Toronto Symphony 2017-2018 # 4: Romance of the Tone Poem

The tone poem or symphonic poem was the pre-eminent form invented during the Romantic era of European musical history, and was practised by many composers throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century.  Famous creators of multiple tone poems include Liszt, Dvorak, Smetana, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Richard Strauss -- to name only a few.  Some commentators even insist that the earlier concert overtures of Beethoven (particularly the Leonora # 2 & 3) and the later symphonies of Mahler are tone poems in all but name.

Throughout my concert-going career, tone poems have almost exclusively been a one-to-a-concert item.  But this week's Toronto Symphony Orchestra programme included no less than three tone poems, and a striking and diverse collection they made indeed.

First up was Lyadov's The Enchanted Lake, Op. 62.  The orchestra beautifully captured the sound world of this rarely-heard piece which murmurs quietly but mysteriously throughout its length, never rising above a mezzo-forte -- if indeed it even goes that far.  The term "diaphanous" perfectly describes both Lyadov's music and the orchestra's subtly-coloured performance of it.

The next work was the three-part Nights in the Gardens of Spain, for piano and orchestra, an unusual example of a tone poem which includes a concerto-scaled part for a solo instrument.  Despite the large solo part -- and with all due respect to Ingrid Fliter's skillful performance -- this most definitely is not a concerto.  You just have to look at the piano part -- mostly arpeggio elaborations of themes presented at the same time by the orchestra -- to see that the piano here is a part of the ensemble rather than an opposing dramatic voice.  But no matter.  Fliter and conductor Juraj Valčuha partnered in a sensuous, evocative performance of Manuel de Falla's inspired score, ranging from the perfumed darkness of the Generalife gardens at the beginning to the celebratory party atmosphere of the concluding Mountains of Cordoba.

After the intermission we heard the first successful entry in Richard Strauss' chain of tone poems, Don Juan, Op. 20.  This is music of great energy, beginning with the uprushing opening notes -- a Romantic-era nod backwards to the "Mannheim rocket" of the classical period.  Orchestra and conductor alike certainly caught that energy with an impressively crisp and precise launch.  As always, I hoped to be convinced of a clear through line tying the piece together -- and hoped in vain.  That's a near-impossible problem wished by the composer onto the interpreters of most of his tone poems, with their disjointed structures arising from the episodic programmes or (in this case) no stated programme at all.  But the players certainly gave it their all, and the final dying-away achieved great emotional intensity.

The concert wrapped up with a suite of excerpts from Richard Strauss' most successful opera, Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59.  The suite is uncredited, but is generally believed to have been created by the conductor Artur Rodzinski, who led its first performance.

It's only natural that this suite zeroes in on the numerous waltz fragments which pepper this beguiling operatic score.  The problem is that they remain, as in the full stage work, fragments.  But the arranger has devised the sequence and the linking passages with much care.  The one disappointment for me is that the suite doesn't end as the opera does -- with the great trio and love duet followed by the brief, light-hearted scherzando passage up to the final chords.

Players and conductor alike let the seductive waltz rhythms expand and sweep along in the most organic way, and the instrumental colours of the score shone out with gleaming purity.  This suite brought the concert to a most rewarding conclusion.