Emilie LeBel. Photo credit Phillipa C Photography
(program)
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra presented a mixed program featuring Prokofiev, Shostakovich and the world première of Emilie LeBel’s 'unsheltered’ on November 13, 2019 at Roy Thomson Hall.
Emilie LeBel - unsheltered
Sergei Prokofiev - Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 19:
I. Andantino
II. Scherzo: Vivacissimo
III. ModeratoDmitri Shostakovich - Symphony No. 10 in E Minor, Op. 93:
I. Moderato
II. Allegro
III. Allegretto
IV. Andante – Allegro
‘Davis Presents Russian Masters’ runs from November 13 to 15.
load management——it’s one of the trending buzzwords in the NBA, especially since the sick days observed by former toronto Raptor, kawhi leonard, has attracted the intense scrutiny of the international league of sports media, forcing emergency debates to deliberate just how much rest is enough rest for a millionaire who isn’t injured but is potentially injurable millionaire. this small saga has been no joke, and reached the supreme court of sports coverage when ESPN staged one such debate with an audience composed entirely of active members of the military, apparently there to keep the peace between the mercurially tempered stephen a smith and perennially exasperated max kellerman. all this as proof of the steady stream of high NBA drama readily available for entertainment, and as a bit of context for the clockwork machinery of the TSO: performing on tuesday in montreal, then hopping on a plane to make it to toronto by afternoon the next day with enough time to ‘reunite with our family, take a nap, shower, practice and be back at the RTH for a concert’(!) how’s that for managing the workload. it mustn't go unsung, the staggering work and athletic endurance that happens offstage to sound that good onstage, night after night and at the highest level.
Emilie LeBel and Sir Andrew David with the TSO. Photo by Jag Gundu
moving on, it was another smashing night this past thursday at Roy Thomson Hall, beginning with a very new work by canadian composer emilie leBel; then on to sergei prokofiev’s Violin Concerto, perhaps as a contrast to the potentially explosive highs and dolorous lows of dmitri shostakovich’s Symphony No.10. if variety is the TSO’s m.o. in regards to programming, then this compilation titled ‘Davis Conducts Russian Masters’ might well be the poster child for the full range of symphonic experiences available on any given night at the symphony. though i suspect the mysterious mechanisms involved in putting together a program run more on chance than on design. leBel was there in person to introduce her piece, the effect of which was a special kind of excitement: the piece went from her desk to sir andrew davis’s podium in a single calendar year. yet another instance of that marvelous clockwork of a well orchestrated resident symphony.
the fires in edmonton, the climate and migrant crises, were some of the issues top of mind when leBel began composing ‘unsheltered’ this past spring. it’s a topsy-turvy space that we step into at the onset, with a prominent role for percussions interjecting eerie notes over low long lines on strings, like plumb bobs cast into an ambiguous depth. this clangy percussion section persists through much of piece, down to the last note. there isn’t much of an arc in the development, rather a generally diffused mist of anxious gestures, ‘slippery glissando’, gurglings from the brass section, incantations that hesitate to be phrased on a makeshift drum kit. we don’t get the first through melodic-line until about one-third of the way in, a lyrical little phrase on a trumpet gives a sense of forward direction, the promise of a potentially useful object to return to later. a brief pause in activity brings more of the same, and the orchestra returns to more discord and dissonance, audible as well as visible: the disunity in the movement of the bowing arms of violin section is a lively contrast to the usual tutti of the section.
