With a Spring In Their Steps

Among the welcome signs of the gradual return of normality was the reappearance, for the first time in three years, of the annual Spring Showcase of Canada's National Ballet School.

 

It would be easy to dismiss this as "just kids" -- easy, and very much mistaken.

 

The students who participated in this performance, from Grade 10 upwards, gave a stirring and exciting performance of four classical or classically-inflected dance works. The maturity and polish of their dancing was no less remarkable than the sheer energy and joie de vivre which they brought to the stage, and to us.

The entire performance was pervaded by that energy, with the sparkle in the eyes and the broad smiles on faces saying it all as far as the students were concerned. Later on, perhaps, it would be time enough to rein in some of that excess and harness it to generate greater intensity, but on this night that excitement and joy of the artists became in turn an absolute joy to the audience.

 

The first and third works on the programme, respectively Spring and Autumn from James Kudelka's The Four Seasons, showed off the great strengths of the small group of dancers involved. In Spring, Graydon George gave a poised, graceful performance of the role of the Man, the central figure in Kudelka's allegory of life. Maya Fazzari contrasted with a clean-edged, restrained performance as the lead woman. The men of the corps brought real lift and propulsion to Kudelka's endearing prancing movements.

In Autumn, Anton Tcherny took over the role of the Man, giving an edgier reading well suited to the rather different character of this piece. Ana Sofia Hernandez as the lead woman, presented the softer-edged presence which becomes so important a contrast here. The corps brought tremendous energy to the unique scything movements, making much of the unique sound effect of dance shoes striking flat upon the floor in time with Vivaldi's emphatic triple-time rhythm.

 

As a by-the-way, for those not familiar with the complete work, the Man would be danced by one person throughout, but the lead women in each part would be (as here) performed by different artists in each season. 

  

Spring and Autumn bookended a new work, choreographer Robert Stephen's Boundless, danced to the second movement (con moto) of Schubert's Piano Sonata in D Major, D.850.

 

Conflict of Interest Alert: Robert Stephen is my nephew.

 

Schubert's music, like many movements of his later piano sonatas, is full of dramatic contrasts and unusual, even odd, key changes. There are lighter, more reflective passages, and full crescendo climaxes followed, in his later manner, by sudden silences. 

The company of 13 women and 5 men captured the essential character of so much of the dance, a serene fluidity which contrasted strikingly with both the works we saw before and after (Kudelka) and with the music to which it was set. The artists made much of the innate musicality of Stephen's choreography, and if some of the busier scenes seemed to call for a little more traffic control, that all helped to project the boundless energy which lived up to the title of the work.

 

The final main work was the Grand Pas Classique from Marius Petipa's Paquita. Generally regarded as the ultimate virtuoso showpiece of the nineteenth century Russian ballet, Paquita is entirely typical of its time in showing off the talents of as many female dancers as possible, while having only one role for a man (although that one role is a wowser). Back in the day, the dancers' patrons expected nothing less and would have rebelled if their favourites were in any way excluded.

Given that expectation, it's no surprise that the choreography for Paquita involves plenty of "stand and pose" attitudes for the corps de ballet, and for every one of the individual dancers in the pas de huit, the pas de six, and the three solo variations. The seventeen women in these roles showed themselves as much at home in this more regimented style as in the freer, more fluid choreography of the other works.

The dancers of the three solo variations -- Anna Neudorf, Sophia Bielik, and Emma Topolova -- brought great sparkle and presence to their brief but effective dances.

With immense precision and gusto, and with almost nonchalant skill in their respective solo variations, Lilia Greyeyes and Wesley Miller as the lead couple in the pas de deux brought the house down -- and rightly so.

 

The entire programme was exciting and involving. With artists of this level of maturity and energy, the future of the dance world is definitely going to be something to see.

 

Toronto Symphony Orchestra 2021-2022 # 5: Music of Interest

Last week's Toronto Symphony Orchestra programme was interesting from first to last, giving much for the music lover to chew upon and nothing that was overly familiar or beaten to death.

 

The programme opened with the world premiere of in moments, into bloom by Julia Mermelstein. It's one of a group of Celebration Preludes commissioned by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to commemorate its centenary season. Each piece was to have a playing time of 3 minutes, thereby acting as a kind of hors d'oeuvre or appetizer, not only for the concert to follow, but also for the other works of the composer.

