| TOSHIYUKI SHIMADA |
MUSIC DIRECTOR AND CONDUCTOR
Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra
www.ectsymphony.com
MUSIC DIRECTOR AND CONDUCTOR
The Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes
www.osfl.org
MUSIC DIRECTOR AND CONDUCTOR
Yale Symphony Orchestra
www.yalesymphony.net
MUSIC DIRECTOR LAUREATE
Portland Symphony Orchestra
PRINCIPAL CONDUCTOR
Vienna Modern Masters
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF CONDUCTING
Yale School of Music, Yale University
Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra
www.ectsymphony.com
MUSIC DIRECTOR AND CONDUCTOR
The Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes
www.osfl.org
MUSIC DIRECTOR AND CONDUCTOR
Yale Symphony Orchestra
www.yalesymphony.net
MUSIC DIRECTOR LAUREATE
Portland Symphony Orchestra
PRINCIPAL CONDUCTOR
Vienna Modern Masters
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF CONDUCTING
Yale School of Music, Yale University
"First, it goes to
conductor Toshiyuki
Shimada, who led the
three works with a
nuance, a sense of
musical narrative and a
sonic transparency that
audiences here have
seldom experienced."
On Concert with Eastern
Connecticut Symphony
Orchestra The Day,
New London
conductor Toshiyuki
Shimada, who led the
three works with a
nuance, a sense of
musical narrative and a
sonic transparency that
audiences here have
seldom experienced."
On Concert with Eastern
Connecticut Symphony
Orchestra The Day,
New London
 |  |  |  |  |  |
"With the leadership of
Toshiyuki Shimada, the
total sum it up in one
word: exquisite ...
remarkable for his clean
style and his master in
the wide ranges of
pianos and fortes." On
Concert with Orqesta
Filarmonica de Jalisco
El Informador,
Guadalajara, Mexico
Toshiyuki Shimada, the
total sum it up in one
word: exquisite ...
remarkable for his clean
style and his master in
the wide ranges of
pianos and fortes." On
Concert with Orqesta
Filarmonica de Jalisco
El Informador,
Guadalajara, Mexico
REVIEW
Review: Shimada knows the score with ECSO
By Milton Moore
Publication: The DayPublished 01/25/2010 12:00 AM Updated 01/25/2010 06:19 AM
New London - At the start of Saturday's Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra
concert, the fourth under new Music Director Toshi Shimada, the conductor asked the
audience at the Garde Arts Center for a mid-term grade.
In the audience's programs, Shimada said, there's a questionnaire, one that focused
on audience response to his programming of music new to this audience. "I'm
wondering what you're thinking," Shimada said.The crowd immediately replied with
applause.
Shimada then proceeded to conduct a spirited and revelatory program of three works
that spanned centuries and once again proved that he has lifted the orchestra to a new
level. His conducting reveals the myriad voices in each work, a sonic transparency
that never feels fussy, while retaining a keen sense of the overall shape and effect of
long spans of composition.
In the evening's big sonic work, Stravinsky's 1947 Suite from "Petrouchka," it
seemed that each principal in the orchestra was a star, as the mercurial orchestration
spotlighted an obbligato for virtually every instrument amid its cross-cutting meters
and rhythmic bustle. In the programmatic counterpoint to Stravinsky, Haydn's 1795
Symphony No. 104, the "London Symphony," Shimada led a pared-down, Classical-era
sized ensemble in a beautifully phrased and paced performance that mined all the wit,
tunefulness and pure pleasure Haydn offers.
Between these stylistic bookends, he used a smaller orchestra still - just 28 pieces -
for Ibert's 1935 concerto for chamber orchestra and alto saxophone, the Concertino da
Camera. The soloist in this very French, very Jazz Age work was ECSO Instrumental
Composition Contest winner Stephen Charles Page Jr., who traversed its cascades of
sixteenth notes and the sax's wide register, from its guttural basement to its upper
oboe territory, with a playful ease. In the bluesy opening to the second movement, his
honeyed tone and supple phrasing, with no apparent attack to any note, transformed
the theater hall with a late-night jazz club spell.
The opening performance of the London Symphony, which Shimada called his "tribute
to New London," basked in the charms of the Classical era, a period overlooked for
nearly a decade by the former music director. The small orchestra - with just four
cellos - was at its best, the string sections responding beautifully to Shimada's fine
sense of phrasing. The andante slow movement was both delicate and rhythmically
sharp - no small feat - and as the surprising modulations at its center dropped into an
emotive minor, Shimada threw back his shoulders and spread his arms, as if swan
diving into its depths.
