On Thursday, Victor, Peter, Ben, Harriet, and me met up after work for dinner at Sushi Time on Queen St W for a quick dinner and then it was off to Roy Thompson Hall for the TSO again. Yes, that’s the third time I’ve gone in the last month; I think this has turned into a hobby. Actually I lied, we didn’t go to listen to the TSO because they are on a 3-city tour. A couple of Canadian orchestras are doing city-exchanges so the night’s concert featured the National Arts Council’s Orchestra with Pinchas Zukerman conducting and playing the violin.

The program started with Bach’s (fourth?) Violin Concerto in E-Major. Apparently everyone was familiar with this piece except for me. I thought it was alright, and listening to it, I was thinking how close this piece was to the style of the Classical period. If you removed the harpsichord, it sounds like something the a court string quartet could be playing.

The next piece, Transfigured Night by Schoenberg was a clunker. No one liked this piece. I remember Schoenberg from my music education as being a contemporary composer experimenting with atonal and dissonant music. I was afraid that this piece would be in that style, but fortunately it was from the period before he went all inaccessible. However, I still didn’t really enjoy this performance because the source material was too Romantic (ultra-Romantic is an accurate term).

After an intermission (aside: why do we always walk down to the washrooms during intermission…and then walk back up), we heard Schumann’s fourth symphony. This was necessary for me to continue my symphony streak — I’ve heard a symphony at every TSO concert I’ve attended. I liked this piece, although it seemed like a 29-minute first movement. Apparently the basis for this symphony was a symphonic poem so all the source material was presented early.

I missed 3 important hockey games to attend this concert, so I was glad when the conductor came out and announced that the Senators had made it to the second round. The second thing that surprised me is that after the programme was complete, there was an encore of the Overture from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Finally, a piece I am familiar with. Actually, in retrospect, I shouldn’t be surprised that there was an encore, because this was a touring orchestra, not the TSO.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: classical, tso