Apologia: This review has been greatly delayed due to my work
on the 60th anniversary reunion of Elliot Lake Secondary School,
where I taught for 32 years. But better late than never, here it is.
However, as has happened at select performances all season, the concert opened with the final "Sesquie" for Canada's 150th: The Bastion by Pierre Simard. After the work was played, conductor Peter Oundjian joked about how great it was to get a piece that was only 2 minutes long (that was a condition of the commissions for this project). But he then went on to add seriously that there was at least a 10-minute work in the ideas that Simard presented, and I wholeheartedly agree. A very gripping little preview of bigger and better things to come -- I hope.
Polish composer Karol Szymanowski developed his compositional style along such unique lines that he sounds like no other. More than once, I've had the experience of hearing a piece of music on the radio, saying to myself, "That sounds like Szymanowski," and then finding out at the end that it was indeed a work by this modern Polish master. But what is this distinctive Szymanowski sound? Commentators have struggled to find appropriate words and metaphors for it. Some have referred to incense or perfumes; others speak of painting styles.
Best to just listen to the music, and all of Szymanowski's music that I've heard is certainly rewarding. He composed many piano works, chamber works, symphonies, two violin concerti, and my two personal favourites, his Stabat Mater and his opera King Roger. This week's concerts featured the Violin Concerto No. 2, with Nicola Benedetti as soloist.
It's a single movement work, with several connected sections, rather in the manner of Sibelius' Symphony No. 7 although the similarity stops right there! Much of the work is gentle and meditative, with the violin soaring and twisting in complex and beautiful melodies over background shimmerings. Even when it gets faster and its persistent rhythms get more pronounced, it still tends to remain quiet. This fact throws into relief the few louder passages, including the energetic ending.
Benedetti's performance was a delight from the very first notes. She more than met the challenge of persuading the audience to appreciate and love a work that would be unfamiliar to most. Her playing combined qualities often considered incompatible: a clear singing tone with strong playing in louder passages. No doubt in my mind that she was thoroughly in tune with the composer's unique and colourful sound world. Only in that final climax did she vanish under the orchestra, and the fault certainly wasn't hers or the conductor's.
Best to just listen to the music, and all of Szymanowski's music that I've heard is certainly rewarding. He composed many piano works, chamber works, symphonies, two violin concerti, and my two personal favourites, his Stabat Mater and his opera King Roger. This week's concerts featured the Violin Concerto No. 2, with Nicola Benedetti as soloist.
It's a single movement work, with several connected sections, rather in the manner of Sibelius' Symphony No. 7 although the similarity stops right there! Much of the work is gentle and meditative, with the violin soaring and twisting in complex and beautiful melodies over background shimmerings. Even when it gets faster and its persistent rhythms get more pronounced, it still tends to remain quiet. This fact throws into relief the few louder passages, including the energetic ending.
Benedetti's performance was a delight from the very first notes. She more than met the challenge of persuading the audience to appreciate and love a work that would be unfamiliar to most. Her playing combined qualities often considered incompatible: a clear singing tone with strong playing in louder passages. No doubt in my mind that she was thoroughly in tune with the composer's unique and colourful sound world. Only in that final climax did she vanish under the orchestra, and the fault certainly wasn't hers or the conductor's.
To wrap up the season, the Toronto Symphony programmed Carl Orff's famous cantata, Carmina Burana. This is one of the greatest of rarities, a "modern" work that was latched onto with a will by performers and audiences everywhere right from the get-go. Carmina Burana has had so many live performances and recordings since its premiere in 1937 that it makes composers everywhere go green with envy. And like so many others of its kind, it remains very much a one-hit wonder -- although Orff wrote much other fine music, and was (and remains) very influential in the realm of music education for children.
Start with the title: "Songs of Beuern" -- named for the Benedictine monastery in which the medieval manuscript was discovered. The texts, however, are very secular -- with an earthiness that becomes downright raunchy and must have raised eyebrows when the collection of poetry was first discovered and published in 1847. In 1936, Orff came across the book, and was immediately seized by the power of the opening verses, "O Fortuna, velut luna, statu variabilis," ("O Fortune, like the moon, forever changing) and the accompanying illustration of Fortune, empress of the world, sitting at the centre of her ever-turning wheel. He sketched the opening chorus at once -- and in his characteristic, pared-down style.
After the opening fanfare, the first two lines are sung to a melody which uses just three notes on adjacent pitches, the first three notes of a minor scale. The melody moves down, up, and down again over these three notes, all the while accompanied by a propulsive motoric rhythm. And therein lies the key, since this cantata begins as it means to go on.
Orff deliberately cultivated this simplistic musical style, with vivid and constantly varied orchestration providing much of the musical interest. Harmonies and melodies alike are apparently straight-forward -- but certainly not artless -- and almost folk-like in character. Counterpoint and polyphony are nowhere to be found. With only a few exceptions, the two dozen separate songs in the collection are strophic in form, and with little or no real musical variation from one stanza to the next -- other than, perhaps, volume.
