The Toronto Symphony Orchestra designated its third performance of the season (and of the week) as its official gala opening concert and invited superstar pianist Lang Lang to join in on the festivities at Roy Thomson Hall on Saturday night.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
The music heard by the near-capacity crowd was first-rate, with Lang’s contributions being particularly fine. But the evening raised a question that didn’t get quite as satisfactory an answer.
Let’s get that out of the way first: Here was the official kickoff concert of the orchestra’s 92nd season. Patrons who bought special tickets were invited to a pre-concert reception and sported formal evening wear. The hall applauded the start of music director Peter Oundjian’s 10th season with the Toronto Symphony.
All the key board members, sponsors and donors were supposed to be present.
So the evening should, by extension, have worked as a snapshot of where Toronto’s flagship classical orchestra stands, circa 2013.
The mood was upbeat. The music was beautifully played. But the programme itself was confined to a narrow strip of time and geography: central Europe between 1780 and 1845, less than an average human lifetime.
Was this what the organization’s artistic team thought the board and its patrons would like? Presumably. But had a visitor to Toronto sat down blindfolded at Roy Thomson Hall, he or she might have been forgiven for not having any clue what city or what year they were in.
The programme was odd in the first place, bizzarely combining two of Mozart’s finest piano concertos with the Overture to Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner. The Wagner allowed the orchestra to bring in all of its players and to show off what a big ensemble in full flight can sound like.
But the symphony programmers could also have pulled one of the many excellent Canadian — even Torontonian — symphonic works from its well-stocked library. There were at least two great living Toronto composers in the audience whose work would have provided an impressive showcase not only of the orchestra’s prowess, but of its connection with the here and now of art music in this country and city.
Instead, we got a museum-case programme, carefully exhumed from the European Vault of Great Classical Chestnuts.
Thank goodness for Lang Lang, who breathed a lot of here-and-now into the two Mozart concertos.
Lang is a bit extravagant at the keyboard, often turning his movements into an elaborate personal dance. But what really matters is what he does with his extremely agile fingers.
We heard two contrasting concertos: the light-filled G Major No. 17, K453 and the shadowy C minor No. 24, K491. Lang approached them with the pianistic equivalent of a method actor, suffusing his playing with the appropriate character for each piece.
His inclination is to underline recurring themes, to carefully delineate phrases and to differentiate repeated notes with different articulations and touch. He also has a keen ear for dialogue, especially between piano and orchestra. Taken together, his interpretations yielded very compelling music, expertly partnered by the Toronto Symphony under Oundjian’s confident leadership.
There are more subtle ways of playing Mozart, but Lang’s infectious enthusiasm never sounded forced or excessive, and helped highlight the seemingly infinite inventiveness in Mozart’s writing.
Lang was rewarded with a prolonged, noisy ovation that he repaid with what had to be the gaudiest-sounding Chopin waltz heard in these parts in a long time.
The Wagner opera overture was textbook perfect.
It’s good to know the season has begun.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
