Toronto Symphony Orchestra with conductor, Jukka-Pekka Saraste at Roy Thomson Hall, April 9, 2015.
Amid the great boiling cauldron of bad karma that is the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, there was a forgotten man: Jukka-Pekka Saraste, former music director of the TSO and the guest conductor of a program that was, famously, supposed to include Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 as played by one Valentina Lisitsa.
What remained after the cancellation heard around the world was Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. It was given a performance Thursday night in Roy Thomson Hall that functioned admirably as a victory of music over madness. Yes, Torontonians, you have a very good orchestra.
I was ready to move that ranking up to great in the opening minutes, so powerful were the thrusts of the funeral march and so vivid the sonorities. This was a brilliant treatment, blazing with detail yet balanced. The smart highlighting throughout the first movement of trumpet principal Andrew McCandless was emblematic of the approach. His comrade-in-arms, principal horn Neil Daland, was likewise sturdy or lyrical on demand.
The third-movement scherzo seemed a symphony in itself, full of ghostly apparitions. Like the finale, it was bright and punchy. Strings in the famous Adagietto struck me as too withdrawn, although Saraste let them bloom at the end. As for the waltz sequences and other echt-Viennese elements of this turn-of-the-20th-century opus, they lacked something in flexibility and characteristic pulse. We were hearing a Canadian orchestra in this music, conducted by a Finn.
Dispensing with a score, Saraste kept his baton moving. I do not doubt his knowledge of the notes but I wonder nevertheless whether the reassuring presence of a well-thumbed Mahler Fifth on the lectern would create more opportunities to relax. Nevertheless, this performance succeeded in putting everyone in a better place.
I have heard talk of a small crowd on Wednesday but numbers on Thursday were reasonable and the atmosphere in the hall was upbeat. No protesters, no big show of security. Just a good concert, suitably cheered.
It should be noted that 73 minutes with no intermission did not seem at all short measure. The Rach 2 would have been too much. Stewart Goodyear, hired last week as a substitute artist before Lisitsa became the stuff of headlines, has been badly treated, no question. But I think in the final analysis this was a gig he was better off not getting.
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