Music Director Peter Oundjian led the orchestra in a crisp, precise performance of music which thrives on those very qualities. Balances are important, and were impeccable throughout. The percussion parts lead the ensemble, but mustn't overwhelm it either, and that basic need was amply fulfilled.
A weak link was the five-fold refrain of O, o, o, totus floreo in the last part of the work. It needs to accelerate, and it did, but Oundjian began the acceleration in each verse too late and had to shift gears far too rapidly to reach the right speed for Quo pereo. This caused some looseness in ensemble, otherwise admirably tight and connected at all times. A more gradual acceleration over a longer span of the lines would be more usual, and would hold together much more firmly.
The combined forces of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and (in Part 3) the Toronto Children's Chorus admirably met the demands of the music. It's tempting to take the excellence of both these ensembles for granted, but after my one year in the TMC (1977-78) I thoroughly understand the amount of work underlying the fine results from from this exceptional amateur chorus. The clear enunciation of the medieval Latin/German texts throughout was a delight. So was the enthusiasm of the singers in the tavern scene and in Tempus est iocundum.
I've left the soloists till the last because they were the absolute highlight of the performance. It's hard to think of any time when I've ever heard such a beautifully balanced team of solo singers. The voices were all of a piece -- firm, clear, only "enough" vibrato (a very subjective call on my part), and well up to the varied demands of their parts, including some cruelly high notes for all three.
Soprano Aline Kutan sang with ease in the higher registers, and subtly captured the range of feeling, from the virginal In trutina mentis dubita to the loving abandon of Dulcissime! World-famous counter-tenor Daniel Taylor characterized, and acted, more overtly in the comic highlight of the score, the Song of the Roasting Swan, without forgetting that it was still a concert performance and not an opera. Baritone Philip Addis superbly evoked the dark sadness of Circa mea pectora and the rage of Estuans interius, while his performance of the recitative-styled Ego sum abbas cucaniensis was a dramatic highlight.
All in all, a truly rewarding performance of a work which I have heard far too rarely in its original full-orchestral dress.
Orff's huge success with Carmina Burana owes
everything to his skill at creating intriguing diversity within
what at first sounds like a recipe for boring sameness.
The real character of the music for Carmina Burana emerges when you consider the huge percussion section, and for this purpose you certainly have to include the two pianos among the percussion department because that's how they are used. Throughout the score, the percussion provide the driving force in the more energetic movements, and add characteristic little grace notes and touches to the gentler, lyrical movements. Rhythm is the absolute key to this music -- so much so, in fact, that the composer created a reduced version of the orchestral score for piano and percussion only, to put the work within the reach of choirs of more modest financial means. Music Director Peter Oundjian led the orchestra in a crisp, precise performance of music which thrives on those very qualities. Balances are important, and were impeccable throughout. The percussion parts lead the ensemble, but mustn't overwhelm it either, and that basic need was amply fulfilled.
A weak link was the five-fold refrain of O, o, o, totus floreo in the last part of the work. It needs to accelerate, and it did, but Oundjian began the acceleration in each verse too late and had to shift gears far too rapidly to reach the right speed for Quo pereo. This caused some looseness in ensemble, otherwise admirably tight and connected at all times. A more gradual acceleration over a longer span of the lines would be more usual, and would hold together much more firmly.
The combined forces of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and (in Part 3) the Toronto Children's Chorus admirably met the demands of the music. It's tempting to take the excellence of both these ensembles for granted, but after my one year in the TMC (1977-78) I thoroughly understand the amount of work underlying the fine results from from this exceptional amateur chorus. The clear enunciation of the medieval Latin/German texts throughout was a delight. So was the enthusiasm of the singers in the tavern scene and in Tempus est iocundum.
I've left the soloists till the last because they were the absolute highlight of the performance. It's hard to think of any time when I've ever heard such a beautifully balanced team of solo singers. The voices were all of a piece -- firm, clear, only "enough" vibrato (a very subjective call on my part), and well up to the varied demands of their parts, including some cruelly high notes for all three.
Soprano Aline Kutan sang with ease in the higher registers, and subtly captured the range of feeling, from the virginal In trutina mentis dubita to the loving abandon of Dulcissime! World-famous counter-tenor Daniel Taylor characterized, and acted, more overtly in the comic highlight of the score, the Song of the Roasting Swan, without forgetting that it was still a concert performance and not an opera. Baritone Philip Addis superbly evoked the dark sadness of Circa mea pectora and the rage of Estuans interius, while his performance of the recitative-styled Ego sum abbas cucaniensis was a dramatic highlight.
All in all, a truly rewarding performance of a work which I have heard far too rarely in its original full-orchestral dress.
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