Classical Travels
Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto
October, 2010

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) has the good fortune to enjoy good relations with several of its former music directors. While current music director Peter Oundjian is now well-established, conductor laureate Andrew Davis is a frequent and welcome guest conductor, and less often, maestro Jukka-Pekka Saraste. Saraste, who was music director of the TSO from 1994 to 2001, recently succeeded Semyon Bychkov as conductor of the WDR Radio Orchestra in Cologne.

Solid Sibelius Follows Less than Stellar Stravinsky

On this occasion, Saraste’s partnership with the TSO got off to a shaky start with a messy performance of the early Fireworks by Igor Stravinsky, but soon righted itself with a solid performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto, with Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud as soloist. Saraste has often demonstrated his affinity with the music of his compatriot Sibelius and he did so again on this occasion.

Kraggerud played the concerto with impeccable intonation and beauty of tone, and I was reminded again how much Roy Thomson is improved from its original acoustical incarnation. Kraggerud’s violin projected with ease into the hall as compared with Anne-Sophie Mutter’s struggle to be heard last week in a concert I attended at Montreal’s lamentable Place des Arts. Although Kraggerud’s return visit to Toronto was impressive – he made his first appearance in 2007 – his playing did not convey much individuality.

I must confess, however, that what drew me to Roy Thomson Hall was not the opportunity to hear yet another performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto, but the much rarer opportunity to hear Shostakovich’s remarkable Fourth Symphony.

Shostakovich Work Officially Condemned 

During the 1920s and early 30s, Soviet artists were encouraged to experiment and produced work of startling originality. Then the roof fell in. The Soviet leadership became paranoid about losing power and feared any kind of individual freedom.

Dmitri Shostakovich was a fast-rising young composer during this period, but suddenly his brand of personal expression was out of favour. His opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was officially condemned in 1936, and the Fourth Symphony had to be withdrawn before its premiere, amidst fears that its “formalism” would offend the authorities.

Shostakovich sought to make amends by quickly producing his Fifth Symphony the following year. While the Fifth remains the composer’s most popular work, the Fourth Symphony is a far more challenging and original piece.

During his TSO regime, Saraste, with his tousled hair and scruffy beard, had the look of a Bohemian. Today he has a decidedly aristocratic appearance, a new look of maturity and elegance. Appearances aside, he remains a serious and dedicated musician.

Unsettling, Exhausting, Exhilharating! 

The Shostakovich Fourth is not only problematic in its origins but in its difficulty too. It makes extreme demands on the orchestra and on listeners. The TSO had obviously been very well prepared by Saraste and gave him maximum effort – with the exception of some disinterested back desk violinists – from start to finish. The solos for English horn, piccolo and trombone were all excellent.

The Shostakovich Symphony No. 4 starts with music that is far from being either fresh or original; workmanlike would be a more apt description. But just when one is about to give up on the piece – it is relentlessly noisy too – a wild fugue begins in the strings. Shostakovich suddenly vaults us from the mundane and artificial to the real and frightening. From there on the symphony constantly surprises us with its musical and expressive shifts, right through to the magical and ambiguous ending – strings holding a soft C major chord against the celesta playing a tune in C minor – which foreshadows the end of the slow movement of the Fifth Symphony.

The Fourth Symphony is a magnificent, seminal work in Shostakovich’s development and Saraste was totally inside it. No wonder the TSO musicians applauded him enthusiastically at the end. The audience too seemed to realize that they had heard something wonderful, even though it took some effort to stay with the composer’s long and unsettling journey.

Paul E. Robinson is the author of “Herbert von Karajan: the Maestro as Superstar,” and “Sir Georg Solti: His Life and Music,” both available at Amazon.com. NEW For friends: “CLASSICAL AIRS,” The Art of the Conductor podcast!

Conductors come and go, but it is always a thrill to see one who really makes a difference. At the beginning of this season, Jaap van Zweden assumed the music directorship of the Dallas Symphony (DSO) and musical life in Dallas has not been the same since.

Jaap van Zweden is not your Hollywood central casting conductor – in fact if you met him on the street you might mistake him for a wrestler or a weight-lifter – but conducting has less to do with how you look than what you can do with an orchestra.

Maestro van Zweden is obviously a driven man and he expects that same drive from his players. At the concert I attended, there was no one sitting back and taking it easy. Instead of the lazy, half-hearted bowing one sees so often in string sections, every man and woman was bowing as if their lives depended on it. Not since Sir Georg Solti commanded a podium have I seen such intensity from a conductor.

