SETTING UP TOVEY’S FINALE
Much to celebrate in VSO’s 99th season
The 2017-18 season is the 99th for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Well, kind of.
If you like to quibble about history, a VSO got going in 1919 then lapsed into suspended animation after a few years, resuming regular activities in 1930. But most of us will welcome any excuse for a celebration, especially for one of this country’s most important classical ensembles.
How do you put together an orchestral season of music appropriate for such a momentous event? Programming isn’t a subject that provokes much curiosity except among music directors, conductors, and (sometimes) critics. Yet it’s fundamental to our shared experience of live symphonic music — exactly what music is the orchestra going to play, and why? And how is this all inflected by the fact it is Bramwell Tovey’s last season as music director?
Publicists naturally tend to stress visiting soloists (like Lang Lang, who plays Gershwin Sept. 25) or special events (like VSO at the Movies: Jurassic Park on Nov. 18 and 19), but the real core of the experience is the orchestra and the important repertoire on the main series concerts. Year 99 offers quite the selection, reprising and developing themes from the entire Tovey era.
Some of the treats ahead are obvious, like Elgar’s masterwork The Dream of Gerontius (Nov. 4 and 6). Before that, however, a concert with Evelyn Glennie (Oct. 28-30) will feature a new-to-Vancouver concerto by contemporary U.S. composer Jennifer Higdon.
Over the last decade, Tovey has made our orchestra a leader in programming work by women. Higdon’s work has been well received at the annual New Music Festival. The conjunction of her music with Glennie’s percussion virtuosity should be memorable. And it will be followed by Shostakovich’s glorious Tenth Symphony, dating from the immediate postwar years.
Fans of big Soviet symphonies have another event to look forward to with a performance of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, written less than a decade before the Shostakovich programmed by guest conductor Lawrence Renes (Nov. 25-27).
Otto Tausk, Tovey’s successorin-waiting as music director, conducts twice this season: more Shostakovich as well as Sibelius (Oct. 14-16), then Berlioz, Dvorak, and Brahms (Jan. 13-15). When he first announced his intention to step down, Tovey intimated that he hoped to keep a few orchestral showpieces for his last seasons. One of these is surely Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique (Jan. 27).
Less showy but nonetheless something to look forward to is Anton Bruckner’s unfinished Ninth Symphony, which Tovey will essay (May 11-12). This should prove reminiscent of Tovey’s performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony a few seasons ago: hardly conventional stand-up-and-cheer repertoire, but rather music of astonishing depth, pathos, and intensity. Season 99 turns out to be a good year for Bruckner — guest conductor Michael Sanderling plans to do the rarely heard Third Symphony in his program (March 3 and 5).
Two major works by Schumann and Schubert are on tap in the new year.
Schumann’s Fourth isn’t for everyone; although most listeners adore Schumann’s songs and piano music, there are those (not me!) who find his orchestral writing lacking. His Fourth is a model of symphonic innovation; listeners can make up their own minds about its effectiveness when guest conductor Perry So gives it a try (Feb. 3, 5). Schubert’s Ninth Symphony in C major figures on Constantin Trink’s program (April 28 and 30). Sometimes referred to as “the great C monster,” Schubert’s last symphony is one of the great, late classical opuses, and heard in these parts too infrequently.
Then there is the official end of the Tovey era. Two extravaganzas are planned to commemorate the occasion — Tovey will do an in-concert performance of Britten’s Peter Grimes (June 9 and 11) and a week later it’s Mahler’s Second Symphony Resurrection, (June 16-18), with a festival chorus and soloists Erin Wall and Susan Platts.
Momentous music for a momentous moment in Vancouver Symphony Orchestra history.