Toronto Symphony closes 2016 New Creations Festival with works by Brett Dean, DJ SkratchBastid, and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.
Toronto Symphony Orchestra: New Creations Festival: Knocking at the Hellgate with Peter Oundjian/Brett Dean (conductors), Russel Braun (baritone) and DJ Skratch Bastid (turntables) at Roy Thomson Hall, Saturday, March 12.
[Originally published in the Toronto Star]
When our city’s winter ice finally melts, there is something deep inside of the Canadian psyche that begins to crawl out and stretch out its arms. The spring in the step of those who attended the closing TSO New Creations Festival on Saturday night was noticeably cheery, and the music helped us along.
In keeping with the thaw was Radiohead guitarist and composer Jonny Greenwood’s “Water”. The piece was inspired by the final couplet of Phillip Larkin’s poem that describes a glass of water “where any-angled light would congregate endlessly”. The music conjured the image of bended light beautifully and was bathed in the warm twang of the tamburas, a long-necked Indian lute that produced a humming drone throughout.
Greenwood included his usual nods to his hero, Penderecki, (vivid density and extended techniques) but most importantly, he demonstrated a growing mastery of economy and through-composed form.
The main focus of the program was Brett Dean’s “Knocking at the Hellgate”, a fascinating pairing down of his first opera Bliss that attracted an almost mythical status following its premiere by Opera Australia in 2010. Conferred as a 30-minute suite of three orchestral movements separated by arias sung by baritone Russel Braun, it was a challenging listen. Those who stuck it out were rewarded with a rich, self-contained sound world that told the story of protagonist Harry Joy, a flashy advertising executive with a seemingly perfect life. As explained in the preamble, Joy suffers a heart attack early on, and wakes up in a hospital with the realization that his life isn’t as perfect as he thought it was; one man’s heaven is another’s hell.
With Dean on the podium, the TSO played with an aggressive energy and took the music to the places it needed to go. Against the richly lyrical performance by Braun – and taking on techniques first pioneered by Jacob Ter Veldhuis – it included found voice samples that were rhythmically highlighted as music. The balance was effective. A highlight was Dean’s brass writing, which masterfully underlined the climaxes along with the fully-stocked percussion.
The epilogue to the evening (and the festival) was an improvised performance by DJ Skratch Bastid utilising remixed orchestra samples recorded during the festival’s rehearsals. A record needle as violin bow, the dual-phonographs in the hands of DJ Skratch Bastid produced sounds like an electronic radio dial with all the recordings of the world at his fingertips.
The turntablism movement has given birth to much of the creativity on display by Skratch Bastid, and with his appreciation for musical powers of syncopation and polyrhythm, the audience appeared to embrace him completely. I suspect his growing reputation as one of Canada’s finest turntablists just went up a notch.
#LUDWIGVAN
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