The concluding Stravinsky suite, for all of its sizzle, is woven of thin cloth, with a
handful of motifs that reappear again and again. It succeeds on its rhythmic energy
and on the musicians' virtuosity as the score's spotlight moves from section to section
- and Saturday, it was a success indeed.
Shimada kept the polyrhythms brewing, creating a sense of ostinato as its unifying
character. He drew on all of its sonic power, especially the nearly sub-sonic rumblings
from the large bass section, the contrabassoon and that most Russian basso profundo
of instruments, the bass clarinet.
Virtually all of the principals had fine moments, often paired or in trios. Flutist Nancy
Chaput, oboist Anne Megan, pianist Gary Chapman, bassoonist Tracy McGinnis,
English hornist Olav van Hezewijk, trumpeter Julia Caruk, and concertmaster
Stephan Tieszen all earned their bows.
The sound world was luxurious, from muted brass ensembles to bass clarinet and
clarinet doubling to create a box organ effect. The one flaw was the use of an
electronic keyboard for the celeste, which sounded far more like a synth than the
sparkling chimes of the true instrument.
Article published Nov 16, 2009
Review: A starry night for the ECSO
New London - Saturday evening's concert by the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra was a tribute to
thinking big.
Music director Toshi Shimada fronted a big orchestra bristling with percussionists, led three works that took
very different approaches to create a sense of the monumental, and collaborated with the biggest name
soloist the ECSO has presented in many a year.
The soloist was pianist Peter Serkin - he of musical royalty, the son of pianist Rudolf Serkin and grandson of
violinist Adolf Busch - who lived up to his billing with a bravura performance of Brahms' Piano Concerto No.
1. The tall, patrician Serkin, at the peak of his artistic powers at age 62, was commanding as he traversed
the scope of this most Romantic of Brahms' major works, alternately explosively forceful and entrancingly
introspective.
This is a concert piece that is fueled more by emotion and the quality of expression than by virtuosity, a
concerto that was recast from piano sonatas and has far less a sense of soloist and accompaniment than
most. Younger soloists could have learned much by watching Serkin and Shimada interact, as they kept
close watch on each other and shared the pulse of the work's give-and-take.
In the big two-handed chords that propel the outer movements, Serkin fairly vibrated with energy, especially
in the first movement, which Shimada took at a brisk pace and shook off any traces of gloom from its
portentous orchestral opening. But most arresting was Serkin's treatment of the hushed, lyrical second
theme, as he intensified the drama by hanging off the beat, creating the sense that he was drifting away in
his own reverie, while never losing the thread of ensemble.
That mood was redoubled in the slow movement, which opened with a lush sonority in the strings and
bassoons before Serkin wove a poetic solo so intimate that audience members in the Garde Arts Center
must have felt as if they were eavesdropping.
The final movement, the most conventional of the three with its rondo form for pianistic variety, was all
dashing excitement. Here, Serkin and Shimada were in constant interplay - on Serkin's return to the
expansive second motif, Shimada beamed at him from the podium like a proud father. The mood of
collaboration was confirmed when, after a sustained final ovation, Serkin walked around the orchestra to
shake hands with the key front desk principals.
Sharing the spotlight in the two other big works on the program were the sonic yin and yang of flutist Nancy
Chaput and timpanist Kuljit Rehncy.
The program opened with "blue cathedral," a 1999 tone poem by American composer Jennifer Higdon, the
most-performed contemporary work in the U.S. these days. A tribute to the composer's brother, who died in
youth, it is built on two singing voices - that of the composer, as voiced by flutist Chaput, and her brother,
voiced by clarinet principal Kelli O'Connor.
The Copland-like work started with these two voices over softly sighing strings, and it built in layers of
sound, reaching a vibrant sonority as the five percussionists (three playing the chimes together at one point)
and timpanist Rehncy joined with a brass chorale. And the orchestral color drifted into new territory in the
moving closing measures, as the clarinet seemingly ascended to the heavens over the soft rustle of 50
quiet Chinese bells in the hands of the string players and the eerie hum of glass harmonicas (wine glasses
rubbed to vibrate) in the hands of the brass section.
Chaput had the starring role in the program's central piece, Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis of
Themes by Weber, a 1943 work written while the German composer was the head of the music department
at Yale, where Shimada now teaches.
Shimada was at his finest leading this four-movement work, keeping it light on its feet and, as is becoming
his trademark here, transparent in the complex voicings of the intricate sectional interplay. Hindemith brews
up a thick contrapuntal stew in much of it, but Shimada never bogged down.
