Foursome sounded like magic
Filed Under Kitchen Curtain | Posted on January 18, 2008
Most classical music in Toronto is about grand gestures symphonies and operas and visiting international stars. But some of the most beautiful and memorable moments can be much more intimate and purely homegrown.A case in point came last night as big and small musical worlds collided in a chamber concert by four young members of the Toronto Symphony and Canadian Opera Company orchestras: violinists Jin-Shan Dai and Peter Seminovs, violist Joshua Greenlaw and cellist Elspeth Poole.These are not people who play together often. Yet despite not being equally familiar with each other and having little rehearsal time, the result was magic. This quartet achieved a balance and finesse that bested some groups that have been together for years.They had sat down on the stage at Trinity-St. Paul’s Church to play two early-19th century chestnuts the Op. 44, No. 2 work in E minor by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) and the Op. 59, No. 1 piece in F Major by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) for the first of five seasonal concerts organized by the Associates of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, a volunteer organization that has been connecting TSO musicians with the opportunity to present chamber music since 1973.During the final curtain call, former TSO principal viola Stanley Solomon got up onstage to present each player with a rose. He stopped the applause to ask the musicians what the name of their group was. Solomon was joking, but he needn’t have been.We should encourage Dai, Seminovs, Greenlaw and Poole to make return concert dates as soon as possible, and as often as possible.The centrepiece of the evening was the Beethoven Quartet, the first of three to be dedicated in 1806 to Russia’s ambassador to Vienna, Count Rasumovsky. It is considered to be one of the pinnacle pieces in the repertoire, something that last night’s foursome proved to us all over again.The four players highlighted the carefully drawn architecture, shaped aching melodic lines, textured the varied counterpoints and dazzled us with virtuosic fingers and bowings. Best of all, the playing was honest and unaffected, putting the spotlight on the music, not the performers, in both the Beethoven and the much more straightforwardly emotional Mendelssohn.The concert may have only represented a thin slice of Western music, but the performances left us wanting nothing more.
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