[Originally Published in the Toronto Star]
Toronto Summer Music Festival: YOA Orchestra of the Americas with Carlos Miguel Prieto (conductor) Ingrid Fliter (piano) and Orchestre de la Francophonie, Tuesday, Koerner Hall.
The crème de la crème of international youth orchestras descended on Toronto as part of the first week of Toronto Summer Music and Panamania. Flush with fresh faces (all under 30), the YOA Orchestra of the Americas presented a well-defined show of works from the Western Hemisphere.
Koerner Hall has the uncanny ability to make performances sound richly luscious – but at the same time, the acoustics can be unforgiving. Flub a note or two, and it clops onstage like a drunken horse knocking over half the violin section.
Case in point was Carlos Chávez’s Symphony No. 2, “Sinfonía india.” Composed in one movement, the work follows three motifs originating from native-American tribes of northern Mexico. It is a bear – especially for the trumpets that rip, and blow large interval leaps in the upper echelons of the score. There are also countless odd metered rhythms that need to be dealt with in a natural way. The YOA percussion section never really got them quite right.
To the rescue was Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter as a soloist to Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major. The counter-balance to the heavy Chávez, Fliter lightened the mood of the opening first movement with a crack of the whip, followed by jazz-inflected tchotchkes and diverting rhythms.
Mexican Conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto’s towering figure drove the beat like a Texas pumpjack. The following second movement Adagio was lingering and overly romantic, and called for more direction in the phrasing. Fliter closed the deal with a strong Chopin Waltz for an encore, leaving the audience to enjoy an intermission with a stiff drink in the lobby.
Dvořák’s 9th “From the New World” (the same piece Neil Armstrong took with him for the first Moon landing, in 1969) rounded out the night.
One of the most popular works in the repertoire, the “New World” symphony was composed in 1893 while Dvořák was doing a three-year stint in New York. It’s a profoundly symbolic piece and some argue heralded a way forward for American symphonic music.
Prieto looked electric while teasing out the famous Largo, and latched onto it – then quickly rose to the peak. The problem was that by the end, there were no more flags to plant, and instead the orchestra hovered around in a lingering late-romantic triumph. The triple forte trombones didn’t help matters, and like turmeric, took over the soup.
Despite the missteps, one cannot disparage the talent of the YOA musicians. The fact is, they can play.
The Toronto Summer Music Festival continues through to August 9.
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