming more of an elder statesman, and by and large I’m asked to do Beethoven or Schumann or Mahler. I guess it’s very kindly assumed that I can bring some life experience to bear on it.”