Michael Tilson Thomas has made a career of doing the music he believes in. “I very much like the idea of the past, present and future being connected. Because I knew so many composers, hearing them sing their own music in their own voices had a huge influence on me. You learn so much about a person from hearing them sing. So I had to work backward with composers I never met, ones who died 200 years before I was born, to create a voice, a clear expressive point of view.”