Last night I went to see Peter Oundjian, the music director for the TSO, conduct the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (where he is the principal guest conductor). Of the many times I’ve gone to the TSO, this was the first time that I’ve seen Oundjian conduct! That was one of the reasons I wanted to go. Another was because the programme was pretty good, centered around Beethoven’s 5^th Piano Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s 4^th Symphony.

We got seats in R7 again. I swear that the TSO should put my name on a gold plate and affix it to one of the seats there because this is maybe the 4th or 5th time that I’ve sat there. I mean it’s interesting to see what the conductor and the orchestra is doing, but some variety would be nice. Also, it was not as good this time because they opened the piano towards the audience, so the sound was a bit muted for us.

The night started off with Oundjian saying a few words and then jumped immediately into a surprise playing of O Canada!, after that was done, we started sitting down; but they moved on immediately to the Star Spangled Banner. I felt like I was at a hockey game. But the real reason was that there were a lot of Canadian and American dignitaries in the audience that night. This was followed by Joan Towers’ For An Uncommon Woman. It’s a short, modern piece.

This was followed by the “Emperor” concerto. I remember trying this out when I was picking which concerto to play, although I would have preferred playing Beethoven’s 1^st because I was more familiar with it. But my piano teacher said “Emperor” was better so I tried the first movement out a bit. I wasn’t really impressed with the themes (he needs to write better hooks) so I moved on to other pieces. It was the same way last night, while there were sections that had a lot of imperialistic fanfare, it wasn’t as engaging as I thought Beethoven’s most famous piano concerto should be.

The soloist was Anton Kuerti. I recognized his name, although I wasn’t sure where I heard it before. I looked up his bio beforehand, and aside from being a world-class pianist, he ran for parliament as a NDP candidate in 1988! Although I was probably too young to remember his name from there. It wasn’t until I heard him play the second movement that I really started enjoying it. I suspect that the first movement called for a lot of pedal, and combined with the orchestra created a sonic cornucopia; but in the second movement, there was enough clarity to really hear the control and interpretation of Kuerti’s Beethoven. Case in point, there was a maybe 16-bar long, perfectly balanced trill during which there was a constant linear crescendo. It was incredible and amazing! I also liked the third movement better than the first, but perhaps it was because I had finally caught onto how good Kuerti was!

After the concerto, he closed the grand piano and walked off the stage. Although he came out for several more bows, he didn’t bother playing an encore. I guess he really didn’t want to play anymore, because he is pretty prolific, and I could bet he wasn’t tired as he has performed all 5 Beethoven concertos in a single concert before.

Tchaikovsky’s 4^th was after the intermission. It was a contrast from the Beethoven as Tchaikovsky used a lot of Russian folk tunes. I wasn’t familiar with this piece but it was alright, there were some interesting sections, specifically the pizzicato third movement and a theme in the first movement that involved running scales echoed by various instruments.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: classical, concerts, tso