After all the second chances I’ve given that bitch , he still disappoints. Life’s too short to give another 50 minutes of it to the galumphing emptiness that is Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5—even if played by the San Francisco Symphony. Michael Tilson Thomas is bringing his world-class group up the coast, and though I’m bailing at intermission to give the Fifth a miss, I won’t skip Thomas’ own Street Song, which as he puts it moves “between the world of the middle ages and the present, between East and West,” or Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 5 with the ursine Garrick Ohlsson, who eats Russian piano concertos for breakfast, at the keyboard. GAVIN BORCHERT

Tue., Jan. 20, 7:30 p.m.; Wed., Jan. 21, 7:30 p.m., 2009