The music and the man were featured at last week’s season opener of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, a joyous event designed to celebrate the official beginning of Maestro Peter Oundjian’s tenure as the orchestra’s Music Director. After a year spent mapping out a season’s worth of quality music, the Toronto-born Oundjian swept onto the stage with his trademark smile and an infectious enthusiasm for the symphony and the city.
The conductor’s energy and genuine pleasure at being the head of a world-class orchestra spilled over into the opening programme. After accompanying the audience in a robust rendition of the national anthem, the orchestra launched into Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, and a new piece by young Canadian composer Matthew Whittal entitled The Short Road to Nirvana. These works bristled with dancing rhythms and dynamic delivery.
The highlight of the evening was undoubtedly the Beethoven. One of Oundjian’s favourite works (and the first symphony he ever conducted), the maestro led his charges through this joyously expressive piece with great vigour. This symphony shows Beethoven at his complex best, bringing out and linking many emotions together through beautiful strains of melody and theme, and the TSO rose to the task with much energy and emotional presence.
The orchestra took the audience on a romp through the warm and buoyant first movement, connecting lyrical minor sections to passages of playful classical slapstick with great aplomb. The woodwind section shone here, bouncing snatches of melody back and forth amongst themselves with cheeky amusement. Oundjian, conducting without a score and clearly having marvelous fun doing it, was completely attuned to his orchestra and the nuances of the music.
It’s one of the annoyances of the sometimes stuffy etiquette at modern music halls that applause between movements is frowned upon, because coughing and shuffling of paper is not the way to acknowledge each thrilling section of a performance like this. The strains of the second movement’s hauntingly rich melody, played with much resonance by the cellos and handled with appropriate delicacy by the conductor, led into the meteor shower of bold brass and sassy strings that was the third movement.
The crackling energy of the orchestra carried the audience along as blaring bugles and galloping rhythm unleashed the fourth movement, with the maestro at the reins. Beethoven’s blend of melody, motif and punchy rhythm carried this work to its end with almost maniacal energy. This piece was an ideal start to the orchestra’s season, as it featured all the sections of the orchestra and allowed the musicians to explore their musical and emotional range.
It worked because all of the sections worked in concert with each other, and with the conductor, to produce a joyous yet tightly delivered overall effect. This kind of cooperation bodes well for future, more complex offerings from this group. A well-deserved standing ovation sent the orchestra and audience off to intermission on a high.
Whittal’s work, winner of the TSO’s 2004 New Creations Competition, was a mysterious soundscape of orchestral tone, colour, and Eastern influence. Its sublime ending, a single bell ringing through a fog of sound, displayed the subtle touch of a promising composer. And while Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances nicely rounded off the evening with excellent work from the woodwinds, it was a subdued selection that didn’t quite reach the heights it was striving for. It could be that the orchestra’s energy was spent on the Beethoven, as it was the Beethoven experience that heralded this season, and this conductor, as one to pay attention to.
This TSO season is packed with classical favourites-many popular amongst students- such as an evening of “Heroic Beethoven” and Mahler’s Titan Symphony. Guest artists include cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinst Itzhak Perlman and U of T’s own MacMillan Singers. For more info and to join the student discount program, where you can get great seats for only $10, check out www.tsoundcheck.com.
