Truth in Our Time just wrapped a three-stop tour that kicked off at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto on March 30, before travelling to New York’s Carnegie Hall and closing at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.Curtis Perry/National Arts Centre
Imagine that it’s 2018 and you’re the National Arts Centre Orchestra, devising a concert that offers commentary on the big truths of contemporary life – climate change, authoritarianism, racism. This is the quaint origin of Truth in Our Time, the program that NACO was meant to perform in 2020, and which by sheer will has aged remarkably well.
Two years delayed, Truth in Our Time just wrapped a three-stop tour that kicked off at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto on March 30, before travelling to New York’s Carnegie Hall and closing at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
A theme like Truth in Our Time is flexible and malleable and, apparently, just vague enough to adapt from a pre to a mid-pandemic world. NACO likely could have kept their original programming intact, and it would still be brimming with sincerity. So it’s remarkable how far they went in ensuring that Truth in Our Time would be truly contemporary: they added to the program brand-new Philip Glass.
No doubt, much of the anticipation for Truth in Our Time came with the promise of Glass’ Symphony No. 13, commissioned by the NACO to honour the memory of Canadian news giant Peter Jennings. It’s an exciting prospect to hear the latest from Glass, and to hear his take on “truth” in the context of journalism and media.
His new symphony is quintessential Glass, with that unmistakable compose-by-numbers repetition and the ever-widening sound that makes one think of architecture and empires and institutions. If we hadn’t been told, though, that the piece was honouring Jennings, we’d likely never have guessed it. Like his Symphony No. 13, Glass himself seems to take a healthy sidestep around what it means to express truth in music:
“Rather than making a proclamation about ‘what is truth,’ for the composer we are on much better ground when we talk about ‘This is the music that I listen to, this is the music that I like and this is the music that I write.’ ”
Much of the anticipation for Truth in Our Time came with the promise of Glass’ Symphony No. 13, commissioned by the NACO to honour the memory of Canadian news giant Peter Jennings.Curtis Perry/National Arts Centre
Really, it was everything else on the program that had things to say about Truth in Our Time. The evening opened with Nicole Lizée’s Zeiss After Dark, the two-minute gem that’s one of 40 “sesquies” co-commissioned by the NACO and the TSO in recognition of Canada’s 150th birthday. Lizée, the fiercely interesting Canadian composer with a fascination for film, wrote Zeiss After Dark as a musical equivalent to the so-called “candlelight scene” from Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, famous for being lit only by three-wick candles. What’s true here is that Lizée really does turn Kubrick’s “gauzy” cinematography into sound: interlocking glimmers, bright pads of harmony and colours that are never static.
And there was truth upon truth from Yao, the Francophone singer-songwriter and spoken-word artist who gave us Strange Absurdity. In between bilingual plays on words, Yao nods to racism, an unhealthy media culture, Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit and George Floyd.
Perhaps it was meant to be Glass, but the meat of this concert’s message came with the pairing of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 70 and Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35. Both works were written in 1945 by composers who took starkly different tacks when it came to political commentary.
Shostakovich, now an archetype of the defiant artist, wrote his ninth symphony at the request-slash-command of Joseph Stalin. It was supposed to be something heroic, something to memorialize the Soviet contributions to the fight against Nazism. Shostakovich gave Stalin satire: brimming with trills and triangles and pizzicati and all the silly sounds one could draw from an orchestra, the symphony is effeminate and bulbous and spoils all hope of finding a moment of heroism in the score. When he’s being heartfelt, Shostakovich dares to mourn the Soviet regime with careful nods to Hasidic tonality.
Korngold’s answer to the growing antiseminitism in prewar Europe was to emigrate; the Austrian composer moved to California in 1934 and made a name for himself composing Hollywood film scores. He stuck to the Romantic style he developed in Austria, which not only gave us the unmistakable sound of lush, sweeping film soundtracks, but became Korngold’s act of political defiance: He would create beauty, but not where the world was ugly.
Violinist James Ehnes seemed to relish in that beauty, as he took the stage for Korngold’s Violin Concerto. It was strangely free from ego – and maybe unfortunately free from indulgence – but Ehnes delivered a taut, loving performance.
Much credit is due to NACO music director Alexander Shelley, who did double duty as maestro and tour guide for this murky program. On the podium, Shelley has a knack for tasteful imperfection, where he shrugs off the metronome and allows his orchestra the space to tell their own truths, phrase by phrase. He no doubt made sure we felt the full impact of Lizée’s miniature, Shostakovich’s Symphony and Korngold’s Concerto, and though it fell short in message, Shelley conducted Glass’ new symphony from memory, and that’s worth a mention.
Truth in Our Time is a breath of fresh air for anyone who has been frustrated by a vague, word-salad-like concert theme. With their much-anticipated touring program, NACO has made space for actual, tangible truths about life in 2022.
The April 14 performance was livestreamed on the NAC website and is available on demand until May 5, 2022.
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