The main offering in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's latest on-demand concert is a stimulating, thoughtful, and -- above all -- intensely dramatic performance of Vivaldi's evergreen cycle of violin concertos, The Four Seasons.
The principal work is preceded by two equally energetic and stimulating contemporary compositions which fit in very well as present-day partners to Vivaldi's well-loved masterpiece.
The fast movements of the Vivaldi are famous for their near-frenetic energy, and the same characteristic appears in both of the modern pieces on this intriguing on-line program.
The concert was taped on the stage of Roy Thomson Hall some months ago, under the health requirements then in effect, with an ensemble of 20 strings plus harpsichord. The concert was led throughout by concertmaster Jonathan Crow, who of course also played the principal solo part in the Vivaldi.
After a short spoken introduction from music director Gustavo Gimeno and concertmaster Jonathan Crow, the first work was introduced by composer Gabriela Lena Frank: Coqueteos from Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout. The title approximately means "flirtations" (think of the cognate "coquetry" in English). The piece is rooted in the native rhythms and guitar playing of Frank's ancestral land of Peru.
It's a vivid, energetic dance for strings (originally for a string quartet), plainly rooted in the same rhythmic and melodic turf as the music of many Latin American lands and, indeed, of Spain itself. A couple of short interruptions into slower, more meditative tempo do little or nothing to take the wind out of the music's sails until it explodes into an energetic finale.
The second work, Canadian composer Dinuk Wijeratne's A letter from the After-life from Two Pop Songs on Antique Poems, was just as energetic as Frank's vivid dance, and like her piece was originally written for a string quartet. That character is evident right at the outset with a pulsating violin rhythm overlying a chant-like melody on viola. Both elements gradually spread out to the full orchestral body, and that pulsating ostinato becomes the motor energy driving the entire piece. As the music grows in power, the quieter interruptions hardly slow the momentum. Then the energy winds up to three powerful repetitions of the opening notes of Schubert's Death and the Maiden quartet, before a final fierce outburst ends the piece.
And so to the main event, and here was truly a performance of The Four Seasons like no other I have ever heard in a live concert.
With the rise of the authentic performance movement in the 1960s and 1970s, textures in virtually all Baroque music were fined down to more limited numbers such as might have been expected in a live performance in the 1970s. With that came the adoption of the style of bows used by string players in Baroque times, and the use of playing techniques appropriate to the period in which the music was first written and played.
To put it in perspective, the last two complete Four Seasons which I've heard featured an ensemble of 4-6 strings, plus harpsichord for the continuo.
This, however, was a performance which definitely chose to swim against the tide. The lean and hungry sound of modern Baroque performance was plainly out of reach with a body of 20 strings, but instead there were other possibilities which opened up. The contrast between the passages played by the full orchestra and those played by a smaller group immensely aided the dramatic context of the music -- for example, the huge dynamic variation between the quiet buzzing of insects and the loud rolls of thunder in the slow movement of Summer. Similar dramatic shifts in the scale of tone abounded.
The use of a larger body certainly didn't mean that the sound became fuzzy or bloated. Vivaldi's most rapid passagework was as clean and crisp as you could ask, and the clarity of the much quieter passages was enhanced by the full, rich sound.
Crow's performance of the solo part made it abundantly clear that this was not, and was not meant to be, an "authentic" performance. Sparingly, but effectively, he employed a generous Romantic rubato at key structural points in the music. A big-boned, dramatic reading, guaranteed perhaps to make the strongest proponents of authentic style cringe, but truly engaging and involving for the more open-minded. And why not, since the dramatic intentions behind the composer's pictorial approach are clearly visible?
Musical performance aside, this was still a Four Seasons like no other, because of the style of the presentation. Vivaldi wrote these concertos inspired by the paintings of Marco Ricci. These paintings were in the then-popular style in which the immense sublimity of nature overpowered the diminutive figures of people, animals, and buildings. You can certainly hear that immensity built right into the music at many points.
Each concerto was also introduced in Vivaldi's score by a descriptive sonnet, and the scores were then sprinkled with brief written notations to show which sounds or events in the sonnet were reproduced in the music, and in which part.
It's become common in recent years to incorporate a reading of the sonnets into a live performance, but things went much further here. The sonnets were spoken by four different members of the orchestra, in their respective birth languages of English, Japanese, Mandarin, and French (with on-screen English translations). During each concerto, portions of the relevant Ricci painting were digitally superimposed on the video image above the players' heads (where you would otherwise see only the choir loft or balcony seating of the hall), and the written notations from the scores were reproduced in English translation at the top right corner of the screen.
The result was a rich, full-blooded performance of the Four Seasons, enhanced with multi-media extra touches to bring you right inside the spirit in which the composer created these pieces.
Even if you would prefer a sparer, leaner style of performance, this is a Four Seasons worth checking out if only for the impact of the total presentation. For the listener with no such qualms, this entire concert will, I think, pull you in and delight you -- and that goes equally for the two contemporary works which open the programme, since they come far closer to the spirit of Vivaldi than many of the more arid and sterile contemporary works I've heard.
This concert remains available from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's website until April 15, and can be watched as many times as desired with one ticket. The link to purchase tickets follows:
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