The Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO), made a bold and exciting statement about new music in announcing its 2020/2021 season, the first under new music director Gustavo Gimeno. On their website, maestro Gimeno is quoted as saying, “I believe that orchestral music is at its most exciting when we create contrasts and diversity. We bring together our most cherished musical masterpieces alongside less familiar but equally brilliant works by contemporary composers who are evolving orchestral music for new generations.” Gimeno’s perception that Toronto’s vibrancy and diversity are qualities on which he feels he can build his tenure as TSO music director is reason for Toronto’s music creators to take heart!
Moussa, Chin, and Croall
Gimeno and his artistic team have expressed this initiative of blending the new with the old in several ways. For example, in his opening concert next season, Gimeno has programmed Crimson for large orchestra by Montreal-born composer and conductor Samy Moussa, along with Mahler’s Symphony No.1 and selections from Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito. Moussa has been appointed the TSO’s first annual artist in residence and as such he will both conduct the orchestra (a concert including his Violin Concerto, with the brilliant Canadian soloist Kerson Leong) and compose for it (his new Symphony No.2.) Other works by Moussa will also be heard in various contexts throughout the season.
I spoke to Moussa at his home in Berlin recently, and he told me he is “thrilled to take on this honour” of serving as the TSO’s first artist in residence. His Symphony No.2 is a work he was eager to propose to the TSO. It’s a work, he told me, “with a special ambition, a purely musical entity with a personal artistic goal.”
Another approach to blending new repertoire with the classics can be seen in the TSO’s celebration of Beethoven @250: interpolating contemporary works by Odawa First Nation composer Barbara Croall and by Korean-German composer, Unsuk Chin, both inspired by Beethoven.
“The Toronto Symphony’s efforts for new music are much to be lauded,” Chin told me. “It is a good thing if new works are being placed alongside key works from the orchestral canon, by placing them in a more ‘classical’ context one learns that there is no need to be afraid of contemporary music. My new work freely relates to the conversation books by Beethoven which he created when he increasingly struggled to communicate, due to his deafness. The loss of hearing frequently resulted in an inner rage and frustration which may have found its reflection in the extreme range of his musical language, the whole gamut of emotions from volcano-like eruptions to utmost serenity. It tells very profoundly and poignantly something indispensable about the human condition. Beethoven was, so to say, the first modernist composer: he constantly stretched the boundaries of musical language, and his quest for originality completely changed the course of music history. He is a composer for one’s whole life, someone whose music can be constantly rediscovered and redefined.”
In the case of Croall’s work, titled alternatively in German and Odawa, Innenohr/Biinjii’ii Tawgaang (Inner Ear), she was invited to use Beethoven’s Second Symphony as a basis for inspiration. “I imagined Beethoven outdoors on one of his many excursions of ‘walking the music through his mind’” Croall writes, “when suddenly a winged insect flies into his ear and becomes the source of the idea (and new obsession) and cause of Beethoven’s reawakening – about how much the nature around him envelops him with creative inspiration, and is always there to also help him with his own healing from a childhood of trauma and the increasing loss of his hearing (which became clearly apparent while he embarked on composing his second symphony). This insect trapped inside his ear opens up his ‘gift’ of tapping into the nature around him – the sensations of winds in the branches of trees, the shape of the hilly landscape he is walking through the woods, the strident calls of birds and sounds of their wings beating, the dense fog after a rain, (und so weiter) – and to confront his own darkness and ‘monsters within’ that have been the underlying source of his frustration and torment.” Croall’s work was co-commissioned by the TSO with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra.
Croall and Moussa will also both have compositions included in the TSO Chamber Soloists presentations, preceding selected concerts. In the case of Croall it’s her Lullaby for Pipigwan and String Quartet, and for Moussa it’s his Frammenti dolorosi et amorosi for voice and piano, on texts by Michelangelo.
Croall added, “I was really very surprised when approached about maestro Gustavo Gimeno programming my work. He has a special interest to understand new works by composers of many cultural backgrounds which is so exciting. He truly is committed to knowing more and more about what shapes the ideas of music that comes from this land. His own special ear for colour, gestural expression, and seeking to find the true heartbeat of a piece of music and its soulfulness makes him a unique conductor of this era.”
Throughout the 2020/2021 season, there are contemporary works of various styles and origins included in Gimeno’s programming. These include the Canadian premieres of Steve Reich’s Music for Ensemble and Orchestra, in collaboration with Soundstreams Canada; Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen’s Horn Concerto; Grammy Award-winning Jennifer Higdon’s Loco; and Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto with soloist Nicola Benedetti. North American premieres include Unsuk Chin’s tribute to Beethoven, mentioned earlier, as well as Nadia Boulanger’s (1887–1979) rarely heard Allegro, and an example of imaginative contemporary scoring, Aqua Cinerea, by the rising young Spanish composer Francisco Coll.
