Tonight was the opening concert of Toronto Summer Music, a festival running until July 29th in several performance spaces around Toronto.

For a festival such as this one with the dual objectives of showcasing performance and training artists in its academy its theme of “metamorphosis” can be a powerful metaphor, whether we’re considering the music or the musicians.

I had to do a double take when I read on the TSM website that “2023 is the seventh season with Canadian violinist Jonathan Crow at the helm in the role of TSM’s Artistic Director.”

Time flies, especially when cultural events are disrupted by a pandemic. The butterfly in the TSM logo could be me or any of us, emerging from our masked cocoon.

Festivals offer special opportunities that aren’t usually available, as when five excellent soloists can give us a taut reading of the Mozart concerto.

Two pianists were the stars of the evening:
Beethoven: Sonata No 14
Mozart: Piano Concerto No 12 (arr. For chamber ensemble)
(intermission)
Milhaud: Scaramouche
Levko Revutsky: Preludes Op 7, Nos 1 & 2
Liszt: Etude No 3 “La Campanella”
Rachmaninoff: Suite no. 2 for Two Pianos

Jon Kimura Parker made a welcome return to the festival, seeming ageless in his stunning reading of the Moonlight Sonata, before introducing 21 year old Illia Ovcharenko to us, the winner of the Honens International Piano Competition.

Parker, Artistic Director of that competition, spoke of glowingly of the young Ukrainian virtuoso, with whom he partnered on two works in the second half of the program.

I had to wonder, how much time have they had to play together, how well do they know one another? Piano duos work together for years, seemingly anticipating one another as though reading minds. How when they met relatively recently, could they get the kind of cohesion we heard in the Milhaud and especially in the powerful Rachmaninoff suite? It was a joy watching them, seeing the eye contact and the body language.

I hope we will have the chance to welcome Ovcharenko back to Toronto again. He demonstrated sensitivity to Mozart, at times bringing out the comical playful side especially in his cadenzas. After the joyful exuberance of the Milhaud duet, the two Revutsky preludes took us in an entirely different direction, something soulfully Slavic in the manner of a Rachmaninoff or a Scriabin, someone I hope to explore further, and someone we need to hear more often. The Liszt afforded Ovcharenko the chance to show us more delicate playing, a subtle approach to Liszt that’s very welcome.

The Toronto Summer Music schedule can be found at https://torontosummermusic.com/events/.