Keeping Score - Season 2 (2009)

"I feel therefore I am." For Hector Berlioz, and for the Romantic movement he personified, those were words to live by. But with the unprecedented outpouring of emotion in his Symphonie fantastique he almost overpowered Paris. This orchestral sonic spectacular, written to win the heart of a beautiful actress, demanded sacrifice from its author and his audience. From romantic daydreams to deadly displays of devotion, the symphony relates an “episode in the life of an artist,” that artist being the love-obsessed composer himself. Join Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony as they follow Berlioz to the brink in this episode of Keeping Score.

Ranging from tender sentiment to savage chaos, the music of early 20th-century composer Charles Ives explores an essentially American riddle: how can we survive the relentless assault of our own success? Unwrap the layers of Ives's Holidays Symphony as Keeping Score takes us inside this musical portrait of New England life. From the intimacy of the winter hearth to the explosive concussion of the 4th of July, discover the insights Ives liberates in his music's confrontational crunch. Join Michael Tilson Thomas as he, the San Francisco Symphony, and Charles Ives belt it out over truth, beauty, and the American Way.

Hidden beneath the surface of his life-saving Symphony No. 5, Shostakovich may have left a subversive cipher. Publicly called to task by the brutal forces of Stalin, the Soviet Union’s golden boy composer was literally writing for his life. This episode of Keeping Score investigates the arresting symphony that would either redeem Shostakovich or condemn him to the Gulag. Did he dare hide a kernel of musical criticism in his paean to the Motherland? Join Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony as they explore the enigma of this masterwork. What Shostakovich has to say might depend on what you’re brave enough to hear.