The Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Gustavo Gimeno in performance. Photo by Stuart Lowe
“The Toronto Symphony Orchestra has announced its 2021-2022 season—a live, in-person one that will also be Gustavo Gimeno’s first complete season as music director,” writes J. Kelly Nestruck in Wednesday’s (6/16) Globe and Mail (Canada). “It is set to begin on Nov. 10, with Anthony Barfield’s Invictus, a piece for brass ensemble inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, and then continue with concerts that gradually get bigger and bigger—in length, in audience, in number of musicians—until the TSO reaches ‘Ode to Joy’ in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in June, 2022.” Included is an interview with Gimeno, in which he speaks about conducting live-streamed concerts in Europe during the pandemic; the Toronto Symphony’s careful, gradual approach to reopening the coming season and being “more creative” with repertoire by including composers such as Steve Reich, Oskar Morawetz, Zosha Di Castri, Samy Moussa, and Emilie LeBel; ending the season with “Ode to Joy,” which “makes sense, but … also says to me: We’re not there yet. We’re still in a battle”; and looking forward to conducting Mahler’s First Symphony, “a piece very close to my heart.”
