Add the San Francisco Symphony to the growing list of orchestras that produce their own recordings now that the big entertainment conglomorates have reduced their involvement in classical music.

A label like SFSmedia needs to appeal to as broad a section of the musical public as possible and thus tends to concentrate on major repertoire. You can't get more major than Beethoven's most popular and best symphony and his finest, if not necessarily most performed, piano concerto.

Whether you have an SACD player or listen to it in CD mode, you will probably be impressed by the detail and spatial subtlety of the recorded sound. Those qualities highlight the refinement of the orchestral playing.

Michael Tilson Thomas doesn't depart radically from what we might call the "standard" approach to the Fifth Symphony. But the way he gets individual instruments to become more prominent here and there for just a few beats, as needed, adds a welcome dimension to the music.

The concerto is well done, as you would expect, although it's not as impressive as the symphony. For example, Ax's playing sounds a little mechanical in the first movement development. It's not a big deal. I do recommend this disc, but primarily on the basis of the symphony.