A Showpiece Concert

Last night's Toronto Symphony concert featured a work that is often cited as a showpiece for the excellence of an orchestra's players, as well as one that is a real (albeit not obvious) test of the musicianship of a pianist.


Before those two works, though, the concert began with a modern work, Vivian Fung's Aqua, composed in 2012.  The composer intended it as a musical representation of the award-winning Aqua Tower skyscraper in Chicago.  In common with much contemporary music, this consisted of some very attractive and winning sounds that (for my money) didn't really go anywhere or do anything.  The orchestra played with the necessary range from subtlety to a climactic roar.  With the exception of 2 short passages, each lasting only a few seconds, this 5-minute work had no discernible rhythm at all unless you watched conductor Peter Oundjian faithfully beating time.  My personal preference is for music that has distinct rhythm and a sense of movement to it.


After an extensive re-setting of the stage, the concert continued with American pianist Richard Goode joining the orchestra in the Concerto in G Major, K.453 (# 17) of Mozart.  Goode is a musician of considerable stature; his complete cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas has been acclaimed as among the best of the best ever recorded by many critics.  He is also known for chamber music performances.  This is an essential qualification if you are going to tackle a Mozart concerto.  What you don't want is a hot-shot Klaviertiger such as the one Sir Donald Tovey once called by the euphemism "Herr Hammerfaust von Tastenbrecher"!  At the same time, this is not dainty music, so let's not go too far to the other extreme, which the reviewers of the renowned Penguin Guide describe as "the gentle clink of Dresden china".  It's equally necessary for the orchestra to get the balance right between these possible extremes.


Goode has a wonderful sense of Mozartean style and scale of tone.  His playing is clean and clear, not lacking in energy, but never overplaying either.  Use of the pedals was beautifully judged too.  The orchestra partnered with grace and verve, and again the scale of the playing was just right.  Even the rather prominent horn part didn't stick out like a sore thumb (a likely trouble spot).  Ever since Peter Oundjian came to the Toronto Symphony 10 years ago, I have always enjoyed most his excursions into the eighteenth century repertoire of Haydn and Mozart, sensing that he has a real affinity for the music of this particular era.  This concerto was as engaging as anyone could want it to be.


The second half was taken up by one of the biggest of Richard Strauss tone poems, Ein Heldenleben ("A Hero's Life").  This grandiose piece is well-understood as a kind of musical autobiography.  It's as well to remember that it was written when the composer was still only 34 years old.  Perhaps it is for this reason that the final sections, effectively depicting old age and death, seem less convincing to some listeners (although I always enjoy them!).


This was actually the first time I have ever heard the work played live, so it was interesting to compare the experience with listening to recordings.  The first thing I noticed was a characteristic Straussian fingerprint -- the presence of sweeping melodies entrusted primarily to the strings.  These the orchestra carried off magnificently.  The opening, a rushing upward arpeggio for cellos and basses, is a notorious trouble spot but was executed with perfect precision, and set the passionate tone of the entire performance instantly.  One thing Peter Oundjian has definitely achieved with the Toronto Symphony is a notable improvement in the tone and quality of the string sections.


Balance and clarity are important considerations with such a large-scale work, and for the most part all the key voices came through with no problems.  The swirling decorative passages for 2 harps in the opening section are often swamped in recordings, but were clearly audible.  I was struck by the positively Mahlerian sound of the shrill chattering woodwinds as they depicted the hero's "enemies" (read: music critics!).  Concertmaster Jonathan Crow made every single note count in the concerto-sized violin solo part which depicts the hero's wife, and indeed caught all the diverse personal traits of the beautiful, loving, maddening, shrewish Pauline de Ahna, the operatic soprano whom Strauss married. 


Even the massive battle scene was kept firmly under control -- right from the exact precision of the offstage fanfares that launch it.  Only in the closing pages did the balance disintegrate, but with the entire orchestra roaring away fortissimo this is probably an unsolvable technical problem.  Indeed, Strauss may actually have been the first composer to produce such a deliberate cacophonous uproar!


The long-lined melodies of the section depicting the hero's "Works of Peace" contain many allusions to previous Strauss works.  This whole section built up effectively to the climactic fortissimo quotation from the early tone poem, Don Juan, and here Oundjian wisely saved an extra degree of volume increase for the last chord before that peroration began.


The concluding portrayal of death features a magnificent horn solo and finally culminates in the famous "sunrise" motif from Also Sprach Zarathustra (think: 2001: A Space Odyssey).  I had never really registered the fact before that at this point the strings, so often the vehicle of this composer's lyrical ideas, fall completely silent.  The final ascent to a peak, crescendo, and diminuendo is entrusted to the brasses, and here the TSO's brass section did themselves proud, especially in the dwindling sound after that last grand outburst.  All in all, a successful and indeed passionate account of a piece that tests every section of the orchestra in turn, and that tests the conductor's ability to hold the sprawling, sectional structure of the work together.