TSO with soprano Barbara Hannigan, conductor, Peter Oundjian, Roy Thomson Hall; Wednesday, Jan. 27.
[Originally Published in the Toronto Star]
With a brew of composers rarely mixed, soprano Barbara Hannigan joined the Toronto Symphony last night to perform Henri Dutilleux’s “Correspondances” – a 22-minute song cycle which she has remained loyal since first recording it with Esa-Pekka Salonen, in 2013.
The evening was a homecoming of sorts as Dutilleux, who died in 2013, had a close connection with the TSO, and first appeared in Toronto as part of the inaugural 2003 New Forms Festival.
In company with Dutilleux’s homecoming were works by Sibelius and Berlioz, that not so much appeared last night, but, rather unabashedly, slinked out as if to remind us why these deserve to be remembered at all.
Sibelius’ ghostly tone poem, “The Swan of Tuonela” from the Lemminkäinen Suite, was highlighted by the English Horn player Cary Ebli who performed with a buttery and agile tone that circled above the orchestra like a seabird. The brooding Nordic Tuonela was kept slow under Oundjian’s baton, and the TSO crept inside each of the dark misty textures. Notable was TSO Principal cellist, Joseph Johnson, who played with a stunning repose.
The topper was the musical UFO that is “Symphonie Fantastique”, which was famously written while Berlioz was he was high on opium (for parts of it anyway). Leonard Bernstein once said, “Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip; you wind up screaming at your own funeral.”
Part of that screaming has to do with Berlioz’s allegedly infatuated with Irish actress Harriet Smithson. He set out to plot his emotional states made musical through his Idée fixe, which Oundjian shaped with careful focus on the climaxes. It all culminated into the final movement to end all final movements (“Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath”). The TSO were on board with the rich orchestrations and robust motifs.
The evening’s peak, however, was Dutilleux’s “Correspondences”; a work written originally for the American soprano Dawn Upshaw in 2003. After Dutilleux had met Hannigan (a lover of ‘les grandes voix féminines’) he decided to write a new finale just for her. The work is based on poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke, and letters by Vincent van Gogh, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Prithwindra Mukheriee, and interspersed with a single interlude that highlights an accordion against the brass-heavy orchestration.
Hannigan’s airy ease and fervid sensibility shaped the test earnestly, and ultimately drew the deserved attention to the symbolic connection between the senses and the world that surrounds us.
The concert repeats Thursday evening, and Hannigan should not be missed. Details here.
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