TSO dazzling as it opens 91st season

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra opened its 91st season with a strangely mixed program that, when all was played at Roy Thomson Hall on Thursday night, proved to be a showcase of accomplished musicianship.

It helped that the guest soloist was Brandon, Man., native James Ehnes. The international star showed off his breathtaking technique in a riveting performance of one of the warhorse Violin Concerto written by Johannes Brahms in 1878.

It is a piece filled with beautiful melodies, stunning virtuoso passages and a wonderful sense of movement and structure that was clearly rendered by Ehnes’s accompanists, led by music director Peter Oundjian.

The capacity house was so loudly and happily impressed with Ehnes’s performance, that he obliged with a smart, sleek rendition of the Gigue from J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 2 for solo violin.

The real treat came after intermission, when the TSO and Oundjian performed Harmonielehre, a largescale, three-movement symphonic work written in 1985 by American composer John Adams.

Adams’ work is built on a fascinating series of effects and counter-effects. The complex interplay that happens between different sections of the orchestra demands lightning-quick reflexes from everyone on stage and an ironclad grasp of the score on the part of the conductor. Fortunately, everyone was up to the task, making Saturday’s repeat performance well worth checking out.