Toronto Symphony 2019-2020 # 2: American Night at the TSO

This week, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra has mounted a fascinating programme of works by five different American composers.  The concerts are led by guest conductor Leonard Slatkin, one of the leading American conductors over the last few decades.  Although Slatkin has appeared as guest conductor with the TSO on a number of occasions, this concert marks the first time I've managed to get to one of his performances.

The concert opened with a Canadian premiere: Cindy McTee's Double Play for Orchestra.  Maestro Slatkin raised appreciative chuckles when he disclosed in his pre-concert speech that Cindy McTee is his wife, that he and his son are also composers, and that he tries to programme one work by each of them in turn on a weekly basis to keep the revenue stream flowing!

One of the more entertaining aspects of contemporary classical music is the fun of trying to imagine from the title what a particular piece might sound like or how it might be put together.  McTee's title certainly intrigued me with the number of possibilities it raised in my mind.  In the event it turned out to be a two-movement work lasting some 17 minutes, with the two movements linked together. 

Normally, my great beef with contemporary music is the lack of any kind of rhythmic sense, any feeling of momentum or progression.  In that case, you'd think that I would enjoy the highly upbeat second movement more than the slower, almost static first.  But you'd be wrong.  McTee's first movement, entitled The Unquestioned Answer, presents a modern riff on Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question.  Using the same searching melodic "question" which Ives posed on trumpet, McTee puts it through a kaleidoscopic array of variations on different instruments, while string chords appear, shift, and vanish like clouds and occasional threatening swells of thunderous brass tone swamp the scene.  It's nothing if not gripping.

The second movement, Tempus Fugit ("Time Flies") builds up what seems an unstoppable momentum of jazzy cross-rhythms across the orchestra, with much use of percussion to punctuate the rhythmic drive.  It's very engrossing for a few minutes, but outstays its welcome as the sameness begins to wear after a while.  All the frequent shifts in rhythmic pattern were played with crisp precision.

Next, pianist Jon Kimura Parker joined the orchestra and Maestro Slatkin for the Piano Concerto, Op. 38 by Samuel Barber.  Barber is most famed for his Adagio for Strings, adapted from his early String Quartet.  This concerto came later in his life, being first performed in 1962, and received its TSO premiere a year later -- both performances with pianist John Browning.  This is the first time I've ever heard the work.

The concerto's bombastic first movement did nothing to change my impression that Barber had, by this point in his life, written himself out (he didn't think so).  It's rather telling that, for a composer who became famous for his melodic gifts, he didn't manage to find a single clear melodic statement anywhere in the movement.  There also didn't seem to be any clear connection between the soloist's material and the orchestral sections.  The two remaining shorter movements were much more rewarding.

Jon Kimura Parker dispatched the fiendish arpeggios and glissandos of the solo part with great energy and flair in the first movement, and then mined a vein of poetry in the slow second movement with gentler playing and beautiful phrasing.  The orchestra under Slatkin partnered him to lovely effect in that slow movement and then had themselves a fine old time with the high-energy 5/4 moto perpetuo of the finale.

After the intermission, we heard three shorter works in contrasting styles.  Bernstein's Overture to Candide featured on perhaps the very first Toronto Symphony concert I ever attended, as a Grade 8 student, and I remember how we studied the themes and listened to a recording in music class before the concert.  It remains a brilliant, extrovert showpiece with several obstinately memorable ear worms among its rich budget of melodies.  Slatkin's ebullient performance would have met with the approval of the young Bernstein when he wrote the piece (Lenny was notorious for getting slower in his tempi as he got older). 

The next work, definitely more serious, was Corigliano's Elegy for Orchestra. This deeply-felt piece written in 1965 was dedicated to Samuel Barber, and well it might be for the example of Barber's famous Adagio is close at hand here, at least by inference.  Corigliano's harmonic vocabulary is a good deal spicier than the austere sounds of the young Barber, but the emotional atmosphere remains common to both works.  Maestro Slatkin led the orchestra in a thoughtful, concentrated reading of this miniature gem of orchestration, with the flutes in particular delighting with their pure, cool tone in the opening measures and throughout.

The final piece on the programme lent its title to the entire concert: Gershwin's An American in Paris.  This symphonic poem, written in 1926-28, was described by Gershwin himself as a "rhapsodic ballet," and that description pointed the way to its eventual use in the classic 1951 film.  But he also said on another occasion:

"It's a humorous piece, nothing solemn about it. It's not intended to draw tears. If it pleases symphony audiences as a light, jolly piece, a series of impressions musically expressed, it succeeds."