Chaput shined brightly in the complex, long flute obbligato ending the slow movement, a fleet and long-
breathed passage that lit up the hall. And Rehncy and the percussionists put on a great show of
musicianship as they took a set of variations from the energetic and playful scherzo and made them sing.
It was an entertaining, at times thrilling, evening. Shimada continues to win audience trust in his first
season here; both the contemporary work and the potential quagmire of Hindemith were vivid, fresh and
well-received. And the appreciative audience gave a long ovation to one member of the ECSO who has yet
to pick up an instrument.
Orchestra Executive Director Isabelle Singer was honored at intermission for her 25th anniversary of
keeping the orchestra on stage and thriving. Now on her fourth music director here, Singer gets to take
much of the credit for orchestra's success.
ECSO board president Paul McGlinchey put it succinctly as he gestured to the orchestra: "What you see here
on the stage, our new music director Toshi Shimada, all these talented musicians … the common thread is
Isabelle Singer."
REVIEW
Shimada, Tieszen delight in ECSO concert
By Milton Moore
Published on 10/19/2009 in Home »Features »Features
New London - It's easy to be fooled by Toshi Shimada's conducting. Watching Shimada lead the Eastern
Connecticut Symphony Orchestra without a score in Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5, conducting the 50-
minute work with detailed, full-body control of the 80-piece ensemble, you could be lured into believing that
the orchestra is just one vast instrument and Shimada is the virtuoso soloist.
Crafting the long sweep of musical drama, with its nuances of sonic and emotional shape-shifting, was
Shimada's obvious triumph Saturday night at the Garde Arts Center. But the orchestra's new music director
seems to have the gift for enabling the musicians far more than controlling them.
In Saturday's concert, which also featured a thoroughly entertaining reading of Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5
by ECSO Concertmaster Stephan Tieszen, Shimada continued to display what may be his trademark: his
ability to reveal inner voices, to display the subtleties of a score without getting lost in the details, and to
allow the musicians to play at their best.
In the symphony's opening moments, as clarinetists Kelli O'Connor and Chantal Hovendick paired for the
somber “Fate” theme that underpins the entire work, Shimada carried them forward on gently swelling,
beautifully phrased sectional playing in the violas and cellos. In the long, exposed solo that opens the lovely
second movement, long-time ECSO French horn principal Dana Lord captivated the audience with a
gorgeous tone, yet Shimada supported Lord's spotlight moment with seamless sonic bloom growing from the
cellos through the violins. And not lost in the infectious waltzing strings of the third movement were the
lovely solos by principal bassoonist Tracy McGinnis.
Under Shimada, the ECSO can be thrilling both in its sum and in its parts.
In Tchaikovsky's almost bipolar score that leaps back and forth from fortissimos to pianissimos, Shimada
found countless nuances of dynamics in between. The “Fate” theme, which returns again and again in
different dramatic roles, seemed endlessly colored, with dynamic tapering within measures at times. This
sonic control made the brassy blaze-ups all the more spine-tingling, even savage.
Shimada is also a visual guide for the audience. As the calm second movement love song grew in intensity
from the horns and winds through the strings, the conductor was all but vibrating with the mounting tension.
After the snarling “Fate” theme shattered the movement's reverie, Shimada bent at the waist and swayed
both arms like a human metronome to start the string pizzicatos back in time. In the symphony's finale, as
the “Fate” theme finally emerges as a heroic march, the conductor raised himself to full height and threw
back his head with a look as triumphant as the theme.
The vast Romantic outpouring of the Tchaikovsky was nicely contrasted by Tieszen's performance of the
Mozart concerto, playing on gut strings before Classical-era sized 25-piece orchestra.
Tieszen's solo was a labor of love, with many months of preparation as he not only edited the score using a
facsimile copy of Mozart's original, he wrote his own cadenzas, those exposed solo show-stoppers,
performed for the first time Saturday.
Playing, as did Mozart, on gut strings, Tieszen cast a sweet sound and an air of intimacy, even in this most
playful concerto. In the first movement, he shaped the phrasing and the timbre subtly between phrases to
create the sense of an internal dialogue. In the slow movement, he created a breathy swell in the long
phrases, rising and falling like an operatic messa di voce. And his cadenzas were delights.
The musical ideas for his first movement cadenza were drawn from the orchestral introduction, first in
stops, then with drones accompanying the figures before drifting into a lyrical mood. The slow movement
cadenza, which Tieszen said he completed the day before the performance, was based on the see-sawing,
back-and-forth figure at the heart of the movement's songlike theme, salted with tangy stops. And the third
movement cadenza was based on the goofy theme of the Turkish march section, made even more extreme,
and he employed a harmonic sleight-of-hand to lyrically slide out of it all.