The maestro’s message to the players? Music is serious stuff – I stayed up all night to figure this piece out and the least you can do is practice every waking hour until you are able to play it perfectly! Then we will start to work on interpretation and phrasing.

As it happens, earlier in his career, van Zweden did play under Solti and other great conductors when he was concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, recently voted the number one orchestra in the world by a group of respected luminaries; he learned the repertoire as a player in a world-class orchestra and he also learned what it takes to make music at the highest level. He has clearly brought that attitude to Dallas and the DSO players seem to like it a lot.

What I heard at the Myerson Symphony Center was remarkable by any standard and as a glimpse of things to come, it was tremendously exciting.

The concert was a somewhat belated New Year’s celebration, loosely modeled on the annual event by the Vienna Philharmonic broadcast worldwide. This means music by the Strauss family, and it also means finishing up with the likes of the “Blue Danube Waltz” and the “Radetzky March.” To give the occasion an American flavor, van Zweden ended the evening with Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and earlier had presented Leroy Anderson’s somewhat dated novelty piece, “The Typewriter.”

Stokowski’s Orchestration of Pictures Rivals Ravel
The tour de force of the evening was Leopold Stokowski’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s piano piece, “Pictures at an Exhibition.” There are those who still wonder whether Stokowski actually wrote the many transcriptions attributed to him. There is strong evidence that much of this work was really done by Lucien Cailliet, a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the Stokowski era (1912-1936). The fact is that this orchestration is a fine alternative to the famous Ravel arrangement of the Mussorgsky original.

One of the devices Mussorgsky used to link the ‘pictures’ (by the composer’s friend Victor Hartmann) depicted in the piece is the ‘promenade” – walking music, if you will – as the visitor strolls from one exhibit to another in the gallery. The piece begins with just such a promenade and in the Ravel version, it is given to a solo trumpet. It is one of the best-known passages in classical music.

The Stokowski version starts quite differently, with rich and dark sonorities in the string section (with some reinforcement from an organ), and in the performance by van Zweden and the DSO one was taken aback by the weight and opulence of the sound. This was the special quality of the hall yielding to a conductor skilled at eliciting the sound he wants from an orchestra. The performance went on from there to surprise and thrill us with playing of razor-sharp precision and a vast range of color.

Curiosities abound in Stokowski’s version of “Pictures.” Nearly always, Stokowski chose instruments and combinations of instruments far removed from the Ravel version. In several sections of the score, however, he seems to be saying – ‘Ravel’s choice of instrument was so inspired and so right I couldn’t possibly do better’; ergo,  both the Ravel and Stokowski orchestrations feature a solo saxophone in ‘Il Vecchio Castello’ and a solo trumpet in ‘Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle.’

Jaap van Zweden, DSO & Myerson Symphony Center – Triumphant Trio!
I look forward to returning to Dallas for more music-making from Jaap van Zweden and his newly-galvanized Dallas Symphony. I’ll certainly have a lot more to say about van Zweden, but I can’t emphasize enough that Dallas has one of the world’s great concert halls.

There are only a handful of concert halls in North America that come anywhere close to the quality of the Myerson Symphony Center. What makes it great? In a few words – the sound jumps off the stage and involves the listener. The sound enhances the timbre of every instrument in the orchestra and makes them sound well together. It helps too that the Myerson looks so good inside and out, and that you can get a good meal there!

Later this year, the Myerson will be joined by the new Winspear Opera House and the Wyly Theatre just across the way. Within the span of a few blocks, one can also enjoy the treasures of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art.

This is the Dallas Arts District, a work in progress for many years but now coming to completion. Big D is about to become bigger and better than ever.

From Triumphant Trios to Cuatro Leches at La Duni – Dallas Delights!
It is not in the Arts District, but La Duni, a Latin Café on Mckinney – where the Cuatro Leches cake alone would keep me coming back – is one of the places we always visit on our return trips to Dallas, where we lived several years.

There is much more to savor at La Duni, however, than cake; for example,  several dozen kinds of coffee,  and a wide variety of amazing tortas (sandwiches), including our current favorite – the ‘Choripan’ with Argentinian sausage, avocado and manchego cheese stuffed in a fresh popover and served with yucca fries!

La Duni’s McKinney Street location opened in 2001 with founders Espartaco and Dunia Borga at the helm, and there are now two other locations in Dallas. Word on the street – actually, from one of the La Duni staff members – is that within a year or so, there will be a La Duni in Austin. Great news for Austinites, like us!

Paul Robinson is the author of “Herbert von Karajan: the Maestro as Superstar”; “Sir Georg Solti: his Life and Music,” and “Stokowski” (Spring 2009), all available at http://www.amazon.com. 

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