A good part of my musical lifetime flashed before my eyes recently at Roy Thompson Hall as I contemplated the cover of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s program. Of the ten conductors on display, I have experienced nine in live performance, Luigi Von Kunits being the exception, and hearing the TSO has involved many, many treks to Toronto over the past five decades. My first experience of this world class orchestra, however, was during a school trip to the Palace theatre in Hamilton of the 1950s.
Sir Ernest MacMillan conducted Scheherazade and the violin solo, and indeed everything else in the program, so enchanted me completely that the symphony orchestra remains a cornerstone of my aesthetic life to this day. Since that concert, although I can imagine the world a qualitatively more elevated and desirable place without, say, Rob Ford or Don Cherry, I cannot envision life without the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. This recent TSO feast of an appetizer by Beethoven and two main courses of Brahms masterpieces reminded me why.
After opening remarks from conductor Peter Oundjian, delivered in his usual warm, welcoming, and quick of phrase manner, there was much that pleased in Beethoven’s Romance in F major, featuring the Orchestra’s new and towering concert master Jonathan Crow. Soloist and orchestra proved compelling with their elastic dynamics, tonal shadings, and a sense of ethereal line that they created together. Equally compelling was the balance of structure and lyricism. Crow’s violin with its round tone in the higher register and full bodied richness below created the impression of a dense but subtly textured bouquet of sound. The performance in all, with the ebb and flow of interaction between soloist and orchestra, seemed made of air.
The first orchestral showpiece was Brahms’ Piano Concerto Number 1 with Emmanuel Ax as soloist. After the opening emphatic rumbling of the tympani and the luxurious attack of the strings, Oundjian proceeded to keep us subconsciously aware of a drama unfolding throughout the Maestoso first movement. Ax’s articulation and momentum in this massive context also presented a counter presence of assertive lyricism and tonal beauty that seemed to charm even the orchestra’s potent forces into a delicate response via the winds.
The previous TSO performance I had attended of Brahms’ First featured Evgeny Kissin as soloist in a performance that left me surprisingly frustrated with the pianist’s seemingly willful lack of integration with the orchestra. Here Ax and Oundjian’s orchestra seemed of one mind, capable of large scale effects that seemed metaphysically menacing and unresolved, thus feeling their way into meaning. This was a most engaging experience.
The Adagio, with the orchestra speaking in fully textured sound, with each orchestral effect organically emergent from the music itself, maintained this sense of ongoing search and discovery. Ax seemed spontaneous yet aware of proportion, and never deliberate or forced or subservient to concept, while the wind section seemed especially realized and compelling as a unit of musical intention.
In terms of impact, the Rondo seemed to offer a potent sense of warmth in its cosmic resolution while, in musical terms, there was much that also satisfied. Thrilling runs were handled adeptly by the strings who overall also displayed a tonal warmth and confident delicacy of touch. Ax seemed a completely present energy in this performance, one of decisive impact like the orchestra, as both, in completely integrated statement of the score, found new dimensions to reveal in Brahms’ often recorded concerto. This was a revelatory and memorable performance on all counts.
Likewise, Brahms’ First Symphony, which opened with its famous insistent and unrelenting beat and featured throughout both a sensitive blending of orchestral textures and careful attention to the effects of solo instruments and combinations in each section. Oundjian skillfully maintained its forward propulsion, skillfully created an effective sense of tension between orchestral momentum and contributing textural specifics. He was especially masterful at inner logic here, how one thematic instant blended into the next, masterful with each intimate or fragile moment, gracefully shaped, that implied a more massive orchestral statement and development.
Thus, the famous theme of the finale had the quality of realization, of serenity, of self-releasing joy. Oundjian’s interpretation, with its careful negotiation of undercurrent and restraint, and also his realization of emotional range through careful articulation of orchestral parts, all structurally laid out by Brahms, made fulfilling sense. A masterwork such as Brahms First, be it Symphony or Concerto, always has more to say, more to be heard and understood, and Oundjian so often takes a composer’s cues for new insight and realizes them to refreshing and enlightening effect. Fortunately, he has, in the TSO, resources who are capable of giving definitive voice to new discoveries in musical classics. The Toronto Symphony is indeed a national treasure.