The cadenzas were characteristic, perhaps more fitting the source music than many in common use, with a
sense of freshness and adventure, and Tieszen salted the final movement with a number of ornaments of his
own making.
The concerto suffered a bit from an imbalance at times between the orchestra and soloist, due to the
inherent differences between modern strings and gut strings. And at the start of the Turkish march, as
Shimada turned to look at the violinist with an impish smile, Tieszen knocked his score from the stand and
had to pause the performance to reassemble its many sheets.
The program opened with Toru Takemitsu's 1982 “Star-Ilse,” a concise tone-painting inspired by the
composer's communion with nature.
Saturday's concert was Shimada's third leading the ECSO (including his audtion last year), and he continued
to reveal not just the beauty and vitality of the scores, but the talent of his musicians. The mood in the hall,
and the orchestra itself, couldn't be brighter.
REVIEW
September 28, 2009
A happy 'hello' for the ECSO audience
By Milton Moore
Published on 9/28/2009 in the DAY, New London, CT, USA
Toshiyuki Shimada did not disappoint. The ovation was long and strong at the Garde Arts Center Saturday when
he simply showed his face on stage, and the new music director of the Eastern Connecticut Symphony
Orchestra, so winning in his tryout here a year ago, once again charmed the audience with his wit and delighted
them with his music-making.
From the long lyrical spans of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony to the rapid-fire metric complexities of
Bernstein's Overture to “Candide,” Shimada proved a perfect fit, revealing talents of the ECSO ensemble and
principals seldom heard before. He led an intentionally tuneful, crowd-pleasing program that thoroughly pleased
the near-sell-out crowd.
An assistant professor of conducting at Yale and music director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra, Shimada
began the evening with a brief statement of appreciation at his selection from a group of six finalists to replace
Xiao-Lu Li, who led the ECSO for a decade. Shimada gestured to the audience as he said, “We are now starting,
all together, our collaboration.” He had programmed what he called “a pop-sy concert … You will be saying, “I
know this tune.’” He opened with Rossini's Overture to “William Tell,” a television staple from “Loony Tunes” to
“The Lone Ranger,” to prove his point.
Sharing the spotlight with Shimada were many of the orchestra's principals: new cello principal, the 25-year-old
Romanian-born Mihai Marica, whose obbligatos and very presence seem to have transformed a crucial section;
oboist Anne Megan; trumpet principal Julia Caruk; and above all, clarinet principal Kelli O'Connor, who along
with Clark had a ball wandering off the charts in Gershwin's “Rhapsody in Blue.”
From cellist Marica's opening of the Rossini overture and the unexpected pleasures of the singing operatic voice
in the cello section, the orchestra played superbly for Shimada - and seemed to know it. There were smiles
everywhere.
Shimada appears immune to performance pressure; he radiated a sense of ease and comfort fronting the 80-plus
musicians. He is active in his cuing, attentive with the baton when called for and physically dynamic without
seeming showy. He did flash some moments of showmanship, pantomiming a rider during the galloping rhythms
of the hoe-down in Copland's “Rodeo.” After the applause, he said to the audience, “You have never seen a
Japanese cowboy before, have you?” He had the audience howling with his demonstration of his
Texas/Japanese accent, acquired during his five years with the Houston Symphony Orchestra.
During the lyrical and emotive Schubert, a few audience members clapped after the first movement, and
Shimada turned to hush them. Afterward, he explained he felt clapping between movements breaks the flow of
the composition, and at the end of the first movement of the four-movement Copland, when a smattering of
applause rippled, he turned with a sly smile and waved four fingers. But, as in his tryout here, it was the response
of the musicians that was most dramatic. Once again, Shimada gave this orchestra a new sound, more
transparent to reveal all of the voices and more sectionally balanced. He is skillful in the shaping of dynamics,
mastering the acoustic challenges of the hall, and has a keen sense of harmonic structure that reaches across
many measures, even in episodic works like the Rossini and Copland.
In the Rossini, it was the nuances of the slow passages that were a revelation, no longer mere connective tissue.
And in the Schubert, he carried the long singing melodies to the dark and bitter outbursts that punctuate the
developments as if these long harmonic journeys were inevitable. The Bernstein overture, with its crazy 3/2
meters and tumble-down-the-stairs phrasings, was a cheerful romp, propelled by five percussionists, and Shimada
was grinning broadly through much of it.
