Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq will feature in The New Creations festival, a bright light in an otherwise disappointing lineup.J.P. MOCZULSKI/The Globe and Mail
For an organization that constantly talks about innovation and the new (and which even has a highly paid vice-president of innovation), the Toronto Symphony Orchestra unveiled a somewhat underwhelming 2016-17 season on Wednesday to celebrate its 95th year. While there are certainly gems scattered among the orchestra's 102-concert lineup, the spark of true originality – the kind we saw just last month with the TSO's staged Mozart Requiem – seems to be in shorter supply. When performances of Beethoven's Sixth and Seventh symphonies – two of the most familiar pieces in the repertoire – are listed among the highlights of a season, it's hard to make innovation your marketing watchword.
The current season's TSO offerings were actually more adventurous, with the orchestra launching an interesting Decades Project in conjunction with the Art Gallery of Ontario, and a fun program of providing live scores for great films. Both these projects are back in 2016-17, and the 30s Decades concerts look especially interesting, with performances of rarely heard masterworks such as William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast and Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins. The New Creations Festival, curated by Polaris Prize-winner Owen Pallett, also has many tasty treats – including world premieres by Pallett, the great Tanya Tagaq (with Christine Duncan) and Nicole Lizée, to mention but a few. And there is a good number of Canadian compositions, and Canadian premieres scattered throughout the season, but not as many as one would like in featured positions in the program (that is, other than as the first piece of the evening).
But the rest of the concerts seem pretty much business as usual for the orchestra. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the Jan. 21 program devoted to Canadian music in what will be the first weeks of the country's 150th-birthday year. If you had ever attended a concert of Canadian music in the 1960s and 1970s, the program of the TSO's Canadian Mosaic event in January will seem awfully familiar. Godfrey Ridout's Fall Fair, John Weinzweig's Barn Dance from his Red Ear of Corn, music by André Mathieu and Jean Coulthard. Really? In 2017? Where's music by Claude Vivier or Brian Current or Ana Sokolovic or John Estacio or even Murray Schafer? I know Canadian music is, by and large, contemporary music, and it's sometimes a hard sell, but isn't solving those riddles what innovation is all about? It's possible the TSO is saving its salute to Canadian music in our sesquicentennial year to the fall of 2017, that is, not next season, but the one after – but if so, they have made no mention of it.
Nonetheless, the TSO will undoubtedly provide many fine hours of music-making next season; it is a top-notch ensemble, after all, and a fine array of guest soloists, ranging from Emanuel Ax to Renée Fleming (for the opening gala) to Jan Lisiecki to Yuja Wang, will be performing during the season. Many favourite guest conductors will also be returning to the TSO podium, including Thomas Dausgaard, Sir Andrew Davis and Bernard Labadie. Rob Kapilow's popular "What Makes It Great" series has been expanded, and there are several intriguing pops concerts in the works. But in an age where classical music is increasingly being put to the test of relevance, and often passing that test with flying colours (just look at the Canadian Opera Company, or even down the road to the reinvigorated National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa), it's important that the TSO find as many creative ways as possible to expand its reach. Any visit to a TSO concert will confirm the remarkable, and wonderful, balance of diverse audiences the orchestra manages to coax into Roy Thomson Hall these days. Perhaps the Toronto Symphony believes the kind of relatively safe programming it is providing is essential to keeping those audiences satisfied. It may be right – but balancing that need with the innovation it aspires to is the real task at hand.