10 March 2011
A Twitter aesthetic clothed in a traditional symphony program
by John Terauds
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It wasn't intended that way, but Thursday night's final concert of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's seventh annual New Creations Festival could have been an example of how to translate the Twitter aesthetic into art music. As Toronto Symphony composer-advisor Gary Kulesha pointed out during his intermission chat in the Roy Thomson Hall lobby, the program was as traditional as they come: an Overture, a Concerto and a Symphony.
Despite the traditional outer form, the music itself lacked the kind of serious thematic exposition and development explored by these traditional forms.
The pieces were new, or at least recent. And the two most recent ones felt very much in line with a zeitgeist dominated by frequent, simple, 140-character expostulations that suggest motion at the expense of larger-scale depth, focus or coherence.
Hence the likeness to Twitter.
To push the metaphor further was a concerto by American Jennifer Higdon: On a Wire. The soloists were 15-year-old, six-member experimental chamber ensemble/band eighth blackbird, who started the piece clustered around and under the lid of a concert grand piano.
They gamely bowed, struck, strummed, plucked and played the piano, creating a lively cacophony of sounds that had all the playfulness of kids letting their imaginations go crazy in a sandbox.
Higdon carefully provided each eighth blackbird member with solo-spotlight moments, while relegating the orchestra to accompanist status. The sextet of soloists would return to the piano two more times – each time with diminishing returns, but undimmed enthusiasm.
Higdon's piece contained great ensemble writing and a slower section that sounded like a series of refracted lush harmonies – all bits and sparkles of something larger and more substantial, but frustratingly out of reach.
The newest piece of all was the world premiere of Symphony No. 1 in C minor by veteran Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, commissioned by Toronto Symphony music director Peter Oundjian. This was the longest and also the weakest of the night's offerings.
Schafer introduces a multitude of musical and, in the case of a violin pantomime near the beginning, extramusical ideas that tumble one into the next. They barely hung together as a larger piece at Thursday's performance.
The overture was by this year's featured composer, American John Adams: Tromba lontana, from 1985, published as a companion to the festival's opening fanfare, Short Ride in a Fast Machine.
Oundjian conducted the concert with confidence and purpose, and the orchestra responded with nicely balanced, technically assured performances. Only in the Adams piece was there a lack of definition from the lower strings, which were sitting much further back on the stage than usual (to make room for eighth blackbird).
Like the first night of the New Creations Festival, the final outing featured music that acknowledged the appeal of tonal writing, bristled with inventive rhythms and counterpoints and overflowed with imaginative themes.
That was worth something, even if Thursday night's two new pieces didn't coalesce into anything more than a mere sum of interesting parts.