The scripted program ended with pianist Jeffrey Biegel soloing in “Rhapsody in Blue” - “the United Airlines
theme,” as Shimada put it. Biegel gave the solos a surprising intimacy, a sense of a jazzman's musings late at
night in a saloon, and the orchestra played with jazzy freedom in the solos.
By that point, Shimada had his audience so at ease that during the encore of “Stars and Stripes Forever” (a tip of
the cap to Arthur Fiedler), the audience not only clapped in time, there were scattered pockets of sing-alongs of
the grade school version: “Be kind to our fine feathered friends …”
Shimada seems a perfect fit for this orchestra and audience. On the podium, he appears both a peer of the
musicians before him and a soloist playing this orchestra like a keyboard. And he is just plain likable, sort of
equal parts Leonard Bernstein (with whom he studied) in his air of command, and Victor Borge, with his dry and
ready humor.
The audience arrived early, many coming from a black-tie fundraiser across the street at the Thames Club, and
stayed late, for sweets and champagne in the lobby. Thanks to Shimada's debut performance, the ECSO should
expect many return customers.
Review: Shimada knows the score with ECSO
By Milton Moore
Publication: The DayPublished 01/25/2010 12:00 AM Updated 01/25/2010 06:19 AM
New London - At the start of Saturday's Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra
concert, the fourth under new Music Director Toshi Shimada, the conductor asked the
audience at the Garde Arts Center for a mid-term grade.
In the audience's programs, Shimada said, there's a questionnaire, one that focused
on audience response to his programming of music new to this audience. "I'm
wondering what you're thinking," Shimada said.The crowd immediately replied with
applause.
Shimada then proceeded to conduct a spirited and revelatory program of three works
that spanned centuries and once again proved that he has lifted the orchestra to a new
level. His conducting reveals the myriad voices in each work, a sonic transparency
that never feels fussy, while retaining a keen sense of the overall shape and effect of
long spans of composition.
In the evening's big sonic work, Stravinsky's 1947 Suite from "Petrouchka," it
seemed that each principal in the orchestra was a star, as the mercurial orchestration
spotlighted an obbligato for virtually every instrument amid its cross-cutting meters
and rhythmic bustle. In the programmatic counterpoint to Stravinsky, Haydn's 1795
Symphony No. 104, the "London Symphony," Shimada led a pared-down, Classical-era
sized ensemble in a beautifully phrased and paced performance that mined all the wit,
tunefulness and pure pleasure Haydn offers.
Between these stylistic bookends, he used a smaller orchestra still - just 28 pieces -
for Ibert's 1935 concerto for chamber orchestra and alto saxophone, the Concertino da
Camera. The soloist in this very French, very Jazz Age work was ECSO Instrumental
Composition Contest winner Stephen Charles Page Jr., who traversed its cascades of
sixteenth notes and the sax's wide register, from its guttural basement to its upper
oboe territory, with a playful ease. In the bluesy opening to the second movement, his
honeyed tone and supple phrasing, with no apparent attack to any note, transformed
the theater hall with a late-night jazz club spell.
The opening performance of the London Symphony, which Shimada called his "tribute
to New London," basked in the charms of the Classical era, a period overlooked for
nearly a decade by the former music director. The small orchestra - with just four
cellos - was at its best, the string sections responding beautifully to Shimada's fine
sense of phrasing. The andante slow movement was both delicate and rhythmically
sharp - no small feat - and as the surprising modulations at its center dropped into an
emotive minor, Shimada threw back his shoulders and spread his arms, as if swan
diving into its depths.
The concluding Stravinsky suite, for all of its sizzle, is woven of thin cloth, with a
handful of motifs that reappear again and again. It succeeds on its rhythmic energy
and on the musicians' virtuosity as the score's spotlight moves from section to section
- and Saturday, it was a success indeed.
Shimada kept the polyrhythms brewing, creating a sense of ostinato as its unifying
character. He drew on all of its sonic power, especially the nearly sub-sonic rumblings
from the large bass section, the contrabassoon and that most Russian basso profundo
of instruments, the bass clarinet.
Virtually all of the principals had fine moments, often paired or in trios. Flutist Nancy
Chaput, oboist Anne Megan, pianist Gary Chapman, bassoonist Tracy McGinnis,
English hornist Olav van Hezewijk, trumpeter Julia Caruk, and concertmaster
Stephan Tieszen all earned their bows.
The sound world was luxurious, from muted brass ensembles to bass clarinet and
clarinet doubling to create a box organ effect. The one flaw was the use of an
electronic keyboard for the celeste, which sounded far more like a synth than the
sparkling chimes of the true instrument.
