Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Jonathan Crow, violin; Joseph Johnson, cello; Jan Lisiecki, piano. Gustavo Gimeno, conductor. Carlos Simon: Wake Up! (concerto for orchestra). Beethoven: Concerto for Piano, Violin and Cello. Mussorgsky (orch. Sergei Gorchakov): Pictures at an Exhibition. Wednesday at Roy Thomson Hall. Repeats Thursday and Saturday; tickets here.
Pictures again? On opening night? This was my initial reaction to the news that Gustavo Gimeno and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra would start their season Wednesday in Roy Thomson Hall with a program including Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. It took consulting the fine print to discover that the arch-familiar showpiece would be heard not in the popular Ravel orchestration of 1922 but in a version created in 1954 by one Sergei Gorchakov.
It is said that this forgotten Moscow-born composer (1905-76) sought to endow Mussorgsky’s suite of piano pieces with authentically Russian colour. He succeeded at least in creating unusual sonorities by enhancing the percussion battery. Heavy writing for brass (including two tubas) sometimes suggested military music as a frame of reference. Were the interventions of the harp meant to put us in mind of a folk instrument? Hard to say.
Indeed, it was difficult for a listener who knows the Ravel not to make a comparison in real time that almost always favoured the “original.” What a genius Ravel was to assign the solo line of The Old Castle to the always-surprising saxophone! Gorchakov here opted for an anticlimactic trumpet (two of which we had already heard in the initial Promenade).
In some cases Gorchakov’s choices — heavy strings for Samuel Goldenberg — did not veer far from Ravel’s. One sensed a touch of desperation in The Hut on Hen’s Legs and The Great Gate of Kiev as the composer added percussion noisemakers that paradoxically made the music seem less orchestral and more like the work of a one-man band.
Mussorgsky’s source material, of course, remained indestructible, and Gimeno showed a sense of how it should go. The TSO players left no doubt of their virtuosity. Brass in particular had a field day. What a fine thing it would have been to hear them in a Bruckner symphony.
The concert began with the Canadian premiere of Wake Up!, a concerto for orchestra by Carlos Simon, whose résumé includes a Grammy nomination and titled positions at the National Symphony Orchestra (of Washington D.C.) and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Based on a two-note motif related to the title, the 20-minute opus ran systematically through soloists and sections, sometimes in emphatic and dissonant mode, sometimes in a style more akin to Hollywood.
Despite the thematic rigour, the effect was relatively diffuse. Just why the TSO season should open with an American rather than Canadian work is not clear to me. Yet it must be said that the audience — always ready to party — gave the composer a warm reception when he took to the stage. The performance, including solos by some new associate principals, was as brilliant as could be.
Before intermission (and after a lengthy stage rearrangement) we heard Beethoven’s Concerto for Piano, Violin and Cello, a.k.a. the Triple, a score that is somewhat neglected owing to the trouble and expense of hiring three soloists. The TSO recruited two from its own ranks by engaging principal cello Joseph Johnson and concertmaster Jonathan Crow as well as pianist Jan Lisiecki, a TSO spotlight artist this season.
First to speak thematically in all three movements is the cello. Johnson stressed elegance rather than muscularity, and his colleagues followed suit. There were, quite properly, some zesty flourishes in the “alla polacca” finale, and the orchestra under Gimeno made a positive contribution. Generous applause called forth a generous encore, the second movement of Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor. It was played in keeping with the composer’s instructions: Andante con molto tranquillo.
The tradition of opening the TSO season with the national anthem is a thing of the past. There was, however, an agreeable touch of ceremonial formality as the audience was asked to stand for the entry of Edith Dumont, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, and the consequent performance of the Vice-Regal Salute.
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