 

Mermelstein provided a rather fulsome programme note, as seems to be now customary. I didn't read it until after I had heard the music, and when I did it cast scant illumination upon the work. All the same, this piece was pleasing to the ear -- a continuous progression of shifting harmonic and tonal textures, with distinct diatonic chords looming out of the sound from time to time, and then fading back into the kaleidoscopic backdrop. It would be worth hearing again, but more significant to me was that it whetted my appetite to hear more of and from Mermelstein.

The next piece up was Igor Stravinsky's Scherzo Fantastique, Op. 3. It was completely unknown to me, but I didn't need to read the programme to recognize instantly that this was music which, like the slightly later and much better known Firebird, came to life very much under the spell of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who was Stravinsky's composition teacher when he wrote this showpiece.

 

A showpiece it is, pushing the older composer's signature exotic orchestration almost to the limit, while maintaining rapid, pulsating ostinato figures which were inspired by the endless motion of bees and the humming life which permeates a beehive. The orchestra made the most of the lively rhythmic backdrop, and sound was carefully balanced throughout so that even the most densely-written passages still remained both musical and transparent.

 

At a single hearing, it was difficult either to classify or to assess Zosha di Castri's In the Half Light, another commissioned world premiere. According to the programme note, the composer stated that the work was actually a collaborative achievement among herself, text writer Tash Aw, and soprano Barbara Hannigan, who sang the premiere.

The text, both elliptical and epigraphic, isn't much more helpful, other than the fact that it is divided into seven discrete sections. The musical form follows that division, with the last section containing musical recollections of the opening.

The sung role for the soprano is dramatic in an extreme yet non-stagey way. The drama is inherent in the music itself, with its rapid succession of high-altitude cries, low ominous murmurs, and quiet hints of private conversations overheard. The nearest musical comparison I can think of is found in the similar enormous leaps of Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, minus that earlier work's cabaret overtones. In any case, di Castri and her collaborators have here created a piece which deliberately eschews the old ethics of setting text to music, particularly the classic demand that the text be heard. What we hear, musically, is much more a question of the subtext which is not sung, a reality which emerges when you study the printed text as you listen.

Hannigan's performance was powerful in a lyrical way, as she brought ringing beauty of tone to all the extreme demands of the score. The orchestra matched her with enormous variations in texture, yet always holding the sound in control so that the singer was never drowned out. di Castri's score was notable in avoiding this trap, which too often befalls contemporary composers unused to writing for voices.

While Maestro Gustavo Gimeno did sterling work in all these diverse compositions, his showpiece moment came after the intermission when he led the orchestra in an unusual complete performance of the original 1910 score of The Firebird by Igor Stravinsky, the composer's first and greatest hit. In today's concert world, the work is far more often represented by the shortened orchestral suites prepared by the composer himself, either the original 1911 suite in five movements, or the somewhat longer 1945 suite in which Stravinsky added back in a few of the pantomime sequences from the original ballet and re-scored them, all so that the work could be newly copyrighted in the United States.

I've heard both the 1911 and 1945 suites in concert, but the complete score I've heard live only when the National Ballet of Canada staged, and then remounted, James Kudelka's version of the complete ballet.

In fact, the last time I heard The Firebird in a live performance was in June of 2019 when Gimeno, then newly named as Music Director Designate, led the orchestra in a quickly-arranged performance of the 1945 suite which gave audiences (and self-appointed critics, ahem!) a first chance to assess his style and abilities as a conductor. A link to my review of that concert follows:

Meeting Gustavo

Having now heard the complete ballet in concert, I would have to say that I'd frankly prefer the 1945 suite, where some of the more fragmentary and unclear passages meant to support stage mime are set aside to focus on the much clearer and more enlightening set numbers.

With that caveat, the orchestra under Gimeno again (as in 2019) gave a powerful performance of the score, highlighted by such moments as the crisply chattering scherzando woodwinds of the Dance of the Princesses, the rugged rhythmic power of Kashchei's Infernal Dance, and the slow, stately buildup to the final massive brass chords at the close (aided by three extra trumpets in the organ loft).

Within a year of writing The Firebird, Stravinsky had already moved far beyond his Rimskian stylistic roots with the considerably more acerbic Petrushka, and a year after that he had left Rimsky in the dust altogether with the notorious Rite of Spring. Later still, he came to hate the continuing popular acclaim for The Firebird, as it cast shade on almost everything else he ever wrote. But it is still a true masterpiece of its kind, spectacular, showy, musically skillful, and I for one am always grateful for a chance to enjoy it again.

