The San Francisco Symphony is one of America’s better bands, led since 1995 by Michael Tilson Thomas. It seems like only yesterday he was just starting out, whippet-thin, leading the Young People’s Concerts of the New York Philharmonic. He is still whippet-thin and youthful. He looks exactly the same, only his hair is gray and he is moving into his mid-sixties. That happens.

Tilson Thomas brought the SFS to Carnegie Hall for two concerts, each with a soloist. The soloist in the first concert was Gil Shaham, the Israeli-American violinist; the soloist in the second was Deborah Voigt, the American soprano. Shaham’s piece was off the beaten path: the Violin Concerto of William Schuman, composed in 1947 (revised twelve years later). Schuman used to be a big deal in American musical life, president of the Juilliard School, president of Lincoln Center—and, of course, a prolific composer. His < ...

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