TSO Opening Night - Mahler, Symphony No. 2, Oundjian, soloists
Toronto Symphony Orchestra opening night (Sept 23) was magnificent to say the least.
The grasp that Peter Oundjian showed, conducting this massive score, was truly impressive. This is an all-time-best performance from the TSO, what an opening! All involved, in fact, gave Oundjian an enormous encore all to himself at the end of it. The point where I got seduced was [edit] at the start of the fourth movement, where very careful balancing of horns is required to make for warmth. At that point the horns need to be heard
behind the strings, and this moment was carried off so beautifully, giving way to the soprano's solo. The finale (fierce and gorgeous) was carried off in excellent fashion, too. Very minor fluffs and ragged entries as per opening night jitters; these are always forgiven when the overall shaping of a piece is achieved with such aplomb.
I'll let Robert Everett-Green say it for me:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/music/tso-opens-season-with-mahler-magic/article1723899/
TSO opens season with Mahler magic
Robert Everett-Green
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Sep. 24, 2010 1:46PM EDT
“Now or never,” advises the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s latest sales campaign. That might seem an odd slogan for an organization that spends much of its time grooming “timeless” masterpieces, but it’s right on the money for Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. The young composer who wrote this sprawling work was in a mad hurry to square things with eternity, and willing to take every risk to do so. Its five movements are full of sudden changes of attitude, style and tone of voice.
Peter Oundjian chose this heaven-storming symphony to open his seventh season as TSO music director, and delivered the most satisfying performance I’ve ever heard from him with this fine orchestra. He did so, paradoxically, by countering Mahler’s restlessness with patience. He let each turn in the symphony’s convoluted progress have a full opportunity to weigh on our consciousness. He reminded us, in the best possible way, that large truths in music often hide in the small details.
It takes a certain toughness of mind to stand in front of a huge group of players and coax them to play in an intimate fashion. Yet this is what Mahler often demands in this piece, and Oundjian was ready to oblige. I’ve never been more conscious of his background in chamber music than during parts of the first movement. And yet the tensile nature of the movement’s persistent rhythm (so like the halting stiff gait of baroque French overture rhythm) never slackened, and when the big build-up was called for, the means were all prepared.
The opening of the second movement was a cloudless episode of almost Mendelssohnian charm, till the sinister triplet rhythm appeared, like a rude guest whose arrival was in the air all along. But the rolling perpetuum mobile of the third movement was disappointingly rickety, and out of keeping with the high focus of the rest of the performance.
The fourth movement, a setting of the song Urlicht, was feelingly sung by mezzo-soprano Susan Platts, but it was the last finishing notes from the orchestra that really lifted the piece into another realm. And then we were into the strange, apocalyptic finale, with its frequent halts, bizarre offstage brasses and palpable determination to look God in the face. This movement can easily fall apart in the early going, but in the first quiet section after the explosive opening, Oundjian found a dreamlike tone that created a charged atmosphere that persisted through the whole movement. The hushed entrance of the massed choir was magical (ditto the rise from that mass of Isabel Bayrakdarian’s radiant soprano) and though I can’t account for exactly how we got to the point at which the big tutti close felt emotionally right, it definitely did. At the end of the symphony, the whole place was on its feet.
I heard this piece a week ago in Montreal’s Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, and was kind of shocked at how much more present and alive everything sounded in Roy Thomson Hall. The colours of the orchestra were vivid and rich throughout this performance, and each section had abundant chances to shine, and did so.
