{"id":109269,"date":"2024-11-07T15:37:39","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T20:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=109269"},"modified":"2024-11-08T07:00:02","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T12:00:02","slug":"scrutiny-still-unstoppable-john-adams-77-toronto-symphony-orchestra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2024\/11\/07\/scrutiny-still-unstoppable-john-adams-77-toronto-symphony-orchestra\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Still Unstoppable: John Adams At 77 With The Toronto Symphony Orchestra"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"American
American composer John Adams conducts the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (Photo: Allan Cabral)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ravel: Alborada del gracioso; Debussy\/arr. John Adams: Le Livre de Baudelaire; John Adams: \u201cThis is prophetic!\u201d from Nixon in China and Frenzy (Canadian Premi\u00e8re\/TSO Co-commission). Toronto Symphony Orchestra, John Adams, conductor; soprano Anna Prohaska. Roy Thomson Hall, November 6, 2024. Repeats November 9; tickets here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help but think that something more than coincidence was at work here, with the highly anticipated return of John Adams to Toronto Symphony on the evening after America\u2019s big decision day.<\/p>\n

The 77-year-old composer himself couldn\u2019t resist drawing parallels between an excerpt from his breakthrough opera, Nixon in China, and the election results. \u201cThis is an opera for the Republicans and Communists,\u201d he joked from the podium, and whether you like his music or not, Adams is undeniably charismatic and popular.<\/p>\n

\"American
American composer\/conductor John Adams with soprano Anna Prohaska and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (Photo: Allan Cabral)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The audience in the surprisingly sparsely-filled Roy Thomson Hall were treated to all three faces of Adams: the conductor, the orchestrator, and of course the composer. The French-American programme opened with a burst of colours in Ravel\u2019s orchestration of his own piano piece, Alborada del gracioso. There was plenty of bite in the opening pizzicato strings, and plenty of exhilaration thereafter, even if the triple-tonguing in trumpet and flute sometimes lacked clarity.<\/p>\n

Debussy\u2019s early settings of poems from Baudelaire\u2019s Les fleurs du mal, made for an ideal companion to Ravel, especially in Adams\u2019s lavish yet subtle orchestration, idiomatic \u00e0-la-Pell\u00e9as et M\u00e9lisande. Adams took four of the five songs for his homage, wrapping the voice in a cloud of sensuous orchestral colours, yet remaining sensitive to the limpid, transparent textures. Both the Wagnerian pathos of the songs and Adams\u2019s voluptuous arrangement call for a soloist who can fully embody the music\u2019s ecstatic raptures.<\/p>\n

Despite her pleasant timbre and obvious sensitivity, the Austrian-English soprano, Anna Prohaska (one of this season\u2019s spotlight artists) lacks vocal heft and often disappeared under the luxuriant wrappings of the orchestra. This was not helped by her bel canto-style legato, with exaggerated vowels and barely caressed consonances, which only further obscured Baudelaire\u2019s words, while her strange arm-waving seemed to acknowledge the problem of communication without doing anything to solve it.<\/p>\n

\"American
American composer\/conductor John Adams with soprano Anna Prohaska and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (Photo: Allan Cabral)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Prohaska\u2019s appearance as Mrs Nixon in \u2018This is prophetic!\u2019 from Noxon in China did little to redeem her. In this self-standing aria from the opera, Mrs Nixon, who reportedly had no interest in politics during her and her husband\u2019s visit to Beijing, is seized by visions and images, some trivial, some quasi-utopian, from lonely drivers pulling over for a bite to eat, to the Statue of Liberty changing a little (prophetic, perhaps, of recent GIFs of the Statue in tears at the election results?). With no real dramatic backbone or direction, the music\u2019s banal minimalism and new-age text have not stood the test of time.<\/p>\n

The concert closed with Adams\u2019s latest composition, Frenzy, presumably intended as the main attraction of this compact concert. Dedicated to and premiered by Simon Rattle, this is a typical Adams score: skilfully-crafted, effective, energetic and accessible, yet without any dramatic tension or risk-taking. He calls it a \u201cshort symphony\u201d, and if you squint enough, you might just be able to argue for such an optimistic label. But, as other critics have observed, it is really no more than a showpiece, at best, as the composer himself put it in his pre-performance address, \u201ca spring-loaded\u201d work.<\/p>\n

The main theme, derived from Adams\u2019 latest opera, Antony and Cleopatra, is surrounded by rhythmic figures and patterns that mutate, combine, and develop in a perpetuum mobile painted in typically flashy orchestral colours. A master-manipulator, Adams throws in plenty of red-herring moments of deceptive calm, before coming to an unexpected halt. The Toronto Symphony stayed in control of what is clearly a complex score.<\/p>\n

An enjoyable night, then, but one that lacked substance and left one wondering whether the unstoppable American will ever take pause and set his sights on true profundity.<\/p>\n

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The audience in the surprisingly sparsely-filled Roy Thomson Hall were treated to all three faces of John Adams: the conductor, the orchestrator, and the composer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":109272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40967,76,18,19,875,38,52,63],"tags":[1745,3360],"yst_prominent_words":[17340,32890,6827,6825,32885],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/11\/Copy-of-REVIEW-98.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-sqp","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109269"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109281,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109269\/revisions\/109281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109269"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=109269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}