Keeping Score - Season 1 (2004)

“Listen and obey! Fate decrees you must follow the road down to a place you have never imagined yet secretly always feared!” To the practiced ears of Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT), Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, the opening notes of Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony make this dramatic declaration. But how can marks on a 150-year-old page transform into the carnivorous wolf-pack noise that marks this symphony’s climax? Where is the unflinching emotion found? From decoding the score, to uncovering Tchaikovsky’s hidden history, through rehearsals, tuning, and the big bang of opening night, this episode of Keeping Score gives us a backstage pass to the San Francisco Symphony.

Beethoven’s Third Symphony Eroica, the “Heroic,” literally turned classical music on its head. Composing the first ever symphonic autobiography, Beethoven laid bare his dreams, his fears, and, at its climax, his rediscovered heroism. From his early musical rivalries in Vienna to the terrifying realization of his increasing deafness, Beethoven reveals the roots of his genius in this episode of Keeping Score. Never before had music dared to paint so personal a portrait. Follow Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony as they delve deep into the psyche of one of Western Civilization’s greatest artists, reading between the notes of his favorite work.

Savage, hypnotic, and hell-bent, Igor Stravinsky’s ballet, The Rite of Spring, set off a shock wave that turned Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées into the scene of one of the most astounding opening nights in history. The raucous rebellion Stravinsky's score started first onto the stage. As the dancers and the music pushed past civilized limits, the audience, astounded, pushed back. “Keep going no matter what!” the conductor was told, but they didn’t expect a riot! In this episode of Keeping Score, the tendrils of Stravinsky’s music pull us back through France and Russia to pagan times. Join Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony as they celebrate the wild abandon unleashed by The Rite of Spring.

Dealing notes like cards in a game of poker, Aaron Copland gambled on a new American sound. His roots in Brooklyn’s Jewish community, shuffled with depression-era jazz, folk music, and hymns earned him a hand flush with relentless innovation. How such an unlikely outsider managed to capture the spirit of a nation to create classics like Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring is a tale possible only in America. In this episode of Keeping Score, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony pare Copland and his music down to their essence, revealing the sound we now recognize as American.