Toronto Symphony Orchestra | Tippett: Concerto for Double String Orchestra; Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Main, Ok. 503; R. Strauss: Additionally sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30. Andrew Manze, conductor; Emanuel Ax, piano. January 15, 2025 at Roy Thomson Corridor. Continues January 18 & 19; tickets right here.
From heavenly Mozart to cosmic Strauss by way of quietly euphoric Tippett — one other impeccable program from the Toronto Symphony. This time we owed the event to the orchestra’s late Conductor Laureate, Sir Andrew Davis, who deliberate it however alas didn’t reside to understand it. The baton as a substitute handed to the Baroque violinist-turned-conductor Andrew Manze, who in his opening phrases devoted the live performance to the reminiscence of Sir Andrew, reminding us of his selfless championing of Tippett.
It’s onerous to see why Tippett’s 1939 Concerto for Double String Orchestra would really want particular advocacy. That is music that bounds off the web page from the very first notice, and doesn’t cease stunning and delighting till the final. Additionally it is a deal with to look at. Lower in half and seated stereophonically, the TSO strings resembled the musical equal of the Home of Commons, with Manze’s florid enthusiasm qualifying him for the function of an interventionist Speaker. To see and listen to the double basses on both facet of the platform bouncing concepts off one another was only one amongst many treats.
With its invigorating rhythmic power and drive, the Concerto can be proof that counterpoint may be enjoyable. The programme notes steered Jung and T.S. Eliot as mental godfathers. However, their enter is secondary to the heat and humanity that suffuses all of Tippett’s music, nowhere extra so than within the Concerto’s poignant second motion. With its fondly recollected folks tunes and subtly positioned dissonances, that is English pastoralism at its most inspiring, free from the slightest trace of sentimentality or self-indulgence.
Second Half: Strauss & Ax
Jungian dualities had been echoed in Strauss’s Nietzsche-based, man-versus-nature Additionally Sprach Zarathustra within the second half. That is the piece hijacked by Stanley Kubrick in probably the most efficient cinematographic appropriations of pre-composed classical music. Kubrick diminished all the 32-minute tone poem to its opening dawn theme. So, it wasn’t stunning to listen to smatterings of applause within the mistaken place (after the mid-way return of that theme). Nor was it surprising that Strauss’s quietly ambivalent ending ought to have met with a considerably subdued viewers response.
The efficiency deserved higher. If the well-known opening felt a bit underwhelming, that’s partly as a result of Manze was sticking near the rating. These three ascending trumpet notes are marked pianissimo, with no crescendo. Manze adhered to that and to the one forte for the next accented chords. Viscerally, then, this was no match for Karajan’s 1973 definitive recording (not the mock 1959 one used for the movie), and Manze might definitely have been extra spacious with the remainder of the introduction. Elsewhere, although, his fluid pacing helped transfer the work’s narrative easily ahead. Solos, notably the violin within the Dance-Track episode, had been assured and idiomatic, showcasing the orchestra’s high quality as successfully as any of the concertos for orchestra which can be a operating theme of the season.
The prize for essentially the most magical orchestral solo of the night, nevertheless, ought to be shared between the flute and oboe within the finale of Mozart’s C main Piano Concerto, K503. Pianists might come and pianists might go, to paraphrase Simon and Garfunkel. In right now’s world of younger and flashy stardom, to be within the presence of a seasoned grasp with such self-effacing appeal as Emanuel Ax — longtime associate of the TSO; and certainly of Sir Andrew Davis — is a deal with and a half.
Ax’s tone was heat and rounded, but on the similar time gentle and clear, and his phrasing was a masterclass in seamless circulate and refined nuance. Nothing was exaggerated or mannered. Relatively, every of Mozart’s ingenious rhythmic, polyphonic, and harmonic adventures was subtly acknowledged, with Manze and the TSO in shut, empathetic attendance, all the way in which to that impressed change between piano, flute and oboe — as breathtaking as any of the ensemble scenes in Mozart’s operas.
It was touching to see Ax’s discreet fist-bump in the direction of the woodwinds as he returned to the platform to obtain his simply acclaim. His quick eulogy for Sir Andrew and a chic rendition of Schumann’s Arabesque as encore rounded off a really transferring commemoration of the orchestra’s late Music Director.
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Michelle Assay is a Marie Curie/UKRI International Fellow on the Universities of Toronto and King’s Faculty London engaged on Girls and Western Artwork Music in Iran (Womusiran.com). She holds a PhD from the Sorbonne and College of Sheffield and has been a Leverhulme Fellow on the College of Huddersfield. She is the creator of award-winning articles on Russian and Soviet music and on Shakespeare and music, and often seems in concert events as a pianist. She is a daily broadcaster for the BBC and contributor to Gramophone, Worldwide Piano, and Bachtrack, together with Ludwig Van.