MRDe-music ... A Farmyard with Beet ... hoven
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra
Douglas Boyd, conductor
Colin Currie, percussion

Beethoven: Overture to Fidelio, Op. 72
Simon Holt: a table of noises
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67


First off, in response to a question asked by a friend in advance of the concert ... what did I hear? Nothing but the bassoons.

And that is the way things rule the most.

That's out of the way. Time to indulge in two of my stereotypical tropes on a TSO concert ... mocking Toronto Star reviews and pointing out that TSO audience members are often acting in a way more appropriate to barnyard animals than concert patrons (perhaps that's unkind ... maybe they just mistook the TSO for pop music, where people ain't there to actually listen).

First, the barnyard report. Way less annoying than the previous TSO outing. No need to demand a new seat at halftime. But there was whispering, candy unwrapping, and my companion for the evening reported sitting beside a thin bony crow who insisted that their half-sized posterior required two seats. I think the bony one didn't like their date, and was trying to keep some distance from their poorly chosen campanion. I didn't appreciate having my companion horned in on that way. But ... well, one must tolerate much to avoid jail time.

Second ... Toronto Star review (until they change the URL).

Actually, this review was ok up until late on, when the reviewer started talking about the Canadian premiere of Holt's a table of noises. "Instead, the music is more babble than speech. It is like a child in a proverbial candy store of rhythmic and percussive temptations, each sampled greedily, but none savoured." Ugh. I guess that's poetic ... but it says nothing.

Well, let's see if I can do better. Likely not ....

Before the piece, Simon Holt, Douglas Boyd, and Colin Currie discussed the work. This inclined me to enjoy what was to come ... all three were confident, obviously knowledgeable speakers, and they described an experience that sounded promising.

The piece started ... interesting layout, with the reduced no-violins orchestra to stage right, the soloist's percussion rig, a piccolo-ist (?), harp and an orchestral percussionist stage left. The opening ... bird like sounds from high winds, apparently in dialogue from the left to right, and a constant nattering of a single funky little drum. I was amused, entertained, and still ready to be sucked in.

But that didn't really last. Overall, the piece was billed as about 30 plus minutes. To its credit, I didn't find that the time dragged. But then again, I didn't find that the piece had any perceptible architecture. As it was essentially a series of {10} vignettes, I didn't sense that any of the sections dragged (as they were about 3 minutes each, well below the threshold of my level of ADD kicks in), and each had enough moments of interest to keep constantly intriguing me:

what did I just hear?
hiding the sneak in of that similar sound was cool, leaving the illusion of a 4-handed perssionist ...
great xylophone playing, that guy has fast hands ...
nice instrumental dialogue ...
the horns sound great in those closely voiced rushing passages ...
contrabassoons sound cool ...
this is one of the intense moments the soloist mentioned ...
great xylophone playing, that guy has fast hands ... still ...
this closing section sounds great, nice mood, refreshing to hear the glockenspiel ...

But there's the problem ... the piece really did seem to be a collection of moments. Good moments, not bad moments, interesting moments, arresting moments ... and thankfully no offputting moments ... but it was less than the sum of its parts overall.

I was inclined to enjoy it ... and ended up doing so ... but only tepidly.

Can anyone tell I really, really like using ellipsis? They're ... enjoyable round ... and sequential.

The highlight of the night was Beethoven's 5th Symphony (the overture ... meh. To much pattern work, too little melodic or developmental interest for my taste. Yeah, I went there ... ). It was not my favourite performance of the work, but it was interesting.

Douglas Boyd brought a very transparent, light sound from the TSO. In fact, it sounded like he had the lower strings holding back the usual rich, thick sound I’ve come to associate with these players over the past few years. This allowed certain details to really stand out ... like the bassoons, which seemed especially prominent in this performance. I tend to prefer my Beethoven with a thicker sound, and for the 1st and 3rd movement of this particular work to be close to out of control and very heavy sounding, which wasn't the case in this performance. But that said, I'm glad to have heard this performance, particularly because it brought out details and nuance my heavy handed preferences would suppress. The first movement's tempo I would criticize as being too fast though, as the cellos/basses weren't properly able to articulate the "da-da-da-duhhhh" figures first heard early on. Small complaint though, as that was the only real blemish on this interesting take on the work as a whole.

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