Years ago, after a Paris performance of Shostakovich’s Fifth symphony, I heard the composer’s widow, comparing the work to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. “Because it’s always fresh?” I asked enthusiastically, trying to impress the great lady. “No, because it’s performed all the time,” came the dry response. There’s definitely something in that off-the-cuff remark, but I like to think there’s also some truth in mine. I confess to being on my guard when attending a live performance of this emotional roller-coaster, fearing either staleness or mannerism. But it turns out that with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, I needn’t have worried.
This was their first visit to Toronto since May 2018, shortly before current artistic director, Dutchman Otto Tausk, took the baton from Bramwell Tovey. Judging by their March 16th performance at Roy Thomson Hall, the transition has been smooth, and Tausk is very much at home with his mostly youthful-looking orchestra. He also seems to look out for their welfare, not over-straining them with extreme demands on tempo or dynamics. Shostakovich’s outer movements were accordingly on the brisk side, the concluding peroration noble rather than gratuitously dragging or screamed out.
The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall. Photo: Jae Yang
There was a slight downside in the finale, where tempo shifts were a bit too much ‘by-the-book’ instead of (as when Shostakovich’s performed his own music on piano) letting the excitement accumulate organically. Still, there was plenty to enjoy and admire, from the persuasive broader sense of architecture and dramaturgy, to the finesse of shape-shifting textures. This includes Tausk’s adjustment of the divisi violin writing in the slow movement, which may have been a pragmatic acknowledgment of having 50 string players on stage, rather than the more usual complement of 60.
There were some classy solos throughout, but a special shoutout should go to the oboe and clarinet. Tausk’s encore was the Polonaise from Act Two of Eugene Onegin—perhaps a tip of the hat to the forthcoming performance of Tchaikovsky’s opera by the Canadian Opera Company? At any rate, the Russian second half of the concert was balanced by the rendition of “O, Canada” that opened it, gratefully lapped up by the audience.
Marion Newman with the VSO. Photo: Jae Yang
The first half featured two soloists, themselves rather drastically contrasted. The VSO’s composer-in-association Marcus Goddard’s Mountain Visions is an atmospheric, beautifully scored setting of a poem by the French Renaissance poet, Pierre Ronsard. Opening with evocative glissandi—a nod to Lutosławski, perhaps—its elaborations respond to the poem’s appeal to Nature’s healing powers. If only these calls had been properly audible. Marion Newman’s mezzo-soprano had neither the spaciousness and power, nor the colour and flexibility, to serve the music as it merited.
Confirming that the hall’s acoustics were not to blame, Vadim Gluzman’s warm yet penetrating tone effortlessly carried Brahms’s Violin Concerto. Coincidentally, in their 2018 visit, Tovey’s VSO had brought the same piece, featuring James Ehnes. The orchestra’s ease with the score was evident throughout: exuberant and boisterous in their tuttis, velvety and cushioned in their support elsewhere. Gluzman’s violin embraced fire, passion and caprice, his tone always sweet, never forced. The Adagio was taken as if in one sublime breath, the first oboe more than earning his ovation, and the finale was full of exciting athleticism, never laboured and never losing its dancing lilt.
Vadim Gluzman with the VSO. Photo: Jae Yang
For his encore Gluzman chose the melancholic Serenade by the senior Ukrainian composer, Valentin Silvestrov. Poignant in its elegant quietude, and doubly so because of the tribulations of his country, this made quite the bridge to the all-Russian second half.
For more on Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s season visit www.vancouversymphony.ca