Article published Nov 16, 2009
Review: A starry night for the ECSO
New London - Saturday evening's concert by the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra was a tribute to
thinking big.
Music director Toshi Shimada fronted a big orchestra bristling with percussionists, led three works that took
very different approaches to create a sense of the monumental, and collaborated with the biggest name
soloist the ECSO has presented in many a year.
The soloist was pianist Peter Serkin - he of musical royalty, the son of pianist Rudolf Serkin and grandson of
violinist Adolf Busch - who lived up to his billing with a bravura performance of Brahms' Piano Concerto No.
1. The tall, patrician Serkin, at the peak of his artistic powers at age 62, was commanding as he traversed
the scope of this most Romantic of Brahms' major works, alternately explosively forceful and entrancingly
introspective.
This is a concert piece that is fueled more by emotion and the quality of expression than by virtuosity, a
concerto that was recast from piano sonatas and has far less a sense of soloist and accompaniment than
most. Younger soloists could have learned much by watching Serkin and Shimada interact, as they kept
close watch on each other and shared the pulse of the work's give-and-take.
In the big two-handed chords that propel the outer movements, Serkin fairly vibrated with energy, especially
in the first movement, which Shimada took at a brisk pace and shook off any traces of gloom from its
portentous orchestral opening. But most arresting was Serkin's treatment of the hushed, lyrical second
theme, as he intensified the drama by hanging off the beat, creating the sense that he was drifting away in
his own reverie, while never losing the thread of ensemble.
That mood was redoubled in the slow movement, which opened with a lush sonority in the strings and
bassoons before Serkin wove a poetic solo so intimate that audience members in the Garde Arts Center
must have felt as if they were eavesdropping.
The final movement, the most conventional of the three with its rondo form for pianistic variety, was all
dashing excitement. Here, Serkin and Shimada were in constant interplay - on Serkin's return to the
expansive second motif, Shimada beamed at him from the podium like a proud father. The mood of
collaboration was confirmed when, after a sustained final ovation, Serkin walked around the orchestra to
shake hands with the key front desk principals.
Sharing the spotlight in the two other big works on the program were the sonic yin and yang of flutist Nancy
Chaput and timpanist Kuljit Rehncy.
The program opened with "blue cathedral," a 1999 tone poem by American composer Jennifer Higdon, the
most-performed contemporary work in the U.S. these days. A tribute to the composer's brother, who died in
youth, it is built on two singing voices - that of the composer, as voiced by flutist Chaput, and her brother,
voiced by clarinet principal Kelli O'Connor.
The Copland-like work started with these two voices over softly sighing strings, and it built in layers of
sound, reaching a vibrant sonority as the five percussionists (three playing the chimes together at one point)
and timpanist Rehncy joined with a brass chorale. And the orchestral color drifted into new territory in the
moving closing measures, as the clarinet seemingly ascended to the heavens over the soft rustle of 50
quiet Chinese bells in the hands of the string players and the eerie hum of glass harmonicas (wine glasses
rubbed to vibrate) in the hands of the brass section.
Chaput had the starring role in the program's central piece, Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis of
Themes by Weber, a 1943 work written while the German composer was the head of the music department
at Yale, where Shimada now teaches.
Shimada was at his finest leading this four-movement work, keeping it light on its feet and, as is becoming
his trademark here, transparent in the complex voicings of the intricate sectional interplay. Hindemith brews
up a thick contrapuntal stew in much of it, but Shimada never bogged down.
Chaput shined brightly in the complex, long flute obbligato ending the slow movement, a fleet and long-
breathed passage that lit up the hall. And Rehncy and the percussionists put on a great show of
musicianship as they took a set of variations from the energetic and playful scherzo and made them sing.
It was an entertaining, at times thrilling, evening. Shimada continues to win audience trust in his first
season here; both the contemporary work and the potential quagmire of Hindemith were vivid, fresh and
well-received. And the appreciative audience gave a long ovation to one member of the ECSO who has yet
to pick up an instrument.
Orchestra Executive Director Isabelle Singer was honored at intermission for her 25th anniversary of
keeping the orchestra on stage and thriving. Now on her fourth music director here, Singer gets to take
much of the credit for orchestra's success.
ECSO board president Paul McGlinchey put it succinctly as he gestured to the orchestra: "What you see here
on the stage, our new music director Toshi Shimada, all these talented musicians … the common thread is
Isabelle Singer."
