When a 29-year-old conductor named Michael Tilson Thomas made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 1974, leading Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, few could have foreseen this would evolve into one of the most successful unions of composer, conductor, and orchestra in recent memory.

Now, in celebration of 50 years performing Mahler together, MTT and the Symphony present Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, which finds the composer at his most joyous and life-affirming.

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is the ideal piece for music director laureate Tilson Thomas, whose decades-long devotion to the composer yielded the acclaimed Mahler recording project on SFS Media. Don’t miss MTT in his final subscription concerts with the SF Symphony.

// January 25-27 at San Francisco Symphony, 201 Van Ness Ave. (Civic Center); get tickets at sfsymphony.org.