While the TSO and Slatkin were unquestionably jolly on this occasion, I'm not so sure about the "light" part of it.  Slatkin let the brass section run a little too forcefully in some passages, so much so that the overall balance suffered.  Also, a couple of the fast sections were too hectic for my liking, as speed took precedence over musicality.  But Slatkin undeniably had the measure of the score, and handled all the surprising stops and tempo changes without leaving any loose ends.  In sum, a performance that was much more than merely competent but somewhat less than ideal.

Overall, this was an uncommonly rewarding concert for a programme containing so many works that have rarely if ever been heard before by so many of the audience.  Maestro Slatkin certainly achieved his stated intention of bringing to life a diverse and involving selection of the riches of twentieth-century American music.  The concert repeats tonight, Nov. 23, at 8:00 pm at Roy Thomson Hall.

National Ballet 2019-2020 # 2: An Evening With Orpheus

For anyone immersed in the world of the performing arts, the ancient myth of Orpheus must surely be one of the most evocative of all mythological tales.  It speaks to the power of art, the power of love, the refusal to accept the inevitability of a "given," and the challenge of living within restrictive rules -- all themes that resonate with artists and artistic re-creators alike.

Since the art in question is music, it's no surprise that the story of Orpheus and Eurydice was the first story to be dramatized in an opera, nor that it has remained a favourite subject of composers ever since, from the early Euridice of Jacopo Peri and L'Orfeo of Monteverdi, forward by way of Gluck and many other operas and ballets, to the romantic tone poem Orpheus by Franz Liszt -- to name only a few examples.

The National Ballet's second programme of its fall season presents a pair of works linked to the theme of Orpheus and Eurydice.  Both are new to the repertoire, with the major work being a new commission for the National, set to a commissioned score.

The first work, George Balanchine's Chaconne, is linked by the choreographer's choice of music from Christoph Willibald Gluck, opening with what may very well be that composer's single most famous piece -- the Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Orpheus and Eurydice.  That's really as far as the tie-in goes, because Balanchine here produced one of his most successful abstract ballets -- a study in pure, symmetrical, ordered movement that gives full expression to his famous philosophy: "See the music; hear the dance." Although Chaconne contains several classic pas for 2, 3, or 5 dancers, this really is a company piece and one that definitely forces the company to prove its classical skills.  Balanchine is the ultimate example of the choreographer whose steps look easy -- and always seem easiest when the footwork is at its most fiendishly difficult.

Aided by the fluent playing of the reduced, Gluck-sized orchestra in the pit, the company gave this bright and lively Balanchine classic a glowing performance, full of life and light.  This goes to the top of my list of Balanchine pieces I'd love to see again, right alongside the equally brilliant Symphony in C, set to Georges Bizet's youthful outpouring of joy.

It's a definite privilege to sit down and witness the first-ever performance, anywhere, of a major new work like Orpheus Alive.  Normally, ballets are tagged with the name of the choreographer who creates them, but in this case such a procedure is misleading.  This new work is a collaborative team effort, involving choreographer Robert Binet, composer Missy Mazzoli, writer and dramaturge Rosamund Small, and set & costume designer, Hyemi Shin.

The resulting creation is a fantastic cross-fertilization of dance and theatre, making effective but sparing use of digital projections to enhance the drama taking place on the stage.  For the performers, too, it's a definite cross-over piece, requiring dance, acting, speaking, and singing.

When it comes to assessing the world premiere performance of Orpheus Alive, mere adjectives seem rather weak at the knees.  If there was ever a work where the whole was far greater than the sum of its parts, this is the one.  Orpheus Alive is a theatrical experience of stunning power and searching insight, due in large measure to the intense, forceful performance of the title role of Orpheus by Jenna Savella.

Wait a minute, I hear some people thinking -- isn't Orpheus supposed to be a man?  In the myth, yes -- but here the creators have chosen to reverse the genders of Orpheus and Eurydice.  In the final result as staged, it matters not at all.  What we see has so little relation to the outward dress of the classical myth that the names of the characters really don't matter.  This story is set in the present day, and it's almost as if two sets of mythology-mad parents chose to pin these ancient Greek names onto their offspring.

The story also becomes determinedly local by the introduction of a stage set depicting the Osgoode subway station on the Toronto subway network.  It's this subway station that is the scene of the first meeting between Orpheus and Eurydice, and it's also the scene of Eurydice's death.