Sir Andrew Davis and Karen Gomyo. Photo by Jag Gundu
one of the characteristic features of shostakovich’s Tenth is its perpetual resistance to triumphant proclamations, even when the volume is cranked to all the way up. the same applies, to a subtler degree, to ‘unsheltered’. the same sustained resistance that a hypothetically present shostakovich would understand, perhaps even have an affinity for. the end of the piece is revealing, suggesting that all along we were on a restless search for something, a thing found when a small stone is cast by percussions, it seems to land on something solid, graspable, reverberating around the orchestra with a clean and simple echo, a ray of light on a broken column.
next was prokofiev’s Violin Concerto, and the little that i have to say about it owes more to the piece itself than to violinist karen gomyo’s performance, delivered with surgical precision alongside a near-operatic sense of drama. for those in the audience who came in for something on the lighter more tender side of the program, this was their moment. and gomyo made it worth the trip. but i braved the biting cold outside for the primary purpose of headbanging to some shosty, so i might have missed out a bit on most of the delicately-laced quiverings that ornament the violin’s part of this concerto. nevertheless it was a pleasure watching gomyo, whose stage presence seems to result from the accumulation of her engagements with some of the best musical institutions across the globe——it’s probably a shorter list to count the orchestras she hasn’t played with——a natural performer at east. perhaps it’s the relatively quiet score for orchestra in this concerto, but there weren’t any particularly flashy moments to recall from her performance. i bring that up because that’s a perfectly fine thing. especially with most soloists clamouring to gesture and emote as much as possible throughout a performance, it’s noteworthy when an artist leaves most of the gestures to the piece, allowing their technical prowess to draw the oohs as ahs. to that effect did my +1 chime in that gomyo is like ‘the Kawhi Leonard of violinists’...i don’t think i can top that compliment and comparison.
Sir Andrew Davis. Photo credit Jaime Hogge
the main event, shostakovich’s tenth attempt at the symphonic format, was an hour-long, slow and steady intravenous supply of adrenaline. resuscitated from the prokofiev concerto by a well placed intermission, it felt as if my seat had been moved a couple rows closer, or the orchestra nearer by the same extent: i had spent all of last week listening to this piece on vinyl (i run a weekly blog on genre) but it’s a completely different experience hearing it live. you hear it with your body. when the gong crashes, your spine rattles a little, absolutely brilliant stuff. it’s a bit of a simplification, but this symphony is more or less a battle scene, albeit one of ambiguous characters. the only consistent presence therein is the absence of joseph stalin, whose death in the spring of 1953 drove the progress of this apparently long-hibernating symphomy to the conductor’s podium in the winter of that same year. it’s length is staggering, and so is the consistency of the parts played of various sections: the high-pitched whistle on flutes like a flying kettle, pizzicato on strings mimicking the brisk march of a showy battalion, the anxiety-inducing screech of a pair of piccolos, the goose-croak on principal clarinet, off-colour remarks on bassoon, the Elmira theme on french horn, and finally, the bombast of the DSCH theme as it bellows from the cellos and double-basses.
the Elmira and DSCH themes are the real culprits in the ambiguity of this symphony. many a theories have been volleyed regarding the mock-heroic stance straddled this work——with one foot in triumph and the other in irony——but the most interesting insights are the ones that relate to the contrasts between the two themes. the elmira theme, named after a schoolmate the composer was infatuated with, is introduced on the horn: soft and pastoral, a picturesque image of the rural masses, an indomitable and astute population. it’s menace, though, lies in its recurrence, often instigated by the horn then echoed elsewhere in woodwinds. it returns over and over, often without provocation, like a loitering warden, the local NSA, Big Brother, CIA man that has entered the chat, whatever.
in contrast, the DSCH theme——four notes that abbreviate the composer’s name in german——is the more obviously and dramatically menacing character, prominent especially near the climactic finale. the intrigue in this symphony for me is hearing these two themes as driven by the same force, rather than opposing forces. what is local and diffused in Elmira concentrates into an organized and tyrannical symbol in DSCH. so that even in the slow movement and passages, when the french horn is in the spotlight, the feeling is never that of ease and open fields. and when the last note snuffs the fourth movement, it isn’t the twinkling of a small stone cast into ambiguous depths——as in ‘unsheltered’—— but the guillotine of time crashing onto a firm hand that held on for too long. that’s at least how i hear it, others continue to hear differently (yay variety), however you hear it, don’t miss your next chance to do so with the TSO, they’ve got it down to clockwork.
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Photo by Jag Gundu