REVIEW
Shimada, Tieszen delight in ECSO concert
By Milton Moore
Published on 10/19/2009 in Home »Features »Features
New London - It's easy to be fooled by Toshi Shimada's conducting. Watching Shimada lead the Eastern
Connecticut Symphony Orchestra without a score in Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5, conducting the 50-
minute work with detailed, full-body control of the 80-piece ensemble, you could be lured into believing that
the orchestra is just one vast instrument and Shimada is the virtuoso soloist.
Crafting the long sweep of musical drama, with its nuances of sonic and emotional shape-shifting, was
Shimada's obvious triumph Saturday night at the Garde Arts Center. But the orchestra's new music director
seems to have the gift for enabling the musicians far more than controlling them.
In Saturday's concert, which also featured a thoroughly entertaining reading of Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5
by ECSO Concertmaster Stephan Tieszen, Shimada continued to display what may be his trademark: his
ability to reveal inner voices, to display the subtleties of a score without getting lost in the details, and to
allow the musicians to play at their best.
In the symphony's opening moments, as clarinetists Kelli O'Connor and Chantal Hovendick paired for the
somber “Fate” theme that underpins the entire work, Shimada carried them forward on gently swelling,
beautifully phrased sectional playing in the violas and cellos. In the long, exposed solo that opens the lovely
second movement, long-time ECSO French horn principal Dana Lord captivated the audience with a
gorgeous tone, yet Shimada supported Lord's spotlight moment with seamless sonic bloom growing from the
cellos through the violins. And not lost in the infectious waltzing strings of the third movement were the
lovely solos by principal bassoonist Tracy McGinnis.
Under Shimada, the ECSO can be thrilling both in its sum and in its parts.
In Tchaikovsky's almost bipolar score that leaps back and forth from fortissimos to pianissimos, Shimada
found countless nuances of dynamics in between. The “Fate” theme, which returns again and again in
different dramatic roles, seemed endlessly colored, with dynamic tapering within measures at times. This
sonic control made the brassy blaze-ups all the more spine-tingling, even savage.
Shimada is also a visual guide for the audience. As the calm second movement love song grew in intensity
from the horns and winds through the strings, the conductor was all but vibrating with the mounting tension.
After the snarling “Fate” theme shattered the movement's reverie, Shimada bent at the waist and swayed
both arms like a human metronome to start the string pizzicatos back in time. In the symphony's finale, as
the “Fate” theme finally emerges as a heroic march, the conductor raised himself to full height and threw
back his head with a look as triumphant as the theme.
The vast Romantic outpouring of the Tchaikovsky was nicely contrasted by Tieszen's performance of the
Mozart concerto, playing on gut strings before Classical-era sized 25-piece orchestra.
Tieszen's solo was a labor of love, with many months of preparation as he not only edited the score using a
facsimile copy of Mozart's original, he wrote his own cadenzas, those exposed solo show-stoppers,
performed for the first time Saturday.
Playing, as did Mozart, on gut strings, Tieszen cast a sweet sound and an air of intimacy, even in this most
playful concerto. In the first movement, he shaped the phrasing and the timbre subtly between phrases to
create the sense of an internal dialogue. In the slow movement, he created a breathy swell in the long
phrases, rising and falling like an operatic messa di voce. And his cadenzas were delights.
The musical ideas for his first movement cadenza were drawn from the orchestral introduction, first in
stops, then with drones accompanying the figures before drifting into a lyrical mood. The slow movement
cadenza, which Tieszen said he completed the day before the performance, was based on the see-sawing,
back-and-forth figure at the heart of the movement's songlike theme, salted with tangy stops. And the third
movement cadenza was based on the goofy theme of the Turkish march section, made even more extreme,
and he employed a harmonic sleight-of-hand to lyrically slide out of it all.
The cadenzas were characteristic, perhaps more fitting the source music than many in common use, with a
sense of freshness and adventure, and Tieszen salted the final movement with a number of ornaments of his
own making.
The concerto suffered a bit from an imbalance at times between the orchestra and soloist, due to the
inherent differences between modern strings and gut strings. And at the start of the Turkish march, as
Shimada turned to look at the violinist with an impish smile, Tieszen knocked his score from the stand and
had to pause the performance to reassemble its many sheets.
The program opened with Toru Takemitsu's 1982 “Star-Ilse,” a concise tone-painting inspired by the
composer's communion with nature.
Saturday's concert was Shimada's third leading the ECSO (including his audtion last year), and he continued
to reveal not just the beauty and vitality of the scores, but the talent of his musicians. The mood in the hall,
and the orchestra itself, couldn't be brighter.
