Beethoven's 7th and 8th symphonies never sounded as marvelous as on Saturday night at Trinity-St. Paul's Centre in downtown Toronto, rendered by the musical outpourings of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. Mind you, despite my being the grateful recipient of ten concerts per year (well, that, and those thirty-six months of piano lessons taken in my prepubescent days), I really ought to know more about baroque music (and so on) than I do. In fact, whenever I hear the word render, I think of pork fat. And my closest associations with that great composer are remembering to spell his name by splitting thus -- Beeth/oven (speaking of pork) -- and an image of Gary Oldman playing that very role (pork role?) right around the time he began dating Isabella Rossellini (whose mother ranks among my favourite actresses) and fathering their child.
Anyway, I am not sure that I can locate (either in my brain or in my handy Funk and Wagnalls) the appropriate adjectives to describe this embarrassingly talented group of musicians. A few inadequate words, however, come to mind -- dulcet, vibrant, sweet, sad, delightful, precise, comical, lyrical, playful, exact, inspiring, liquid -- but one or several modifiers cannot do justice to the goosebump thrill that I experience from up in my narrow balcony pew. In truth, whenever I look down at the now-familiar faces of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, I don't see people. I see flowers and plants and characters from story books and films. I see Tumnus and Bo Peep and Toad of Toad Hall and Peter Pan and the Little Dutch Girl and Hans Brinker and a lovely set of wafting tulips, and so on. (Okay, so Music Director Jeanne Lamon reminds me of Joan Plowright, but Joan Plowright as a nursery rhyme gardener, watering her roses and daffodils and showering her forsythia with love.)
Which is all to say that Saturday night was a tour de force. Led by mellifluous guest conductor Bruno Weil, the musicians set off into the enchanting world of, as I said, Beethoven's 7th and 8th symphonies, beginning with the shorter and extremely lively 8th, and stringing and tooting and tapping their way into the initial banter and final lightning-electric syncopated frenzy of the 8th. (I would speak here in musical terms -- allegro, staccato, scherzando --and so on -- were I either entitled or schooled [or diligent], but neither [and nor] is the case.) The most accurate description I can give is of the rather girthy front-row-balcony gentleman wildly chewing his gum and tossing his head back in mirthful oblivion, jaws gyrating at what seemed to me an uncomfortable and dangerous speed as his excitement reached a frothy, fevered pitch. I was delighted. Clearly, this man was delighted. Everyone in that glorious hall was delighted. Indeed, a person could feel the approving swell chords and chords before the absolute climax, collective knees creaking, our puffy hands sweat-drippy in anticipation of the inevitable round upon round of wild applause and standing ovation. In fact, if it were up to me, I'd still be standing there clapping.
As it was, the tulips exploded in chorus, their petals spiralling up -- in one or two instances sticking to the stained-glass windows -- their slender stems bouncing off of hymnals and second-floor radiators. Peter Pan flew high into the air, her violin caught in the joint of the chandelier, her bronze-red hair streaking by in bolts of Technicolor flashes. Even the gentle Tumnus looked terribly surprised, his watery eyes made waterier still from the sudden eruption, his Florsheim shoes reductively shiny in the rise of the dust and damp. At one point, Bo Peep and her entire flock of sheep lay flattened under a series of high-strung violins, and I have to say that little Hans Brinker, usually so calm in the face of remarkable challenge, was mopping his brow. Let's face it -- the place was a mess. A person couldn't see for the flurry of soaring oboes and flutes, the trombones and trumpets a great mash of metal, the glint from the sackbuts now blinding. In truth, had I not just experienced the most exciting musical night of my life, I might have been a little resentful when Dickens fell, solidly, into my lap.
Still, when all is said I done, I will always be able to say that I was there the night the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra exploded.
<:^)
Archived April 2, 2008