Toronto Symphony Orchestra 2021-2022 # 4: New Worlds in Music

As the years roll by, I've become more aware of a growing adventurous streak in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's programming -- a new direction which relies less on the established "classics" of the European tradition and goes more into the fringes of the musical world, and into the broad and diverse range of new music being created in our own times.

 

It's a trend which accelerated during the tenure of the orchestra's previous music director, Peter Oundjian, and which seems to be gathering even more speed under the current maestro, Gustavo Gimeno.

 

This week's concert programme is a case in point. Three of the four works are pieces which I have never heard, including one world premiere (a TSO commission) and one Canadian premiere. I'd almost be willing to bet that the third piece unknown to me is a Toronto premiere -- although, since it's a composition of the Czech composer, Bohuslav Martinů, it's entirely possible that it was performed in the early 1970s under then-Music Director Karel Ancerl. 

 

The best of the three more recent works was the first one, Mi Piñata: Celebration Prelude by Luis Ramirez. This TSO commission is one of a group of works to be performed throughout the orchestra's hundredth anniversary celebrations. Ramirez has paid tribute to a favourite festive tradition of his homeland in this lively, colourful piece, bursting with sparkling energy and joie de vivre.

 

The second work was Martinů's The Rock. The orchestra savoured the lush textures of this music, but for me it eventually began to develop the atmosphere of a soundtrack to a Hollywood Biblical epic. Interesting to hear once, but not something I would go out of my way to hear again.

Hans Abrahamsen's Horn Concerto was given its Canadian premiere by the principal horn of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, for whom it was written, Stefan Dohr. 

 

The concerto form, ever since the time of Bach and Vivaldi, has thrived on the contrasts between solo or small group and full orchestra. I begin to wonder if it's even possible to write a concerto any more, in a musical environment which values incidental fragments over longer lines, and fascinating textures over structure. Abrahamsen's work made the point perfectly, in the context of this concert programme.

The first of three connected movements was dominated by an oft-repeated four-note rising triadic figure, basically a crib of the first four notes in the main theme of the opening movement of the Dvořák symphony, which would follow after the intermission. Where Dvořák carries the theme forward through a statement, counter-statement, and further development, Abrahamsen remains stuck on the first four notes, over and over. The work demands many fancy technical tricks from Dohr, who played it all with great skill and aplomb, but for me the concerto as a whole was a misfire.

And the fourth work? This, too, is an exploration of a new world in music, if only in a punning sense, for the last and largest work on the programme is the Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 by Antonín Dvořák -- the symphony which the composer titled From the New World.

 

With a repertoire warhorse like the New World Symphony, there's always the danger that familiarity will breed contempt. Not in my case -- as I haven't heard the work played live for several decades, so there was all the excitement of fresh discovery for me. And not in the case of the orchestra or Maestro Gimeno, since the performance held firmly together through all the tricky moments which abound in the score.

Getting the energy of the performance right is critical, since there are many passages waiting to lapse into overblown melodrama, particularly if the conductor or players make the mistake of trying to infuse excitement into the music. All the excitement needed is right there in the notes, and it doesn't need any revving up beyond what the composer wrote.

By and large, and with the possible exception of the final and slightly overblown catastrophic climax in the last movement, the performance of the symphony trod the energy line very neatly, neither too much nor too little. The entire work showed impressive rhythmic unity in spite of the extremes of tempo and multiple gear changes. The horn section covered themselves with glory in a work which probably features more utterly exposed passages for the horns than any other in the repertoire. Chief among them, of course, are the magical chords which open the slow movement. That chord sequence, by the way, serves to explain the shift of key from the E minor of the first movement to the D-flat major of the largo, but (as Sir Donald Tovey so memorably said) the explanation is more mysterious than the trick itself.

Following on from those deep, rich chords, it was a further inspired touch from Dvořák to entrust the main theme to the cor anglais, and the resulting meditation, absolute poetry in tone, stands among the greatest moments in all of music. Cary Ebli did full justice to one of the best-known of all cor anglais solos. The string sections too made musical magic in the long, sustained phrases for muted strings. At the end, the strange opening chords were recalled by the brasses, darkly luminous, and fully capturing the effect that is both remembrance and regret at once.

How I wish that the Toronto audience hadn't been so well trained to applaud at the end of every movement over the last 20 years or so. I'd far rather let that tonal magic soak in for quite a few more seconds of silence before the scherzo explodes across the stage. Alas, not much chance of that happening.

 

To sum up: Gimeno's New World scored very highly for excitement with control, and for tonal beauty with energy. It brought the concert to a rousing end, and gave the conductor a well-deserved standing ovation with multiple calls.