{"id":29803,"date":"2018-09-23T13:59:36","date_gmt":"2018-09-23T21:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/?p=29803"},"modified":"2018-09-23T15:09:23","modified_gmt":"2018-09-23T23:09:23","slug":"vso-audience-celebrates-100-years-of-standing-ovations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/vso-audience-celebrates-100-years-of-standing-ovations\/","title":{"rendered":"VSO Audience Celebrates 100 Years of Standing Ovations"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s 100th Season Concert<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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A number of years ago, I attended a touring performance of the St. Petersburg Symphony at the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre des Clamps-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris, and what struck me most was the audience<\/em>. Accustomed as I was here in Vancouver to a steady diet of competent yet unremarkable performances followed by overwhelmingly enthusiastic standing ovations, I was stunned by the restraint of the Parisians. Not that the St. Petersburg Symphony was lack-lustre\u2014anything but! Perched on the edge of my seat, I thought \u201cFor sure everyone will go nuts at this!\u201d I\u2019d heard how capably Russian string sections played\u2014the incisive attacks, soaring phrases, and turn-on-dime responsiveness like those sky-blackening murmurations of starlings\u2014so I fully expected all-out pandemonium from the audience when the music stopped. But no. Polite yet sustained applause, and then to the exits.<\/p>\n

Which is why when we went to hear the VSO\u2019s 100th anniversary season opener, it was the unbridled enthusiasm of the audience that made the evening so memorable. Here\u2019s what we heard.<\/p>\n

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Edward Top (image courtesy Donemus Publishing)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Helix<\/em> by former VSO resident composer Edward Top set out into more intellectual waters\u2014some sort of references to DNA double helices, I think\u2014but even if you didn\u2019t get the underlying science, the music was full of warmth and cohesion as swirling strands of sound twisted heavenward out of the orchestra.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t too long ago that a new commission was greeted with muted horror by audiences preferring a diet that did not stray too far outside the Mozart-to-Rachmaninov spectrum. But applause was hearty and generous. For me, Top\u2019s music holds a lot of subtlety so I thought that if the orchestra had a few more cracks at the score, it would certainly realize Top\u2019s ideas better. World premiers are a risky affair so bravos all ’round.<\/p>\n

Next up, the concerto. This one provided us with a double Dutch treat: Arthur and Lucas Jussen. These two lads performed Poulenc\u2019s youthful\u00a0Double Piano Concerto<\/em>\u00a0with as much pouty\u00a0impertinence as Poulenc’s score demanded (which was a lot\u2014and they had a lot). Here, the orchestration sparkles, bright optimistic melodies suddenly sour into petulance, while pilfered memes from Mozart fly by with artless grace. But even before all this could happen, the flaxen-haired boys had sailed onto stage clad in little more than matching\u00a0skin-tight military, er, jumpsuits, so it was foregone that the audience would swoon.<\/p>\n

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The Jussen boys\u00a0 (image courtesy The Georgia Straight)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lest I give them the looks-over-talent<\/em> treatment that many attractive female celebrities must contend with, I\u2019ll add that their command of the material was superb and their communication with each other, the conductor, and the orchestra kept everything snappy and focused. Even so, during intermission I overheard one patron remark their performance was \u201cbordering on homoerotic\u201d. That it was, Blanche.<\/p>\n

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Marc Chagall, model for the curtain in the first act of “The Firebird”.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stravinsky\u2019s Firebird<\/em> was the highlight of the programme (not that you\u2019d know from the seats vacated along with the departure of the Dutch boys\u2014I guess they were the real draw). Back in \u201965, we were told, the VSO performed the Firebird<\/em> under the baton of none other that the old bird himself\u2014Igor Stravinsky. Way back then, we were also told, the VSO just performed the Suite<\/em> from the Firebird<\/em> (as if that were a simplified version suitable only for school orchestras or something). In truth, there\u2019s a reason why Igor created a concert suite from the full ballet\u2014to be performed on concert stages when no dancers were to be had.\u00a0I thought perhaps new conductor Otto Tausk might have created a compelling vision of the piece but instead it had a bit of a sitzprobe (cue-to-cue) sound as individual players and sections executed their entrances with precision but without the overarching cohesion needed.\u00a0But \u201cNo matter\u201d concluded the audience as it leapt to its feet in a shameless orgy of applause\u2026<\/p>\n

Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, champions the idea of \u201cone-buttock playing\u201d, an approach which I translate to mean playing on the edge\u2014daring to take a risk<\/em>. In the Firebird,\u00a0<\/em>there were indeed moments that shone with unparalleled beauty (by the first violin section) and might\u00a0 (by the low brass), and\u00a0Concertmaster Nicholas Wright’s violin solos were sublime. But in this performance, I found that too few of the players sounded like they were ready to risk anything, certainly not a buttock.\u00a0Perhaps in the next 100 years or so, we can look forward to some of that VSO audience enthusiasm rubbing off more on the players themselves. Bravo audience.<\/p>\n

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A number of years ago, I attended a touring performance of the St. Petersburg Symphony at the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre des Clamps-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris, and what struck me most was the audience. Accustomed as I was here in Vancouver to a steady diet of competent yet unremarkable performances followed by overwhelmingly enthusiastic standing ovations, I was stunned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[131],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29803"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29803"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29824,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29803\/revisions\/29824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}