{"id":15752,"date":"2013-11-05T23:23:49","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T04:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=15752"},"modified":"2013-11-06T07:32:14","modified_gmt":"2013-11-06T12:32:14","slug":"concert-review-titanic-pleasures-from-ontario-philharmonic-and-matt-haimovitz-at-koerner-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2013\/11\/05\/concert-review-titanic-pleasures-from-ontario-philharmonic-and-matt-haimovitz-at-koerner-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"Concert review: Titanic pleasures from Ontario Philharmonic and Matt Haimovitz at Koerner Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cellist<\/a>
Cellist Matt Haimovitz prepares to perform with the Ontario Philharmonic on Tuesday night at Koerner Hall (John Terauds phone photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Ontario Philharmonic made a powerful statement in the first of this season’s concerts at Koerner Hall on Tuesday night, emphatically reminding us that this is no poor cousin of Toronto’s finest symphony orchestras.<\/p>\n

Longtime music director Marco Parisotto has slowly, steadily built this ensemble from the Oshawa Symphony into a noteworthy big-city orchestra.<\/p>\n

The Philharmonic presented an ambitious programme convincingly performed: Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo (Hebraic Rhapsody)<\/em>, first heard in 1917, and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1<\/em>, the “Titan,” from 1888.<\/p>\n

The guest soloist was Montreal-based Matt Haimovitz, who gave an impassioned, compelling interpretation that was less a show of virtuosic solo work than a series of short monologues within a greater musical play.<\/p>\n

The Bloch work, which runs in one seamless stream, is a feast of orchestral colours. Within the relatively intimate confines of Koerner Hall and its remarkable acoustics, this piece washed us under an ocean of sound.<\/p>\n

Sitting atop the extended stage in the first balcony, the colours were so bright that I frequently found them distracting, paying more attention to the woodwinds one moment, or the violins, instead of the star soloist.<\/p>\n

But the overall execution of the music was winsome nonetheless.<\/p>\n

Haimovitz must have enjoyed the experience of being among equals — not something a concerto soloist gets to feel very often — because he popped up in the cello section for the Mahler symphony.<\/p>\n

The Mahler was shaped, paced and coloured by Parisotto with the care and assurance of a true master.<\/p>\n

The composer poured all of his oversized musical ambitions into this, the first of 10 symphonies (the last one left unfinished). It’s a stewpot of ideas and emotions, brimming with depictions of nature, of fate, of people dancing to folk music, of despair and, ultimately, a swell of victory.<\/p>\n

Mahler wrote for a big orchestra, but he also wrote an incredible amount of detail, much of it obscured in a typical large-concert-hall performance.<\/p>\n

At Koerner Hall, these details came to life in a performance that, under Parisotto’s firm leadership, was direct, transparent and mesmerizing.<\/p>\n

This is what makes for a memorable concert experience — the kind that we all wish we could enjoy more often.<\/p>\n

John Terauds<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ontario Philharmonic made a powerful statement in the first of this season’s concerts at Koerner Hall on Tuesday night, emphatically reminding us that this is no poor cousin of Toronto’s finest symphony orchestras.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,9,76,19,36,52,60,63,1],"tags":[6451,857,2094,2140,2445,2484,6471],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2013\/11\/op.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-464","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15752"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15752"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15761,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15752\/revisions\/15761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15752"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}