Well, I've been MIA for quite a while, yes? But here I am again, and only a few weeks late with my account of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony's season opener.
There were two short modern works to act as curtain-raisers for the main event. Stewart Goodyear's Count Up and John Estacio's Brio: Toccata and Fantasy for Orchestra both exemplified a welcome trend in recent composition: the rebirth of rhythm. Too much music composed during the 1960s to the 1990s simply lay there, a series of sound effects and chunks of sound that began nowhere, went nowhere much, and ended from exhaustion in a place that (like their beginning) was nowhere but was different since it was somewhere else (concept borrowed from one of my favourite writers on music, Donald Francis Tovey!). These two pieces both had strong, clear rhythmic profiles and were clearly bound on a journey. I've always found this makes music more approachable, even if the harmonies and instrumentation are tough nuts to crack. The orchestra played very well, and both works got much more enthusiastic response than the polite-applause-barely-long-enough-to-get-the-conductor-off-the-stage which often greets modern works.
That's due in large part to Edwin Outwater, the orchestra's music director, who manages to program a large number of modern pieces that share this key characteristic, and thus tend to go over well with the K-W audience.
The main event was Beethoven's monumental Symphony # 9, the work which gave the entire concert its title of Ode to Joy, Ode to Kitchener. This by way of being a celebration of the city's 100th birthday.
While everyone who knows the Ninth waits eagerly for the splendid choral variations of the finale, I've always felt that the work stands or falls by the execution of the serene and elevated slow movement. This needs to be genuinely slow -- too many Ninths are undone by the conductor turning the third movement into a brisk walk in the park. At the same time, though, it needs to maintain a clear forward impetus. And finally, the conductor needs to be fearless in letting the tempo breathe, allowing the basic pace to expand and contract at key moments.
Sounds impossible? Well, the great ones who have led performances throughout their careers can usually get it all right by the time they are seventy or so. It's a piece that somehow seems to reflect the wisdom of age, and requires the wisdom of age to perform properly. Or so I used to think. But Outwater's shaping of the slow movement was so exemplary that it age is clearly not the only criterion! The music lived and breathed in exactly the right spirit, and set the seal of a fine performance of the Ninth.
The choral finale was exemplary too, in another way. Combining multiple choirs trained by different conductors can sometimes lead to annoying minor glitches. But in this case, all the singers were very well in tune with one another and with the conductor and the choral sound was tightly unified at all times and very thrilling indeed.
Which leaves the soloists. Tenor Michael Colvin, a late substitution, was spectacular in the march variation. Bass Phillip Addis and mezzo-soprano Megan Latham were both effective,and Latham in particular became a solid anchor of the quartet, not simply disappearing into the sound as the mezzo is apt to do. Soprano Susan Tsagkaris was a relative disappointment, with a pronounced wobble that made it unclear whether she even nailed her high notes accurately.
The dramatic first movement and spectacular giants' dance of the scherzo were also clearly, neatly played, with the obvious advantage of a mid-size orchestra's cleaner sound compensating for the lack of sheer volume that one would get with a full-size body like the Toronto Symphony.
In sum: an exciting concert, with some good solid modern work, a thrilling choral finale, and a beautiful reading of the slow movement that lifted the performers and audience firmly into the heavens, where Beethoven's imagination so clearly took him.
No comments:
Post a Comment