In Wednesday’s (9/18) Toronto Star, Trish Crawford writes, “There’s a saucy red sports car in the driveway of Peter Oundjian’s Connecticut home—his way of celebrating his 10th anniversary at the helm of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.… Cars are apt metaphors for the way Oundjian is programming the 2013/14 season, which opens Wednesday.… [It] begins with sports-car style. The opening week features cellist Alisa Weilerstein.…The symphony’s opening gala on Saturday features Lang Lang.… Violinist Itzhak Perlman … performs Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto on Sept. 25 and 26. … Most of the season is the reliable Volvo—a Mozart Festival, a New Creations Festival.… The Montreal Symphony visits, and Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler are showcased. Abba and Simon and Garfunkel evenings add a little whimsy to the season.… But there might be a high-speed Maserati in the symphony’s future. Oundjian has just returned from a stint conducting in Houston, where there were three large screens on stage. Closeups of soloists and conductors, multiple shots of the orchestra from all sides—these really livened up the performance, he says.… Could the instant replay be part of the concert experience? ‘This has to be in our near future. We will become dinosaurs if we don’t do anything,’ he asserts.”
Posted September 19, 2013
