Photo by Grant Black
The report on the San Francisco Symphony's next season says one of the celebrations of Michael Tilson Thomas' 70 birthday "will have five prominent pianists — Emanuel Ax, Jeremy Denk, Marc-André Hamelin, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Yuja Wang — join MTT for a rare performance of Liszt's Hexameron for Six Pianos and Orchestra (Variations on the March from I Puritani)" on Jan. 15, 2015.
That is an impressive, prominent lineup, but can it rival the premiere of the performance? In 1837, in a benefit concert for the poor, Liszt engaged the most famous composer/pianists of the age, each of whom contributed a variation to the piece begun by Liszt: Frédéric Chopin, Carl Czerny, Henri Herz, Johann Peter Pixis, and Sigismond Thalberg.
The title refers to the Biblical six days of creation.