Kuzmenko, Lizée, and Lebel
In addition to the works by Moussa and Croall to be performed during the TSO’s upcoming season, there are more Canadian composers featured in Gimeno’s programming. Larysa Kuzmenko’s Behold the Night for children’s choir and orchestra is an earlier TSO commission, and is included in a concert with Gustave Holst’s The Planets. Kuzmenko told me, “I am honoured that maestro Gimeno chose to feature my music in his first season. It is clear from the season that he has a strong commitment to new Canadian music. I believe he will be a great advocate for Canadian composers.”
Montreal-based Nicole Lizée’s Zeiss After Dark is a TSO co-commission with the National Arts Centre Orchestra (NACO) and will be presented when the NACO visits in the spring of 2021. Commenting on the program, which includes the Shostakovitch Ninth Symphony and a new work by Philip Glass, Lizée told me, “I’m excited to be included as part of NACO’s program as the invited orchestra as well as being a part of Gustavo Gimeno’s inaugural season with the TSO. I appreciate that my work is being performed alongside that of two important composers by an orchestra that has also made Canadian music a large part of their initiatives.”
Emilie LeBel has been the TSO affiliate composer since September 2018. “During the first week of my new position, I met Gustavo as he was announced as the incoming music director,” she says. “I am thrilled that my contract as affiliate composer has been extended to a third year. As Gustavo steps into his new role, I have the opportunity to see all the excitement and hard work that has gone on behind the scenes take fruition! My role as affiliate composer encompasses a new orchestral commission each year, plus I have an active role in the artistic administration team, and as a mentor in specific education and outreach projects.
“I am currently working on a new 15-minute work, which is my third TSO commission. It will be conducted on the Masterworks Series by John Storgårds in January 2021. I am blessed to have benefited from learning under Sir Andrew Davis, and several guest conductors these past two years. It has been a time of immense learning and artistic growth. I am excited to broaden my horizons under Gustavo this year, as I observe rehearsals and study scores. I look forward to learning from a new perspective, and to exploring how this will support me while immersed in the creation of this new piece.”
It is important that the affiliate composer position play an active role in nurturing and supporting new Canadian work, Lebel says. “I am looking forward to our third year of ‘Explore the Score’, offering the opportunity for composers to hear their orchestral works be read by a professional orchestra, and also receive mentorship on the many facets of a career in composition. Expanding on this opportunity, we have created a new program this year, NextGen, to support emerging talent, bridging the gap between attending a score-reading session and a professional commission.”
Scime, Simms, and Tse
The NextGen program invites three composers each year to receive mentorship from the affiliate composer, and write a five-minute work for the orchestra that will be premiered on the TSO’s Masterworks Series. “After two years of planning, I am thrilled to see this program come together” LeBel says, “and to be supporting the work of three Canadian composers selected by Gustavo: Adam Scime, Bekah Simms and Roydon Tse. These two annual programs will offer support to promising composers, and ensure a strong future for Canadian music.”
The commissions for Scime, Simms and Tse are included in three Remembrance Day concerts, early in November. “It is definitely a huge honour to be named one of the first composers for Gustavo to commission for the TSO,” Tse told me. “Not only is it a tremendous privilege to write for the players, I am pretty excited for the opportunity to get to know Gustavo more through this opportunity. I know that Gustavo is very serious about the next generation of Canadian composers, and I feel honoured that he has taken the time to listen to my music and chosen me for this commission. Artistically speaking, there is a lot that I want to do and try for the TSO. This being Gustavo’s first season at the TSO, there is a certain weight of responsibility that is unlike other commissions. I have written quite a few works for orchestra before but there’s always something else I would like to try like new timbres, textures and harmonies. There is a new sound that I want to achieve from the orchestra which I am still working on, so I think this commission has been instrumental in helping me think deeper about orchestration and sound. The piece will be rooted in the theme of Remembrance which I am excited to be tackling in the coming months.”
Tse’s sentiments were echoed by the other NextGen composers. “Since a young age I have attended TSO concerts, Scime wrote, “and remember wondering what it would be like to be a part of such an incredible collection of musicians and artists who get to make wonderful music of the highest quality for a living. I am very proud and excited to now be a part of this music-making process with the orchestra as a composer. It will be an honour to work with the new director, Gustavo Gimeno, and the TSO musicians in a professional artistic capacity and to hear these world-class musicians interpret my music. Working with an orchestra of this calibre is a hallmark of any composer’s career – and I am especially thrilled that this project also happens to be with my hometown band.”
Simms enthusiastically agreed: “I’m excited by Maestro Gimeno’s intensity and his excitement for new music; my music is often roiling and full of details, so I think he can really bring out the important features of my work. He has an edge and flair to his conducting that I’m really looking forward to see. I’m extremely delighted and honoured to work with my ‘home’ orchestra! My musical language is often most effective with large, expansive instrumental forces, so I’m delighted to be working with as fine an ensemble as the Toronto Symphony.”
David Jaeger is a composer, producer and broadcaster based in Toronto.
