Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Adès: Paradiso from Dante; Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (Kirill Gerstein, soloist). Holst: The Planets. Thomas Adès, conductor. Roy Thomson Hall on Feb. 26, 2025. Repeats Feb. 27 and March 1; tickets here.
Quite a combo Wednesday night in Roy Thomson Hall. On the podium was Thomas Adès, arguably the best-known living British composer of concert music, making his Toronto Symphony Orchestra debut. On the program was the Canadian premiere of his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, with Russian-born, Berlin-based Kirill Gerstein as the stellar soloist.
After intermission we heard Holst’s The Planets, arguably the most popular work in the British orchestral repertoire. Quite a combo, and a healthy crowd to match.
Which is not to say the concert got off to the strongest possible start. Paradiso from Dante’s Divine Comedy is an ambitious subject for musical treatment. Adès has conceived of it as a beehive of sonority. Many were the repetitive rising figures, including a motif that sounded (to me) like a borrowing from Brahms.
Rhythms were heavy and persistent. The sudden entry of 18 female voices (from the Soundstreams Choir 21) halted the perpetual motion only temporarily. This amply orchestrated piece (in fact Act 3 of a full-evening ballet called Dante) lasted 24 minutes. I had had my fill of paradise after about 10.
The concerto was more engaging. Best was the moonlit middle movement, with its delicate (rather than overwhelming) touches of percussion and equitable balance of piano and orchestra. Harmonies were mostly dissonant but melodic motifs were surprisingly simple. The solemn coda featured a bass drum, evidently one of Adès’s favourite instruments.
The outer movements were frenetic and packed with unpredictable effects. We heard elements of jazz, Ravel and Prokofiev. Sometimes the role of the soloist was to calm things down, if only briefly. Liszt made a cameo appearance in the final minute, complete with double octaves, to bring the score to a rollicking close. Gerstein, who has performed the piece more than 50 times, mustered the necessary bravura. It is significant that he still keeps a tablet in front of him, just in case.
Holst
A tall and athletic figure with an exacting baton technique, Adès proved an authoritative conductor of his own music. And the music of others. Far from a run-through, his treatment of The Planets was full of character and idiosyncratic tempo changes. Venus, the Bringer of Peace, was wonderfully soft and gentle. Saturn, slower than usual, was truly the Bringer of Old Age.
Mercury sparkled, Uranus hobbled humorously. The climaxes of Mars were certainly loud enough. The big tune in Jupiter was surprisingly brisk and détaché. Surely we need more sentiment here. Neptune — the most distant of the planets for Holst in 1916 — was done fluidly, almost without a pulse. Space itself seemed to disintegrate. The choristers (prepared by David Fallis) were backstage for the mesmerizing fadeout.
The TSO followed Adès’s inspirations faithfully. Solos were splendid. Principal oboe Sarah Jeffrey was perhaps first among equals. The silky-sounding concertmaster was Ji-Yoon Park, a visitor from the Radio France Philharmonic.
After several seconds of post-Neptune silence, the crowd applauded lustily, if not for long. It was a heterogeneous mix of casually dressed newcomers and veteran subscribers. Some appeared to be aware that several planets these days are sharing the visible sky. I saw at least two listeners wearing astronomy-themed clothing. I doubt that the TSO booked the Holst with the conjunction in mind.
Anyway, the orchestra is clearly doing something right.
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