Aside from these external details of character and place names, the story remains as universal as ever -- and it's the universality of the tale that justifies the whole show.  The title, Orpheus Alive, gives us the key link by underlining the reality that the story line of Orpheus is played out again and again, ever new, all around us, as we walk through the wilderness of this world.  How often have we heard a person who has suffered a bereavement wishing or even pleading for just one more chance to see, hear, hold their loved one yet again?  

In the key central character of Orpheus, Jenna Savella brought heart-tugging intensity to her plea for the return of Eurydice.  Her spoken address to the gods (the audience) ranged across a broad emotional compass.  But this is a ballet, and it was when she turned to dance (as her equivalent of the mythological song of Orpheus) that she truly unlocked the power of her character's emotions.  This lengthy and demanding solo is the true centre of gravity of the entire work, and Savella delivered Binet's complex and wide-ranging choreography with equal measures of finesse and force.  

In the climactic duet with Eurydice, as she tried to lead him back to the world of life, she loaded the choreography with so much desperate energy that I was gripping the arms of my seat.  This role compels this one dancer to carry the entire show forward for most of its 75-minute length, and the storm of cheering which greeted Savella at the curtain calls was the measure of her achievement.

Spencer Hack brought a similar broad range of emotions to the role of Eurydice, no mean achievement when he is given relatively little time to establish and embroider the character.  His transition from the subway station to the waters of the River Styx was imbued with intention, making it clear without heavy underlining that this Eurydice dies of his own will.  

Then, in the final duet, Hack demonstrated great agility and fluidity in his repeated -- and finally successful -- attempts to remove Savella's blindfold.

This, by the way, underlines the psychological hammer-punch that makes the ending of this piece so devastating and thought-provoking.  It's the revelation that the dead want to remain dead.  Having accomplished the transition to whatever lies beyond, they have no desire to return to the world we inhabit.

We see Orpheus leading Eurydice back to the upper world only after we have watched several other couples try, and fail, to meet this test.  In these cases, the dead persons try to provoke, entice, or compel the living ones to look back at them while still in the underworld -- and in the myth, that is the fatal error which causes Orpheus to lose Eurydice forever.

In this re-creation of the tale, the three-headed monster Cerberus, who guarded the gates of Hades, has been replaced.  Modern technology has caught up with hell, and in the most hellish of all modern environments: bureaucracy.  The new three-headed monster is a receptionist named "Sharon," seated at an endlessly revolving reception desk and talking from one head after another at -- not to -- the unfortunate living souls who hope to plead for the gods' mercy.  Rebekah Rimsay, Alejandra Perez Gomez, and Tiffany Mosher splendidly brought this modern nightmare to life, managing to not only look alike and act alike but even sound alike as they bellowed announcements, numbers, and admonitions while rotating around.

The rest of the ballet's cast consisted of Mourners, Furies, Apparitions, and Underworld Spirits, all depicted by assorted groups of company members.  All these group scenes played a key part in creating a portrait of the darkness and tedium of the underworld. 

Robert Binet's choreography for this work is remarkable.  His vocabulary flows spontaneously and easily between modern and classical styles, the women switching on and off the pointe sometimes in a matter of seconds.  Throughout, he's brought a special kind of sensitivity to the movements of the dancers, allowing the fullest expression of the emotions.  In that lengthy central solo for Orpheus, he's created a magnificent flow of choreography which avoids any feeling of sameness or monotony.

Missy Mazzoli's musical score, a combination of live orchestra and recorded soundtracks, is equally adept at creating the atmospheres in which this story can unfold.  Unlike the Gluck (although she does quote his music at one point), this is not music with pretty tunes that become earworms, but it is music of power and substance, and serves the needs of the story uncommonly well.

The text by Rosamund Small is a bit more of a mixed bag.  At times, it becomes a critical contributor to the show's atmosphere (Sharon's speeches, or the first speech of Orpheus to the gods).  But Small also resorts to Bertolt Brecht's epic technique of using humour to let the emotional air out of the show's tires, and really resorts to it too often.  It's almost as if she wants to tell us not to take any of this seriously at all.  This Brechtian deflation was an unfortunate choice, as it served only to undercut the powerful atmosphere being created by the music and especially by the dancers.

Then there's the sad reality that there will inevitably be people in the audience who simply don't find death, and especially death by suicide, to be a laughing matter.

Hyemi Shin's sets and costumes do a splendid job of evoking the strangeness and hostility of the underworld while still keeping all the action visible to the audience -- a challenge which some previous ballets staged in predominantly dark environments have failed to meet.

