Montreal vs.Toronto

TSO could use some of Montreal orchestra's razzle dazzle
John Teraud
While our orchestra is clearly superior, the MSO – with its hype and light shows – simply has more pizzazz

The public square glowed blue and pink as moving images several storeys high blazed from the sides of buildings. Some 6,000 people sat, stood and reclined in the outdoor space under a clear night sky.

This felt like a very special occasion. But instead of an appearance by, say, Amy Winehouse or Timbaland, the fuss on Sept. 4 was for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra's season-opening concert.

The 3,400-seat Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at Place des Arts was sold-out. The public plaza outside its doors contained an extra stage holding an orchestra picked from Montreal university and conservatory ensembles.

Pianist Alain Lefèvre, a local boy with a sparkling international career, arrived to play Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with them.

Conductor Kent Nagano and Lefèvre were cheered like pop stars.

The crowd in the square watched Nagano run inside for his concert with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. The concert was projected on a series of outdoor screens and the sides of several buildings in the Place des Arts complex.

Radio-Canada broadcast everything live on its radio and television and Internet networks so that an estimated 300,000 people could be there that night.

The buzz was palpable.

On Wednesday, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra will launch its new season with the first of two performances of two blockbuster pieces: Carl Orff's Carmina Burana and Maurice Ravel's Bolero, led by music director Peter Oundjian.

There will be no coloured lights or projections outside Roy Thomson Hall. CBC Radio will record the concert, for future broadcast. But no one passing by on King St. will have any idea that something special is going on nearby.

There is every reason to believe this concert will be excellent. It's too bad we have to hide our classical-music light under a bushel – a.k.a. Roy Thomson Hall.

I would like to argue that the TSO today provides a better musical experience than the MSO. Yet the Montreal organization manages to create a flurry of anticipation that our local people can't yet muster.

The MSO presents 70 concerts a year on a budget of $20 million. The TSO offers 107 concerts for $22 million.

The 44-year-old Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier has dismal acoustics. I sat in the sixth row of the first balcony and the concert sounded like it was being played in another room.

A new venue is coming, but has not even been designed yet.

Roy Thomson Hall, a quarter-century old, is hardly perfect. It holds about 600 people less than its Montreal counterpart and its circular layout places most people closer to the stage. It's not intimate, but does help create a nice rapport between orchestra and listeners.

The TSO recently went through rough years, skirting bankruptcy, getting embroiled in serious personnel problems and losing music director Jukka-Pekka Saraste.

At the same time, the MSO has weathered two players' strikes and the loss of maestro Charles Dutoit.

The TSO's new public face is a charming, intellectually lively Toronto-born musician with an excellent pedigree in chamber music.

Listen carefully, and most of Oundjian's work reveals meticulous artistry.

Ticket sales have risen accordingly. There now are many sold-out concerts – including both performances of Carmina Burana.

The Quebecers turned to California native Kent Nagano, now in his second season in Montreal. He, like Oundjian, is in his early 50s. But any similarities end there.

The MSO's opener, for all its flash, included serious music: Richard Strauss's famous tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra as well as arias and songs by Mozart gorgeously sung by (a very pregnant) contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux.

The orchestra was ragged in the Strauss and everything after the big chords made famous in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was muddy and lacked momentum.

The reduced orchestra in the Mozart sounded stolid, in odd opposition to Lemieux's honeyed vocals.

This was not the best work of a famous ensemble, yet the Montreal public gave the evening a prolonged, boisterous ovation.

The best part of the night was what happened outside. So much so that several hundred people chose to leave the hall at intermission to catch the conclusion in the square – including a hologram of Nagano conducting the youth in synch with the players inside.

In an interview the next day, Nagano was deliberate. He answered questions slowly, thoughtfully. As in his music-making, this maestro does not wear his art lightly.

Asked if he would like to see more multimedia concerts, Nagano seemed to say no: "It's not to say that the multimedia experience is the same as the special sensitivities that are generated by a live audience," he said. The acoustics and stage and rapport between audience and performers "simply can't be reproduced artificially. That's something that is closely related to the human spirit, and there is no duplication of the human spirit."

Asked over the phone what he would think of a flashier opening, Oundjian sounded enthusiastic.

Over the last five years, the TSO "has been slowly proving itself, its artistic level and making the product as good as it can be," said Oundjian. Adding new media and more public performances "will naturally evolve," now that deficits are out and a can-do spirit is in.

In Montreal, organizers know that making something look like a major event makes it a major event.

Or we could quote Oscar Wilde: "Nothing exceeds like excess."

In Toronto, our orchestra sounds the part. Now what we need is the pizzazz to make its concerts the grand events they deserve to be.

in response a somewhat bitter and possibly tipsy Maria Callous said...
Fuck toronto.

Thanks TOMave for directing me to the article and thanks Maria for your concisely formed opinion.
Canada is like your big, friendly cousin who is really good at painting and loves camping but has a touch of Asperger's Syndrome (a mild form of autism).
We come by our national insecurity naturally what with our close relative to the south flaunting his lifestyle and generally overshadowing us and hogging the limelight. Then there's Quebec, the proverbial island of French in a sea of English and within Quebec is Montreal (a crumbling,litter plagued, once great city). Three layers of insecurity and low self-esteem that compound exponentially.
Don't get me wrong...I love Montreal but the often knee-jerk hatred of Toronto has more to do with our own self-aggrandizement than any empirical reality. Montreal has the joie de vivre no doubt, a vibrant nightlife and colorful history. Most of us needn't travel 1 and a half hours to get to work and day to day, we enjoy a more leisurely pace. Nevertheless Toronto has 3 or 4 major sports teams to our 1, better museums and public attractions, better infrastructure, has usurped our title of "Canada's business centre" and is still just as safe a place to live if you stay away from the bad half of the city that is controlled by ethnic street gangs.
I know little about the Toronto symphony but I know they're good. So is the Montreal Symphony. It's safe to say that both are composed of around 90% excellent musicians (and 10% good to very good ones) but it's hard to believe that the TSO can match our own beloved orchestra when it comes to organizational incompetence, neurotic musicians, soap-opera like intrigue and vicious political machinations (trust me on this one). What seemed like almost a century of dictatorial rule by Charles Dutoit has left a poisonous atmosphere that, on a hot day, can still actually be smelled in the basement of Place des Arts. After he left there were several directorless years that turned a once amazing orchestra into an unruly crew on a rudderless ship. Now with their new director they will soon return to, if not surpass, their former glory.
The TSO doesn't need light shows and razzle dazzle although it couldn't hurt. What they really need is what the OSM already has....25 or so years of international touring and recording success led by a well known conductor/asshole with a gift for marketing who knows how to whip a terrified group of musicians into fighting shape as he builds his own career on their weary backs, lips, and arms.
While it may be fun and reassuring to bash Toronto we should take a page out of Calgary's playbook and work to make our city a better place while thoroughly ignoring everyone else.