Back in action after surgery for a brain tumor, Michael Tilson Thomas returns to his native Los Angeles for a program coupling Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100, and his own Meditation on Rilke. Prokofiev called the symphony, written in the U.S.S.R. in 1944, with war raging all around, “a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit.” In his Rilke settings, Tilson Thomas has acknowledged the influence of Schubert, Mahler, and Berg, though with American inflections. The San Francisco Chronicle has likened the finished composition to “a Schubertian cowboy song.” Sasha Cooke and Dashon Burton are the soloists. —M.G.