Kevin Mulligan

April 2, 2015
TMU113 Concert Review
TSO and Barbara Hannigan New Creations Festival
On Saturday, February 28th, 2015, I attended the Toronto
Symphony Orchestras New Creations Festival at Roy Thompson Hall.
The concert was A Mind of Winter, and four works were performed.
Of the four pieces, two of them were Canadian premires and one was
a world premire. Peter Oundjian and George Benjamin conducted;
soprano Barbara Hannigan was the guest singer. The first Canadian
premire and piece of the evening, Tochar y Luchar, by Dai Fujikura,
was written in 2010. The second piece and Canadian premire was
George Benjamins A Mind of Winter, was written in 1981 and featured
guest solo soprano, Barbara Hannigan. The fourth piece (a world
premire) was Vivian Fungs Violin Concerto No. 2 Of Snow and Ice,
written in 2014, and the final piece was Mtaboles, by Henri Dutilleux,
written in 1965.
A Mind of Winter, scored for solo soprano, 2 piccolos, 2 oboes,
English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, piccolo trumpet,
percussion, and orchestral strings, made fantastic use of the myriad of
sounds each instrument could make, traditional or not. Howling, icy
winds were captured by the strings, and the bleakly painted winter
landscape is rooted by muted strings. The text for this work was set
from Wallace Stevens poem, The Snow Man, with the solo soprano
narrating, weaving in and out of the orchestra. At times, Ms.

Kevin Mulligan
April 2, 2015
Hannigans voice so perfectly blended with all the other instruments,
that it was hard to tell exactly when the hauntingly piercing lines were
from the orchestra or from her mouth. She captured the audience with
her impressive communication of the text in effortless storytelling. The
slow-set text drew in the ear, but was not too stretched out that
listening became laborious. The harsh, winter landscape described by
the author was neatly and impressively conjured by the orchestra and
the text enhanced by its accompaniment (and, at times, its
interweaving duet between soprano and orchestra).
Vivian Fungs Violin Concerto No. 2 Of Snow and Ice, again,
made excellent use of the instruments and their respective yielded
sounds: solo violin, piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets,
bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3
trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, keyboard, and orchestral
strings. Although there might be a limited musical vocabulary for
winter, this work had a fresh sound. The work was divided up into 4
parts: Birth of a Snowman, Crackling Ice, Macabre Pseudo-Winter
Dance, and Final Return. TSO Concertmaster Jonathan Crow leads the
nostalgic snow-driven memories; Ms. Fungs idea behind this work was
remembering the harsh but beautiful winters in Alberta after recently
moving to temperate San Francisco. Ms. Fungs easily apparent awe,
love, and fear of the winter were all present in the orchestration at
times the movements pined and sang, and at times they were a wall of

Kevin Mulligan
April 2, 2015
white, swirling and relentless snow and ice. In this work (and in
Benjamins aforementioned work), the composer made use of the
horns and woodwinds by having the performers blow through them,
unpitched. This created an eerie stirring of wind that was not gaudy or
all that false sounding. Such a simple creative gesture added
something new and relevant to the performance. The first section of
the work built itself just like a snowstorm would, fluttering and
swooshing; the atmosphere was instantly and effectively created upon
the first few systems of the work.
Both pieces were a refreshing example of new music if George
Benjamins piece is considered a little old, sitting in the 20th century,
then Vivian Fungs 21st century piece was even more impressive. Both
pieces exemplified atmospheric writing that transcended rash modern
sounds and traded in extremely radical orchestration and writings for
carefully and beautifully arranged lines. It was easy to see excellent
craftsmanship and compositional skills from both composers who
created exactly the sounds they heard and conveyed them expertly
through title, text, and orchestration.