By the time his 14-year tenure as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony came to an end in 2018, Peter Oundjian had drastically reinvigorated the orchestra’s international status and reputation. It’s no wonder, then, that each of his return visits is met with warmth and enthusiasm. For Oundjian's part, he offers imaginative programming that both charms and challenges, celebrating the past and pointing forward.
This time, the future came in the shape of the world premiere of a readily accessible, if modest, five-minute piece by Ontario-born British Columbia-based ‘Next Gen’ composer, Katerina Gimon. Under City Lights, Forgotten Stars is the virtually self-explanatory title, and her evocative, accessible score could easily accompany a David Attenborough-narrated natural history programme about light pollution and our longing for the primordial spectacle of star-filled skies. The work opens with a brief depiction of the hustle and bustle of city life (marimba and xylophone to the fore). Tremors in the low strings signal the imagined dimming of artificial light and the reappearance of stars, soon leading to brass fanfares celebrating the emergence of the milky way. The unpretentious yet clearly heartfelt music was as charming as the composer’s introductory words from the platform.
John Adams may be senior in years, but in spirit he remains youthful and vigorous. His 2013 Saxophone Concerto, receiving its Canadian premiere, was inspired by his father being an accomplished alto saxophonist. Its jaw-dropping solo acrobatics were here negotiated with aplomb by Steven Banks: as fearless in the concerto’s Charlie-Parker-like feverish ramblings as he was poetic in its moments of harp-tinged repose. “A substantial tour de force”, the programme note claimed. Well, three movements lasting 30 minutes may qualify as substantial, and there is certainly no lack of craft and skill in the orchestration. But impressed and dazzled as we were, the concerto didn’t ultimately leave much impression, and the dazzle concealed a lack of emotional or dramatic depth or, in other words, substance. Hyper-activity and gymnastics are all well and good as means, but not very rewarding as ends.
A different kind of fleeting visions fills Rachmaninov’s Third (and final) Symphony: the kinds which, to borrow from Konstantin Balmont’s poem, contain many worlds. For myself, a self-confessed Rachmaninov-sceptic and no fan of recent scholarly attempts to rebrand the composer as a modernist, I was prepared to feel over-indulged, as I have been by certain recordings. But with Oundjian on the podium, lushness and refulgent tunes were only surface phenomena. Beneath were layers of edgy, raw, restless energy, borne along by awe-inspiring harmonic and timbral invention. Yes, there are echoes of echt-Rachmaninovian turns of phrase, but each time they promise to burgeon, they escape his grasp, like sand through the fingers, or fleeting images of times gone past.
Take that achingly questioning tune in the first movement. Will it return to crown the work in pulse-racing, tear-jerking glory? Not at all. In fact, nothing ever really settles or goes in predictable directions, perhaps with the exception of the last movement when, despite indications to the contrary, Rachmaninov grants us a triumphant send-off that even he scarcely seems to believe in. Frustrating or fascinating? It depends on the performance. There were moments in the finale that admittedly that felt slightly under-rehearsed. Otherwise, just like Rachmaninov’s music, Oundjian refused to yield to the temptations of nostalgic melancholia, and his interpretation was all the more thought-provoking and invigorating for it.
