The San Francisco Symphony’s (SFS) live concert recording of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 and the Adagio from Symphony No. 10 conducted by Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) received three Grammy® Awards in the categories of Best Classical Album, Best Choral Performance for Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; Ragnar Bohlin, Kevin Fox & Susan McMane, choir directors, and Best Engineered Classical Album for Engineer Peter Laenger at the 52nd annual Grammy Awards held in Los Angeles. This recording is the latest release in the ongoing Mahler recording cycle for the orchestra’s own SFS Media label. Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 in E flat major, Symphony of a Thousand, was recorded live in Davies Symphony Hall November 19, 21, 22 and 23, 2008 and features performances by sopranos Erin Wall, Elza van den Heever, and Laura Claycomb; mezzo-sopranos Katarina Karnéus and Yvonne Naef; tenor Anthony Dean Griffey; baritone Quinn Kelsey; and bass-baritone James Morris. The San Francisco Symphony Chorus under the direction of Ragnar Bohlin is featured on the recording as well as the San Francisco Girls Chorus, directed by Susan McMane and the Pacific Boychoir under the direction of Kevin Fox. The Adagio from Symphony No. 10, which opens this two-disc set, was recorded April 6-8, 2006. A short video with behind the scenes footage and insights from the recording can be viewed here: “A Universe of Sound: Recording Mahler’s Symphony No. 8.”

With these three awards the SFS’s Mahler cycle has now received a total of seven Grammy awards. The first recording, Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, was released in February 2002 and won the Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance. Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 and Kindertotenlieder, featuring mezzo-soprano Michelle De Young won Best Classical Album in 2003. Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 won Best Classical Album and Best Orchestral Performance in 2007. The SFS has garnered seven additional Grammy Awards for recordings outside of the Mahler cycle.

Since the Mahler recording project began in 2001, the San Francisco Symphony has recorded all of the Mahler symphonies, the Adagio from the unfinished Tenth Symphony, Kindertotenlieder and Das Lied von der Erde and released a re-mastered recording of Das klagende Lied. Additional works still to be released include Mahler’s Rückert Lieder, Songs Of A Wayfarer (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen) and selected songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. All of the new SFS/MTT Mahler symphony recordings were produced by Andreas Neubronner and have entered the top ten of the Billboard Classical Chart.

by Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

No one in the enthusiastic audience that packed Davies Symphony Hall for the San Francisco Symphony’s Wednesday night concert was under any illusions about the headliner. That would be cellist Yo-Yo Ma, beginning a two-week residency under the banner of the orchestra’s Project San Francisco.

But Michael Tilson Thomas - always mindful of the verities of showbiz - gave them more than they came for.

If listeners braved the elements to hear Ma give a fervid and fiercely expressive performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2, they also got a superb reprise of Tchaikovsky’s “Little Russian” Symphony and a graceful, evocative account of Sibelius’ tone poem “The Oceanides.” Thomas even offered an amuse-bouche, an unannounced rendition of the Polka from Shostakovich’s ballet “The Age of Gold” to allow for any rain-soaked late arrivals.

That’s what they call giving full value.

Not to say that Ma’s tonally ravishing and rhetorically forthright performance wasn’t the centerpiece of the program. It was. (For Saturday’s repeat performance, the Shostakovich will be replaced by Brahms’ Double Concerto, with Ma and violinist Colin Jacobsen as soloists.) But this was also an object lesson in how not to let star power take over to the exclusion of other things.

It may also be that it takes an artist as eloquent and insightful as Ma to fully sell this dark, gnarled product of Shostakovich’s last years.

The melodies, especially in the first movement, are plangent but veiled, as though there were some urgent emotional subtext that the soloist (or the composer) can’t bring himself to address directly. The sense of relief that arrives with the corrosive scherzo and the ironically dapper finale (played without a break) is palpable.

Ma and the orchestra conspired to strike that dual note perfectly. The solo writing in the opening pages set a tone of reluctant expressivity, while the orchestra’s angular expostulations seemed to be needling him toward greater candor. The latter movements thrived on the music’s rhythmic propulsiveness and aggressive

swagger.

What’s striking too in this concerto, as in many of the composer’s late works, is the transparency of the orchestral writing, and the frequency with which the soloist finds himself in intimate dialogue with just one or two instruments. Wednesday’s performance featured superb solos by hornists Nicole Cash and Jonathan Ring, and percussionists Jack Van Geem and James Lee Wyatt III.

If the two Shostakovich pieces created a world of emotional ambiguity, the rest of the music wore its heart winningly on its sleeve.

The Sibelius, in its first Symphony performance, conjured up the water nymphs of its title in cresting waves of sound and sparkling runs of woodwinds in thirds. Flutists Robin McKee and Linda Lukas and clarinetist Luis Baez handled that aspect deftly.

And for sheer good spirits and melodic effusion, there was the Tchaikovsky, occupying the second half of the program in a crisp, trim little rendition that was absolutely irresistible. Perhaps this symphony, the composer’s second, lacks some of the soul-stirring profundity of his later works; I don’t know. But its charm and vivacity more than compensate, and Thomas and the orchestra played it magnificently.