On Sunday, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, music director Peter Oundjian and guests performed at Montreal’s Maison Symphonique. On Monday, they’re at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, before returning to Toronto.
According to PostMedia critic Arthur Kaptainis, the Torontonians presented an excellent concert. In this morning’s Montreal Gazette, he writes:
This was an admirable concert on every level, from the particular to the intangible. Perhaps the surest confirmation of its success was the positive impression made by Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 12 (“The Year 1917”). This is generally taken to be one of the master’s lamentable party pieces, although Oundjian, speaking from the stage, maintained that the outwardly laudatory treatment of Lenin and his revolution in fact hides a subversive personal agenda.
The best way to redeem the Twelfth, of course, is to forget its politics and stress its musical virtues, including the brawniness of the much-repeated principal theme, the eerie depth of the quiet interludes and grandeur of the climaxes. All of these were given full value, by intense strings, thoughtful woodwinds, spot-on percussion and a brass section that combined striking agility with mesmerizing glow.
Conducting with practical, textbook gestures, Oundjian signalled all the necessary gradients of volume and tone. Whispers had focus, fortissimos were rounded. Unified by the TSO’s sense of its own sound, the symphony seemed a one-movement essay in the human condition rather than a hokey revolutionary pastiche. A masterpiece? That would be going too far. But we left thinking about the Twelfth and willing to hear it again.
The concert started with Pierre Mercure’s Triptyque, a 1959 suite that encases its aggressive Stravinskian impulses between bookends of atmospheric calm. Playing was superb throughout. Special mention: trumpets and trombones. The composer’s widow, Monique, was in the audience.
Next came Beethoven’s Triple Concerto. Sometimes this score fosters a competitive spirit, but the all-Canadian soloists were in a co-operative mood, making chamber music with a comforting orchestra behind. TSO concertmaster Jonathan Crow was clean-cut on the violin and André Laplante, turning his own pages, made amiable music at the piano. Cellist Shauna Rolston indulged in expressive slides that pressed the limits of stylistic tolerance for Beethoven, at least in 2012.
But it all seemed of a piece. The coda of the first movement rose to such an impressive conclusion that the audience burst into applause.