Originally published on www.musicalwritings.com
On the first day of summer 2019, I was visiting Toronto for a short weekend and looking for a nice and satisfactory classical music event. Since this is the 7th biggest city of North America with more than 6 million habitants, this wouldn't be a problem. After a brief search on internet, I've come across with Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) website and it proved me right.
On the first day of summer 2019, I was visiting Toronto for a short weekend and looking for a nice and satisfactory classical music event. Since this is the 7th biggest city of North America with more than 6 million habitants, this wouldn't be a problem. After a brief search on internet, I've come across with Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) website and it proved me right.
In the TSO's main performance venue, Roy Thomson Hall (RTH), located at 60 Simcoe Street, in the heart of the Entertainment District in downtown Toronto, the performance I've found the chance to attend was "Denk Plays Mozart". Later I learned, in 2013 Denk played Mozart Piano Concerto No21 with TSO, at the opening of the Mozart@257 mini-festival.
To be honest, I was a little bit disappointed that there wasn't a Romantic or Modern composer, an authentic Canadian or a new music in the program which is unlikelier to see for me in Istanbul and which I think would be more interesting to my taste. Later, I discovered that this risk-averse attitude was general to all season 2018/19 due to transition of orchestra's CEO and music director. According to Jenna Simeonov from The Glob and Mail "The orchestra, currently under interim CEO Gary Hanson, has been without a permanent CEO since Jeff Melanson's abrupt departure in 2016. Music director Peter Oundjian will finish his 14-year tenure at the end of the current season, to be succeeded by Sir Andrew Davis as interim artistic director; starting with his conducting of the opening-night concert at Roy Thomson Hall on Sept. 20, Davis will hold the post until 2020, when the TSO hopes to have found a new music director." However, at the moment I heard Denk playing in such lyricism and sensuality, combined with the mastery of TSO and refined acoustics of RTH, I thought myself very fortunate.
One of the America's foremost pianist Jeremy Denk, played and lead the orchestra for two Mozart concertos, No14 (K449) and No25 (K511), after the opening with Don Giovanni overture by the resident conducter Simon Rivard. In between the concertos, Denk played Rondo in A Minor (K511) which he described as "one of the most melancholic statements of Mozart" before playing it.
Mozart composed No14 Eflat Major in 1784 and no25 in C major in 1786 as a part of a dozen piano concertos between these years. In each of the concertos, the harmony between Denk and the orchestra was successful and it reflected characteristics and differences of those. On the other hand, positioning of piano was getting harder Denk to communicate half of the orchestra. Although I've seen two reviews* that were pointing to some difficulties of previous performances, this last one seemed to have catched the flow to me.
The piano on the stage, a grand Steinway had a great sound with Denk's fingers and his mastery. It added up when he played 2nd mov of Mozart Sonata in C K.545 as a bis at the end of the concert.
Jeremy Denk has recorded 4 CD's (Ligeti/Beethoven, French Impressions, Ives, J.S.Bach Goldberg Variations) and had also wrote a blog called "think Denk" between 2005-2013 published under his website. He also has an article published on The New Yorker about his Charles Ives Concord Sonata recording. In my opinion, writer-performers are always a great source of information and provides genuine insight on music pieces and music as an art in general.
I was expecting to see RTH almost full because it was Saturday. On the contrary, it was only half full. The reason may be it was the 3rd concert of the same program in the same week or maybe Mozart wasn't attracting too much to TSO audience. I can't complain though, because of this, I could buy the cheapest ticket, with a half price on the same day of the concert :) Discounted price was 20 CAD and it is still not too cheap for me (compared to Viennese last day opera tickets for 3 EUR). Nonetheless, I think having such a practice is so respectful for a private orchestra. In fact, TSO supports education and has been running Toronto Symphony Young Orchestra (TSYO) free of tuition fee for promising young musicians.
There are 2 things that I admired TSO and I found as great services for facilitating the audience to prepare to the concert: The full program and program notes downloadable from the website and TSO's "Denk Plays Mozart" playlist on Spotify. The program itself is very detailed and coherent. I would like to have these for all the concerts that I attend :)
As the first essay of my musicalwritings.com website, TSO and Jeremy Denk and the performance in Roy Thomson Hall on June 1, 2019 will always be remarkable to me. I can say with the peace of mind that Toronto is very lucky to have this orchestra and TSO is very lucky to have Torontians.
Hope to be here again !
*Other reviews on previous performances