REVIEW
September 28, 2009
A happy 'hello' for the ECSO audience
By Milton Moore
Published on 9/28/2009 in the DAY, New London, CT, USA
Toshiyuki Shimada did not disappoint. The ovation was long and strong at the Garde Arts Center Saturday when
he simply showed his face on stage, and the new music director of the Eastern Connecticut Symphony
Orchestra, so winning in his tryout here a year ago, once again charmed the audience with his wit and delighted
them with his music-making.
From the long lyrical spans of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony to the rapid-fire metric complexities of
Bernstein's Overture to “Candide,” Shimada proved a perfect fit, revealing talents of the ECSO ensemble and
principals seldom heard before. He led an intentionally tuneful, crowd-pleasing program that thoroughly pleased
the near-sell-out crowd.
An assistant professor of conducting at Yale and music director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra, Shimada
began the evening with a brief statement of appreciation at his selection from a group of six finalists to replace
Xiao-Lu Li, who led the ECSO for a decade. Shimada gestured to the audience as he said, “We are now starting,
all together, our collaboration.” He had programmed what he called “a pop-sy concert … You will be saying, “I
know this tune.’” He opened with Rossini's Overture to “William Tell,” a television staple from “Loony Tunes” to
“The Lone Ranger,” to prove his point.
Sharing the spotlight with Shimada were many of the orchestra's principals: new cello principal, the 25-year-old
Romanian-born Mihai Marica, whose obbligatos and very presence seem to have transformed a crucial section;
oboist Anne Megan; trumpet principal Julia Caruk; and above all, clarinet principal Kelli O'Connor, who along
with Clark had a ball wandering off the charts in Gershwin's “Rhapsody in Blue.”
From cellist Marica's opening of the Rossini overture and the unexpected pleasures of the singing operatic voice
in the cello section, the orchestra played superbly for Shimada - and seemed to know it. There were smiles
everywhere.
Shimada appears immune to performance pressure; he radiated a sense of ease and comfort fronting the 80-plus
musicians. He is active in his cuing, attentive with the baton when called for and physically dynamic without
seeming showy. He did flash some moments of showmanship, pantomiming a rider during the galloping rhythms
of the hoe-down in Copland's “Rodeo.” After the applause, he said to the audience, “You have never seen a
Japanese cowboy before, have you?” He had the audience howling with his demonstration of his
Texas/Japanese accent, acquired during his five years with the Houston Symphony Orchestra.
During the lyrical and emotive Schubert, a few audience members clapped after the first movement, and
Shimada turned to hush them. Afterward, he explained he felt clapping between movements breaks the flow of
the composition, and at the end of the first movement of the four-movement Copland, when a smattering of
applause rippled, he turned with a sly smile and waved four fingers. But, as in his tryout here, it was the response
of the musicians that was most dramatic. Once again, Shimada gave this orchestra a new sound, more
transparent to reveal all of the voices and more sectionally balanced. He is skillful in the shaping of dynamics,
mastering the acoustic challenges of the hall, and has a keen sense of harmonic structure that reaches across
many measures, even in episodic works like the Rossini and Copland.
In the Rossini, it was the nuances of the slow passages that were a revelation, no longer mere connective tissue.
And in the Schubert, he carried the long singing melodies to the dark and bitter outbursts that punctuate the
developments as if these long harmonic journeys were inevitable. The Bernstein overture, with its crazy 3/2
meters and tumble-down-the-stairs phrasings, was a cheerful romp, propelled by five percussionists, and Shimada
was grinning broadly through much of it.
The scripted program ended with pianist Jeffrey Biegel soloing in “Rhapsody in Blue” - “the United Airlines
theme,” as Shimada put it. Biegel gave the solos a surprising intimacy, a sense of a jazzman's musings late at
night in a saloon, and the orchestra played with jazzy freedom in the solos.
By that point, Shimada had his audience so at ease that during the encore of “Stars and Stripes Forever” (a tip of
the cap to Arthur Fiedler), the audience not only clapped in time, there were scattered pockets of sing-alongs of
the grade school version: “Be kind to our fine feathered friends …”
Shimada seems a perfect fit for this orchestra and audience. On the podium, he appears both a peer of the
musicians before him and a soloist playing this orchestra like a keyboard. And he is just plain likable, sort of
equal parts Leonard Bernstein (with whom he studied) in his air of command, and Victor Borge, with his dry and
ready humor.
The audience arrived early, many coming from a black-tie fundraiser across the street at the Thames Club, and
stayed late, for sweets and champagne in the lobby. Thanks to Shimada's debut performance, the ECSO should
expect many return customers.
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