Last week's concerts at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra featured a programme of almost-all-Russian music. Under the leadership of a guest conductor of East Asian ancestry, Elim Chan, making her TSO debut. With the orchestra itself consisting of players from a wealth of different ethnic backgrounds, I can only marvel at the changes that have come in my lifetime, to an orchestra which consisted predominantly of players from Europe when I was young.
The programme opened with a work by American composer Elizabeth Ogonek entitled as though birds. It's not a typo; Ogonek is one of a number of modern composers drawn to titles which feature no capitals at all.
Listening to this work reminded me forcefully of the time, some years back, when the orchestra opened a concert with the Five Pieces for Orchestra of Anton Webern. No, there's no stylistic resemblance between Ogonek's work and Webern's -- just the fact that, in each case, it took me longer to read the programme notes than to listen to the music.
Ogonek's piece took its inspiration from a tiny little three-line poem, and the work fell into three distinct sections (played continuously) which were meant to reflect in order the three lines. Frankly, I could not discern any real connection between the music, intriguing though it was, and the poem. The connection emerged only in the final few seconds of the work, when some unmistakable trilling birdsong figures emerged from the dense textures.
The remainder of the programme consisted of two of the most popular showpieces of the Russian romantic repertoire: the Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18 by Rachmaninoff, and the symphonic suite Scheherazade, Op. 35, by Rimsky-Korsakov.
The concerto is one of the most-often-ridden of repertoire warhorses, but the many interpretations of the work can basically be divided into two camps, depending on whether the performers stress energy more than musicality, or vice versa.
English pianist Stephen Hough turned in a powerful performance which leaned more towards the energetic side, especially in the first and last movements. It's certainly possible to play Rachmaninoff's endless cascades of huge chords musically, but in Hough's hands some of the bigger passages were disfigured by ugly, harsh tone. He was at his best in the more lyrical sections of the outer movements, and in the singing tone with which he approached the slow movement.
The last movement of the concerto suffered from a severe attack of "anything you can play, I can play faster" and some passages of the frenetic piano writing grew sloppy under pressure. Not for the first time, I couldn't help feeling that a reduction of speed by even five percent would yield huge dividends in musicality, without sacrificing any of the essential excitement that is, after all, built into the notes. Hough then played a Chopin encore which came off as too cool and restrained for my liking.
After the intermission, the concert rounded off with Scheherazade. It surprised me that, for the first how-many-years of my concert-going career, this evergreen repertoire staple never seemed to appear on the TSO's programmes. The balance has been redressed during the last two decades, and I've now heard the orchestra perform this musical magnificence three times, as well as having acquired the live-concert recording on Chandos Records which came out of a fourth performance that I missed.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov achieved a remarkable exemplar of orchestration in Scheherazade. The array of diverse and remarkable tone colours which he conjured out of the orchestra is striking enough, but all the more so when you realize that -- unlike many of his contemporaries -- he didn't enlarge the orchestra with multiple extra instruments in the process. The score calls for only double woodwind, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, percussion, harp, and strings.
There are few works which can be considered in the same league as this one as a testing ground for the orchestra. Not only is the score littered with solo bits for many of the section leaders, but the endlessly shifting kaleidoscope of instrumental textures demands acute awareness of balance from the players as well as from the conductor.
No surprise, then, that the TSO now performs this work as if to the manner born. The various solo parts, some of which can be played in free time, as if a concerto cadenza, are all shaped and phrased with both skill and affection. This is particularly true of the nearly concerto-sized contribution of concertmaster Jonathan Crow. His high harmonics in the slow closing pages were both secure and beautiful in tone.
The players as a team demonstrated consistent awareness of the needs of the moment, and there was no element of the musical argument which didn't emerge both clear and fresh, as if newly discovered.
Conductor Elim Chan showed particular sensitivity to the breathing space allotted to each solo part, and led the performance with well-chosen tempi. If the last movement's Festival at Baghdad was a little on the hectic side, the orchestra pulled right along with Chan's tempo and maintained the clearest articulation of all the many repeated notes. The storm at sea capped the performance with its mighty surging waves and the enormous crash of the tamtam as the ship smashed against the rock was breathtaking.
A most rewarding end to a striking concert.
Ogonek's piece took its inspiration from a tiny little three-line poem, and the work fell into three distinct sections (played continuously) which were meant to reflect in order the three lines. Frankly, I could not discern any real connection between the music, intriguing though it was, and the poem. The connection emerged only in the final few seconds of the work, when some unmistakable trilling birdsong figures emerged from the dense textures.
The remainder of the programme consisted of two of the most popular showpieces of the Russian romantic repertoire: the Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18 by Rachmaninoff, and the symphonic suite Scheherazade, Op. 35, by Rimsky-Korsakov.
The concerto is one of the most-often-ridden of repertoire warhorses, but the many interpretations of the work can basically be divided into two camps, depending on whether the performers stress energy more than musicality, or vice versa.
English pianist Stephen Hough turned in a powerful performance which leaned more towards the energetic side, especially in the first and last movements. It's certainly possible to play Rachmaninoff's endless cascades of huge chords musically, but in Hough's hands some of the bigger passages were disfigured by ugly, harsh tone. He was at his best in the more lyrical sections of the outer movements, and in the singing tone with which he approached the slow movement.
The last movement of the concerto suffered from a severe attack of "anything you can play, I can play faster" and some passages of the frenetic piano writing grew sloppy under pressure. Not for the first time, I couldn't help feeling that a reduction of speed by even five percent would yield huge dividends in musicality, without sacrificing any of the essential excitement that is, after all, built into the notes. Hough then played a Chopin encore which came off as too cool and restrained for my liking.
After the intermission, the concert rounded off with Scheherazade. It surprised me that, for the first how-many-years of my concert-going career, this evergreen repertoire staple never seemed to appear on the TSO's programmes. The balance has been redressed during the last two decades, and I've now heard the orchestra perform this musical magnificence three times, as well as having acquired the live-concert recording on Chandos Records which came out of a fourth performance that I missed.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov achieved a remarkable exemplar of orchestration in Scheherazade. The array of diverse and remarkable tone colours which he conjured out of the orchestra is striking enough, but all the more so when you realize that -- unlike many of his contemporaries -- he didn't enlarge the orchestra with multiple extra instruments in the process. The score calls for only double woodwind, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, percussion, harp, and strings.
There are few works which can be considered in the same league as this one as a testing ground for the orchestra. Not only is the score littered with solo bits for many of the section leaders, but the endlessly shifting kaleidoscope of instrumental textures demands acute awareness of balance from the players as well as from the conductor.
No surprise, then, that the TSO now performs this work as if to the manner born. The various solo parts, some of which can be played in free time, as if a concerto cadenza, are all shaped and phrased with both skill and affection. This is particularly true of the nearly concerto-sized contribution of concertmaster Jonathan Crow. His high harmonics in the slow closing pages were both secure and beautiful in tone.
The players as a team demonstrated consistent awareness of the needs of the moment, and there was no element of the musical argument which didn't emerge both clear and fresh, as if newly discovered.
Conductor Elim Chan showed particular sensitivity to the breathing space allotted to each solo part, and led the performance with well-chosen tempi. If the last movement's Festival at Baghdad was a little on the hectic side, the orchestra pulled right along with Chan's tempo and maintained the clearest articulation of all the many repeated notes. The storm at sea capped the performance with its mighty surging waves and the enormous crash of the tamtam as the ship smashed against the rock was breathtaking.
A most rewarding end to a striking concert.
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