Last Tuesday, the Toronto Symphony played a concert at Koerner Hall the night before their departure for the orchestra's first European tour since 2000. If this concert was any indication, the audiences of Europe are in for a real surprise from an orchestra and conductor too often dismissed as "second-rate".
The concert began with Claude Vivier's Orion. This work was unfamiliar to me, although I had heard another piece by this composer. I immediately sensed that this is a powerful, purposeful structure which truly makes use of the resources of the orchestra as a body and not just as a palette of varying instrumental sounds. I would really enjoy an opportunity to hear it again, as I plainly sensed that there was much more to this work than just the superficial type of sound effects strung together that characterizes so much contemporary music.
But then came the gem of the entire evening, a work which many experts consider to be among the greatest masterpieces of all music, yet one which is shamefully rare on Canadian concert programmes. There could surely be no better environment (other than, perhaps, an English Gothic cathedral) in which to hear Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. The rich, full sound within a modest size of Koerner Hall exactly suited the profile of this beautiful music for double string orchestra and quartet. There are three distinct layers of sound: the large first orchestra, the very much smaller second orchestra, and the solo quartet. The second orchestra are directed to be placed "at a distance" and play very quietly. The quartet are the front desk players of the main body.
Vaughan Williams explored the modal harmonies of the tune and the sonorities of the strings with an intensity and beauty rare in modern music. The music is radiant, inward, glowing, passionate, and reflective by turns, and the entire 15-minute length flows by in a continuous stream of melody that has no parallel in any music known to me.
I heard the orchestra play this piece once before, and that was in Roy Thomson Hall before its renovation. In that echoing concrete cavern, the string sonorities sounded so distant that the players might as well have been in another room. But Tuesday's performance was lush, full, and luminous. The music moved with purpose yet without haste, the climaxes beautifully prepared, and the sound contrast in antiphonal exchanges between first and second orchestras balanced to perfection. If I wanted to quibble, I would ask for the second orchestra to be moved to the upper gallery above the stage, but those seats were all taken in the sold-out hall. I would also ask concertmaster Jonathan Crow to play his solos a little less emphatically and with more of a reflective air. But these are only quibbles. Overall the performance moved me to the edge of tears with its exalted and exultant character. Maestro Peter Oundjian here demonstrated exactly how far the string sections of this orchestra have come under his stewardship. Such a reading of this work would not have been possible at any other time during the years I have regularly attended Toronto Symphony concerts. It was no accident that the audience greeted this work with loud cheers and three calls for the conductor and soloists.
After the intermission, we heard a neatly played, energetic reading of the Overture to Oberon by Weber. It's a typical piece by this composer, closely-structured and vigorous without becoming either showy or experimental. I've always felt that the closest parallel to the music of Weber among well-known composers is found in Mendelssohn.
The programme concluded with the Symphonic Dances by Rachmaninoff. This has definitely become a major showpiece for the orchestra, played more than once in recent years and recorded for the TSO Live label. I don't think the extra fire on this occasion was just due to the more intimate hall, although the hall's sound did begin to feel a bit "crowded" as the full late-Romantic orchestra fired up with all its big guns! Oundjian and the orchestra definitely got the bit between their teeth, and delivered a rip-roaring performance that I doubt I will ever hear exceeded. Familiarity with the score has bred, not contempt, but precision in coping with the rapid passage work and (in the finale) the demonic cross-rhythms. The spooky, ghostly "haunted ballroom" atmosphere of the second movement came across with more than a shiver, not least from the wildly skirling woodwinds. At the end of the finale, the strings again shone in a very different light with the powerful melody and off-beat chords of the Easter hymn, and the final rapid coda flung off into the echoing spaces of the hall at near-supersonic speed, but still with spot-on rhythmic accuracy.
Again there were cheers and a standing ovation. As an encore, the orchestra presented the third movement march from Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony. It was well-played and reached an impressive roar which again strained the limits of the hall's acoustic. But it came across to me as the most pedestrian part of the concert, and I would have gladly left with Rachmaninoff as the final word. I have to admit that Tchaikovsky's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies are not my favourites among his works!
The tour, by the way, also includes solo appearances by renowned Canadian violinist James Ehnes, and the other major piece not heard at this concert was Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony ("The Year 1905"), another massive work which this orchestra has truly made its own. Warm best wishes to the TSO and Maestro Oundjian for a tour which I am sure will be a great success.
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