Over the years, Beethoven's immortal Symphony # 9 in D Minor, Op. 125, has become the ultimate best-seller of symphonic music in Toronto.
Each time the work is remounted, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra gives it three or four (or more) performances, all of which are generously filled, if not sold out. The famous "Choral Symphony" has become the all-but-compulsory calling card for each new music director to present as early in their contract tenure as possible -- preferably either at the beginning of the first season, as a rocket launcher, or at the end, as a showstopper finale. This "rule," by the way, applies to many other orchestras in many other cities.
The orchestra's prior music director, Peter Oundjian, staged the work multiple times (4 or 5 different occasions in all over 14 seasons), and his development as a podium maestro could be effectively gauged by hearing how his interpretation of this masterpiece evolved through the years.
Now, the orchestra's newest maestro, Gustavo Gimeno, has chosen the mighty Ninth to conclude his first full season at the helm, with four performances in all. I attended the last one, on Sunday afternoon.
Oddly enough, I never heard the Ninth performed live until some years after I had sung it half a dozen times as a member of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir!
The symphony by itself typically lasts for some 65-70 minutes, depending on tempo choices of the conductor and length of pauses between movements. At one time, this was felt to be sufficient for an entire concert. A popular tale (perhaps an urban legend) states that when Philips Electronics was developing the first generation of compact discs back in the 1980s, they consulted the famed German maestro Herbert von Karajan about the ideal playing time of the disc. His reply, so the story goes, was that 74 minutes would be perfect because "that's how long it takes me to play Beethoven's Ninth."
Today, though, it is accepted practice in a live performance to pair one or more other works with the Ninth. For these concerts, Gimeno chose to present no less than three contemporary works by three different Canadian composers as his curtain-raisers before the main event.
The three contemporary works heard in the first half of the programme were all TSO commissions, and all were world premieres. Adam Scime's A Dream of Refuge, Bekah Simms' Bite, and Roydon Tse's Unrelenting Sorrow shared a couple of features in common. Each one began with a single emphatic chord followed by quieter music. Each one made use of a large orchestral ensemble with ample percussion. As the titles suggest, each piece was in some way shaped or inspired by the difficult pandemic experience of the last two years. Each one was introduced by a detailed programme note from the composer.
Since I generally leave programme notes to be read after a performance, I have to say bluntly that those detailed essays apparently bore little or no relation to the music I heard. Contemporary composers far too often try to use words as a crutch to explain what they are doing. I feel that a work of music ideally should tell me all by itself what I need to know.
A Dream of Refuge was indeed dreamlike in places, a bit nightmarish in others, but notable above all for the fascinating array of textures that Scime deployed, including creative use of the large number of percussion instruments.
Bite had the strongest rhythmic pulse of the three, a pulse that you could always sense in the background even when no one was actually playing in rhythmic fashion.
Unrelenting Sorrow had a few moments where the swirling masses of sound suddenly alighted on a clear diatonic chord for a moment, to fascinating effect, before launching again.
All three works were definitely worth re-hearing.
An intermission followed before the Beethoven. This performance of the epic Ninth was, for me, rather problematic. I have never heard the symphony performed so quickly. Gimeno dispatched the entire score in 60 minutes flat, and if he hadn't taken the rare repeat in the middle of the scherzo, and a 2-minute pause after the scherzo while the soloists and the balance of the choir were seated, the running time would have been closer to 57 minutes!
Some advocates of the "authentic performance" movement, notably Sir Roger Norrington, adhere to Beethoven's metronome marks, and I sense that this is what Gimeno was doing -- although I'm reasonably sure his first movement tempo was even faster than Beethoven's marking.
This brings up a situation which I've encountered before in Beethoven's music, especially among the later works. I'd sum it up as a case of "either the metronome markings or the tempo descriptions must be wrong, since they can't both be correct." In this symphony, a fast-flowing tempo in the first movement blurs together notes which should ideally be heard discretely in the omnipresent dotted figures that open the main theme. The large acoustic space of Roy Thomson Hall needs to be to be taken into account here, compared to the much smaller halls found in some other cities. Also, the speed deprives the music of majesty, instead making it almost playful -- yet Beethoven's description clearly states Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso. Similarly, going with the metronome mark in the third movement creates a flowing lyrical river of almost Schubertian lightness and makes nonsense of the direction Adagio molto e cantabile.
Personally, I hew to the theory that Beethoven's metronome markings deserve less attention than his clear written directions on the scores. I also haven't lost sight of the fact that orchestras in the 1820s were far more hit-and-miss affairs than today, often with a ramshackle assortment of random players, and fast speeds were ideal for blurring over and covering up a multitude of sins.
However, since Gimeno has opted for a hell-for-leather, high-speed chase of a Ninth, I can certainly commend both the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir for their undoubted ability to deliver the goods at such hectic speeds.
Apart from the acoustic blurring issue mentioned above, the orchestra's members gave an alert, energetic reading of the first movement, the woodwinds sounding particularly fine in the quieter passages where their parts are featured. The fugal passage in the middle of the movement was strongly presented. The scherzo again featured nimble, light-footed articulation from the strings and a positive but not overwhelming contribution from the timpanist (a particular hazard in this movement). Lovely wind playing again in the trio.
Phrasing and legato came to the fore for the strings in the third movement, with the horn making a fine contribution on the little solo cadenza. The two great fanfares near the end were played a little prosaically but with secure and mellow chording.
The cellos and basses sang as one voice in their recitative passages at the beginning of the finale, reminding the hearer that Beethoven had originally intended a lengthy text to be sung by the baritone soloist through all of these passages before he adopted this alternate plan. The variations were all clearly characterized with the fugue bringing an especially fiery response from the players, although the textures did become a bit muddy.
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir came with a reduced body of 100 singers, but they proved more than equal to the test. By comparison with other choirs I've heard in this music, the Choir's tone was secure and rich, not at all strained, in the cruelly high passages for sopranos and tenors. Basses and tenors together responded nimbly to the brisk tempo in Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen. The entire choir gave their biggest, richest sound in the energetic variation of the main theme after the fugue, and the hectic Alle Menschen remained crisp and pinpoint-accurate.
The
solo quartet included some big names with major reputations at the
Metropolitan Opera and other leading venues, and it was intriguing to me
to hear them in a concert setting after having encountered two of them
at the Met. Angela Meade gave a strong reading of the soprano part,
marred by one obvious under-the-note moment. Rihab Chaieb gave a clear
performance of the well-hidden mezzo-soprano part, welding together the
harmony of the quartet. Issachah Savage's stentorian heldentenor voice
made a splendid effect in his major solo, but sometimes overpowered his
colleagues in ensemble. Ryan Speedo Green sang with great power and
security of pitch in opening the vocal finale, and lent a firm foundation to the solo quartet.
By squawking repeatedly about the speeds, I do not mean to imply that this was in any sense an unmusical reading of the work. Maestro Gimeno allowed the music to breathe with slight tempo flexibility as needed, especially in the adagio, although a little more of this in the first movement would have been welcome. He nailed the tricky tempo shift into the trio from the scherzo and similarly managed well the tempo shifts from one variation to the next in the finale.
I do feel, though, that he overplayed his hand and that this performance, while superficially exciting, was somewhat lacking in deeper insights into the score. I'll be intrigued to see how his interpretation of the work develops and evolves with time.
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