On tour, Gustavo Gimeno & the Toronto Symphony celebrate a centennial

When conductor Gustavo Gimeno came to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for the first time in February 2018, he began his opening rehearsal with Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, and there was an immediate connection. 

“Right away, I experienced something that was unusual for me,” he said. “I felt a refinement, a sensitivity in the playing, a way of phrasing, of producing sound, of interacting with each other.”

And when he began sharing some of his thoughts and suggestions about the music, Gimeno found the Toronto musicians eager to listen and ready to dig into the score. “I felt in love immediately,” he said. “It took me a half-rehearsal. It felt very natural and very beautiful. I felt welcome.”

Later that year, Gimeno was appointed music director of the orchestra, replacing Peter Oundjian, who left in 2018 after a 14-year tenure, and Sir Andrew Davis, another former music director, who stepped in as interim artistic director in 2018-20. Now in his third season in the post, Gimeno is leading his first tour with the orchestra, a three-city, North-American itinerary that includes the Toronto Symphony’s first-ever appearance Feb. 14 in Orchestra Hall under the Symphony Center Presents Orchestras series.

“Touring gives you the opportunity to perform the same program a number of times in different halls — adjusting to new acoustics and encountering audiences,” he said. “It gives you a chance of presenting yourself to others, which means choosing a program that represents who you are and what you want to show about the institution.”

At the same time, it allows musicians to get know one another better both onstage and off. “Even having a coffee at the airport or having a beer after the concert, celebrating, engaging together — that creates a vibe that is quite different,” he said. “It brings you closer.”

The tour is part of the orchestra’s season-long celebration of its 100th anniversary, which included a gala concert with celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma in November and which climaxes with a recording of Olivier Messiaen’s towering Turangalîla-Symphonie during live performances in May. In addition, the orchestra commissioned 10 three-minute celebration preludes by composers across the Toronto metropolitan area. Five received debuts in 2021-22, and the rest are being heard for the first time this season.

“It’s hard to think of a more multicultural city than Toronto. It’s really quite spectacular how many people you meet from so many origins.” — Gustavo Gimeno

The Spanish-born Gimeno, 47, is a former percussionist who started his conducting career as a protégé of famed conductor Mariss Jansons at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He began his tenure in Toronto during the pandemic and spent most of his first season dealing with all the challenges related to that, but he does not see it as a lost time. “There was very little music-making, but I do value the fact that as an organization we had to overcome difficulties and that I played my role under the circumstance. In a way, that puts us in a situation of getting closer and growing together in a different way than music-making. But, of course, would I like to go back to such a point? No way.”

Now, in his third season with the orchestra, Gimeno is increasingly comfortable in the role. “It feels more than ever before like a family,” he said. “I know them better than ever before. I feel we are growing musically together. We understand each other. We are motivated.”

In shaping the future, Gimeno has made a point of studying the Toronto Symphony’s past, which included the founding a youth orchestra that will mark its 50th anniversary in 2023-24. In addition, Gimeno pointed out that celebrated composer Igor Stravinsky conducted the last concert of his life in Toronto. If you check the history, a lot of important composers passed by Toronto,” he said. “It was a place where recordings were made.”

More recently the orchestra has worked with such composers as George Benjamin, Oliver Knussen and Magnus Lindberg. “That gives you an idea of how modern and active the orchestra was in the past,” he said. 

Gimeno has established the Artist Spotlight initiative, which showcases the virtuosity of select guest artists each season. In 2022-23, the orchestra is celebrating the talents of French-Canadian cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and superstar pianist Yuja Wang. Gimeno has made a point of combining works on single programs from sometimes vastly different periods and styles, such as one that brought together Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Joseph Haydn, Richard Wagner, György Ligeti and Unsuk Chin. “I find the audiences in Toronto are very curious, not at all scared of listening to new music,” he said. “On the contrary, they really embrace it.”

At the same time, Gimeno is committed to performing past and present works by composers from an array of backgrounds that reflect the diversity of Toronto. “It’s hard to think of a more multicultural city than Toronto,” he said. “It’s really quite spectacular how many people you meet from so many origins.”

Other initiatives include Relaxed Performances for neuro-diverse audiences, the previously mentioned celebration preludes and programs focused on emerging composers, such as the orchestra’s annual Explore-the-Score composition-reading sessions presented with the Canadian Music Centre.

For its upcoming tour program, the Toronto Symphony will present two familiar works, as well as a piece by a Canadian composer probably not widely known to many American audiences. The first step in constructing the program, Gimeno said, was making sure there was a substantial work on the second half. “It has to be a great composition,” he said, “something the orchestra is looking forward to playing and something all the halls agree to do, because you are on tour.”

There were several ideas; in part because the tour concludes on Valentine’s Day, Gimeno and orchestra settled on a suite from Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet that the conductor assembled from the original 1935 ballet, which was substantially revised in 1940.  

The first half includes Édouard Lalo’s popular Symphonie espagnole, a piece that features María Dueñas, a 20-year-old Spanish soloist whom Gimeno describes as an “upcoming star and an incredible violinist and musician.” “It’s a piece that suits her completely, and she was very keen on doing that,” he said.

Rounding out the program is Symphony No. 2 by Canadian composer Samy Moussa. It was commissioned by the Toronto Symphony and premiered a year ago. Gimeno said the orchestra wanted to highlight Canada’s musical culture not with just a five-minute morsel bit a significant 20-minute work. 

“It’s like a meal with different dishes, or a creation with different layers, going in different directions and saying something about who we are,” Gimeno said of the program. “That’s the intention.”