For its powerful combination of intense dance, evocative music, and a fascinating modern re-take on a classic myth, Orpheus Alive is one of the most entrancing and rewarding new works the National Ballet has placed before us in recent years.  Performances continue through November 21 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Arts.

National Ballet 2019-2020 # 1: The Ballerina's "Hamlet"

I must have seen Giselle staged by the National Ballet, in its current form, at least ten times now -- and maybe more -- in nearly four decades of ballet experience.  But this cornerstone classic still manages to capture my imagination, sneaking in under my guard and drawing me into its purely Romantic imaginative world.

Although surprisingly compact at just 2 hours running time including the intermission, Giselle still presents a significant test of two leading female artists.  The title role is known as "the ballerina's Hamlet," both for its huge emotional range and for the need to create a clear arc within the character which will shape that emotional range into a coherent and believable journey.

A different challenge awaits the dancer who portrays Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis in Act 2.  Myrtha demands a rock-solid characterization of cold, vengeful anger and that emotional state must infuse the dancer's entire face, body, and every bit of movement for 40 minutes.

Giselle requires equally detailed characterization from the male lead in the role of Albrecht, and was in fact one of the first ballets to create a significant role for the man, beyond simply dancing attendance on the woman.

There are also the very specific stylistic needs of the early Romantic style of dance, a style which still owes much to the grace and elegance of the ballet as it was known in the eighteenth century.  The extensive acrobatics of the later Russian school have little place here.  Rather, this style calls for light and airy movement, especially in stylish execution of the numerous leaps or grands jetés. 

Given these parameters, Giselle becomes a natural candidate for me to attend more than one performance, and see more than one cast at work.  In an era when every level of the company has incredible depth, the National Ballet's management has cast almost every performance of this run with different leads.

On Friday night, we saw Sonia Rodriguez as Giselle, Francesco Gabriele Frola as Albrecht, Skylar Campbell as Hilarion, and Jenna Savella as Myrtha.

On Saturday afternoon, we had Svetlana Lunkina as Giselle, Harrison James as Albrecht, Piotr Stanczyk as Hilarion, and Hannah Fischer as Myrtha.

Start with Hilarion, a role in which character mime becomes much more significant than actual dancing.  Skylar Campbell's performance highlighted the frustration he felt at Giselle's wilful behaviour, while Piotr Stanczyk emphasized the anger he directed at Albrecht.  Both were outstanding in their death scenes.

Francesco Gabriele Frola presented a patrician Albrecht, cool and elegant.  That characteristic infused his dancing in his solos, and in his duets with Giselle.  Harrison James projected a more vulnerable side of the character, and gave more weight to the dilemma between love and duty which traps Albrecht.  There was little to choose between them in the technical side of the role.

And there was little to choose between Jenna Savella and Hannah Fischer.  Both were superb, right from the all-important initial crossing of the stage on pointe -- the illusion of floating on air came clearly across even though the smoke generator was not used here as it had been in the last staging of the work 3 years ago.  Savella (in a role debut) was noteworthy for the hard edge she brought to her grand jeté, while Fischer excelled in the rigidity of her face and posture, creating that overall sense of cold rage so essential to the character.

Sonia Rodriguez beautifully portrayed the playful, girlish air of Giselle in the opening scenes, dancing with equal measures of grace and lightness.  That grace keynoted her performance in Act 2 as well, her solo in the pas de deux an outstanding moment.  Svetlana Lunkina gave a larger, more dramatic reading of the crucial mad scene, giving the entire ballet a more emphatic turning point.  Her work in Act 2 then highlighted love and regret in equal measures, her dancing throughout being suffused with those emotions.

The corps de ballet did fine work in the peasant dances of Act 1, with some splendid solo work in the first act pas de quatre.  In the second act, the women moved with impressive unanimity, with the difficult sequence of hopping across the stage while poised in an arabesque a real highlight.

This may all sound like a game of swings and roundabouts, and in a technical sense it is.  But ballet remains, first and foremost, a theatrical art.  And so, we have to look also for that indefinable extra something, the elusive quality that changes a good performance into a great one.  In the case of Giselle, as in most romantic tales, that special je ne sais quoi has to occur primarily between the two romantic leads.

And on Saturday, with Svetlana Lunkina and Harrison James, that extra dimension of magic was undeniably present.  On Friday, I admired the competence and beauty of the dancing.  On Saturday, I found myself caught up in the emotional world of Giselle, overwhelmed by the tragic power of the story.