The 07/08 TSO season has recently started and I went to my first concert of the season on Thursday. It featured Vadim Repin playing Prokofiev’s 2^nd Violin Concerto and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. I was not familiar with either of the pieces, but the tickets were half their normal price so it was hard not to go (hey I’m Chinese).

Of the two, I was more interested in the violin concerto. The first movement was pretty standard, I enjoyed the second movement which started off with the strings playing pizzicato in unison to serve as the accompaniment to the melody. The third movement started incorporating some post-modern dissonance which I am not a huge fan of. Afterwards, the audience demanded an encore, so Repin came back out. He instructed the strings to repeat a simple melody (pizzicato again – yay!) while he played what seemed like a theme and variations on Russian folk music. I was not familiar with the piece, but it was pretty cool and showed off his virtuosity. This was probably the highlight of the evening.

After an intermission, we returned for Daphnis et Chloé. This was a 50-minute ballet, but instead of dancing we had the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. I didn’t enjoy this as it was long and unfamiliar. This is one of those pieces that the DJ puts on and then goes to take a washroom break, have lunch, buy some groceries, and fill out a prescription. It seemed like it might be interesting as there were hints of impressionism at the beginning, but then I lost interest amidst the generic instrumental melodies. The choir didn’t add much interest either because they sung tones and acted like an instrument. One interesting moment was when a third of the choir disappeared. We found out the reason a little while later as the lights dimmed (this would have been a bad time to be playing Tetris) and the missing choir members sung off stage. This was the second time I had seen an on/off stage interplay like that, and I guess you wouldn’t be able to experience that on CD.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: classical, tso