By Michael White
classical-music.com
As conductor Michael Tilson Thomas marks his 80th birthday, he speaks to Michael White about continuing to make wonderful music while living with cancer.
Some musicians seem incapable of ageing; and until quite recently a prime example was that most articulate, engaging and all-round alive of conductors Michael Tilson Thomas.
Decades passed and, with them, orchestras: the London Symphony, which he directed in the 1980s/90s; then the San Francisco Symphony, which he ran from the mid-90s through to 2020. Eras changed. But MTT, as people call him, somehow didn’t. He held onto a mercurially boyish grace and elegance – until, in 2022, news broke that he’d contracted a particularly cruel and aggressive kind of brain cancer.
Since then, the music world has watched and waited; and for MTT himself it’s been, to say the least, an anxious time. But December 2024 brought his 80th birthday. He’s still here, still working, though to a restricted schedule. He has concerts – handpicked for what he calls a ‘gentler, quieter calendar’ – booked through to spring 2025. And from the emotionally charged Mahler 2 he conducted at London’s Barbican in October 2024 – pushing aside the chair that had been placed on the podium, and standing for the entire 90 minutes – he can still deliver. Fragile but defiant.
When I ask about his health he says, after a pause, ‘There are a lot of different opinions about that. I have energy, optimism, perspective. It’s only when well-meaning people are so concerned about my welfare that I can’t operate in the way I’m used to. It’s frustrating when I want to rehearse for a number of hours, and they say: “Oh, that might be too strenuous.” I say: “Let me do my work. If it’s too much, I will tell you.”
‘That aside, my situation gives me a certain focus. When I’m asked to do things, I want to know how much actual music-making is involved rather than organisation or promotion. I want everything to be musical.’