‘Keeping Score’ with the San Francisco Symphony

series, Symphony’s ambitious television/video documentary episodes, from Beethoven and “Keeping Score,” the San Francisco spans a huge swath of music in nine Tchaikovsky to American composers Aaron Copland and Charles Ives. Launched in 2004 as part of the symphony’s Grammy Award winning SFS Media project, the series combines bines documentray explorations narrated by symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas with concert performances led by Tilson Thomas in Davies Symphony Hall.

Now, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the symphony is making the entire series available for free online streaming on YouTube, with episodes released in four batches each Wednesday through April 8. The first batch, which features “Copland and the American Sound,” “Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5” and Ives’ “Holidays Symphony,” was released March 19. This week brings Batch 2, which includes two Mahler episodes “Mahler Origins — Symphony No. 1” and “Mahler Legacy — A Mahler Journey.” Batch 3, which pairs Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” with Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantasticque,” will be released on April 1, and Batch 4, with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, “Eroica,” becomes available on April 8. To access these “Keeping Score” offerings, subscribe to the San Francisco Symphony’s YouTube channel. More information and links to the videos are on the symphony website, www.sfsymphony.org (search for “keeping score”).