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SCRUTINY | Toronto Summer Music Opens With A Thrilling Nod To British Genius

By Robin Roger on July 15, 2016

Parker String Quartet with conductor Joseph Swenson and the TSM Festival Strings. (Photo: James M. Ireland)
Parker String Quartet with conductor Joseph Swenson and the TSM Festival Strings. (Photo: James M. Ireland)

Toronto Summer Music Festival: The Parker String Quartet, Nicholas Phan (tenor), Neil Deland (french horn), Joseph Swensen (conductor), TSM Festival Strings. Thursday, July 14 at Koerner Hall. 

It’s not accurate to say that the Opening Night concert started the Toronto Summer Music Festival with a bang, as there was no percussion to be heard.  Even so, it’s hard to imagine a more rousing start to the three-week celebration of chamber music than this evening of English Music for Strings. Nor would it be easy to find a more timely or richer programming theme than London Calling: Music in Great Britain.  The italics are mine, as the preposition indicates that this is a selection not only of works by Britain’s composers but of the full range of composers whose work was enthusiastically received in London.

While London’s stature as a cultural capital may be unknown as the Brexit process unfolds, there is no question that it was an incubator of major musical development and excellence for centuries.  Handel’s Water Music was literally launched on the Thames in 1717, Haydn’s visits in the 1790s were hugely successful, and Mendelssohn was Queen Victoria’s favourite composer.  Also, London gets the credit for being the home of the democratisation of classical music, where the tradition of public concerts for the people, rather than private performances in the Courts for the aristocracy, began.  This fascinating thread runs through the Toronto Summer Music Festival programming, as the major public venues of classical music, including the Musical Union of 1865 and The St James Hall Popular Concerts will be featured with concerts that showcase composers who were heard at these venues including Mendelssohn, Walton, Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert.  An extra layer of history enriches the experience of listening to these concerts in Koerner Hall when we become aware that we’re enjoying the legacy that began in St James Hall.

And of course Britain itself produced its share of great composers,  four of whose works were on last night’s program:  Benjamin Britten’s sublime Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Opus 31, Michael Tippett’s Concerto for Double String Orchestra and  Edward Elgar’s  Introduction and Allegro for Strings, Opus 47  which followed the wonderfully satisfying, though more mainstream, St Paul’s Suite, by Gustav Holst.   The first piece delivered a reminder of the sound of English music which is so familiar to those of us who grew up in Toronto after World War II, when nearly everybody in charge was of British descent when families were fleeing Post War Austerity were arriving, and British War Brides were our friends’ moms.

Tenor Nicholas Phan (left), conductor Joseph Swenson (centre), Neil Deland (right) with the TSM Festival Strings. (Photo: James M. Ireland)
Tenor Nicholas Phan (left), conductor Joseph Swenson (centre), Neil Deland (right) with the TSM Festival Strings. (Photo: James M. Ireland)

We sang the ancient British plainsong melody that became “God Save the Queen” every morning and learned Greensleeves and In An English Country Garden in choir. Many of our music teachers hailed from England, including my beloved childhood piano teacher, Miriam Russell Smith, who was affiliated with the Trinity College of Music headquartered in London.

Greensleeves is woven into Holst’s suite of such British themes, which is also interestingly cosmopolitan, with the inclusion of a Middle Eastern violin solo into the Intermezzo.  Holst’s piece also gave us our first opportunity to watch Joseph Swensen conduct, leading the TSM Festival Strings through the opening Jig with an energetic grace that put the festive feeling into the Festival.

Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings elevated this program from rewarding to unforgettable.  Tenor Nicholas Phan’s ability to produce a sound as fragile as a quivering filament combined with Neil Deland’s utterly even horn created a balance of vulnerability and security that is the essence of the human condition.  Featuring eight poems by British literary luminaries including Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Blake, and John Keats, the piece is a perfect demonstration of British genius.

It isn’t often that a piece for Double String Orchestra is performed, which gave us the opportunity to see the stage of Koerner Hall completely filled with strings.  The TSM Festival Strings pulled off the extremely complex rhythms of  Tippett’s piece and then brought the concert to a close with the final, synchronised plucked note of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, creating an effervescent feeling that combined perfectly with the champagne served in the lobby after the performance.

You could say that instead of starting with a bang, the Festival started with a pop, providing a buoyancy that is sure to be sustained until the final concert on August 6.

#LUDWIGVAN

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Robin Roger

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