Volume 23 Issue 9 - June / July / August 2018

FEATURE
A PROPER
GOODBYE
Peter Oundjian looks
back on 14 years with
the Toronto Symphony
Orchestra
DAVID PERLMAN
Knowing how busy his schedule was going to be over
the course of the spring, I booked my final interview
with Peter Oundjian good and early (Thursday,
March 8, to be precise). He was in town for New
Creations, one of the signature series he created in the
course of his 14 years as the TSO’s conductor and music
director. I’d had a chance to get a sneak-peek look over
the first “post-Oundjian” 2018/19 season before going in
to meet him and what struck me immediately was the
fact that all the Oundjian signatures are conspicuous
by their absence – New Creations, the Decades Project,
and most noticeably, Mozart @, which he had launched
as Mozart@249 the very first year he arrived – stealing
a march on the looming Mozart at 250 hullabaloo, in
that endearing blend of cheeky and canny that has
characterized his stay here.
(As it turned out, he had not looked at the upcoming season at
all and in fact had no hand in putting it together. So rather than, as in
some previous years, the spring interview being with musical director
Peter Oundjian with an enthusiastic agenda of “upcomings” to
promote, this was a rather more leisurely and relaxed ramble through
this and that, looking back as much as forward. Enjoy.)
WN: So 14 years with the Tokyo String Quartet and then 14 years of
this? What’s with that?
Peter Oundjian (laughs): Yes, well it did rather play into my decision
– because I knew the time was coming when everyone would
need to reinvent themselves a little bit on both sides; so then I looked
at that number, 14 years, and said, well, it seems about right. But,
truth be told, we were hopeful we had found a successor so I thought,
Recording the TSO DVD Holst The Planets.
“Well, this is going to be smooth, because you always want to know
that your organization is going to be in good hands when you leave.”
Whenever I wake up at night it’s “What do they need, what could
go wrong, what do they need going forward, what do I do about this
particular personnel issue, conflict, this sound issue, what about
fundraising, why are we not having more success in this area?” There
are just a million things to think about… More than there were with
the [Tokyo] Quartet, actually. I mean with the quartet it was like going
to the moon. “Here’s your schedule for the next two years… Go!” 140
cities every year. Here are the programs. Practise. Rehearse!
If this is Houston it must be Opus 131 again… that kind of thing?
Exactly. Here it’s been different every week. I mean figuring out
the guest conductors. Who the orchestra really enjoys? Who challenges
the orchestra the most? Who simply makes the orchestra feel
good. What’s the right balance? It’s an enormous task, and really challenging
because it’s so multifaceted. There’s a tremendous emotional
input that goes into it – and intellectual. So when you decide the time
has come to move into a different place in your own life and the life of
the organization, the one thing you worry about is – and this is maybe
going to sound a bit self-centred – will people realize how much
attention goes into this? And… You don’t want a vacuum, put it that
way. That’s what you worry about, because when I arrived there was
a serious vacuum. The first few times I conducted this orchestra there
had been serious leadership vacuums on both sides. I mean certainly
we had not had luck with CEOs staying very long, and the right kind
of vision. Jukka-Pekka [Saraste] had left several years before.
Yes, there was an uneasiness at the time. I agree. But is there going
to be less of a vacuum this time round?
Oh I think so. Very much. First of all, Sir Andrew Davis is a great
friend and is somebody everybody trusts implicitly, and he has a
very strong relationship with the city and with the orchestra. But
also I have to say we are in a less tenuous situation. The morale of the
orchestra is in a very different place from where it was in the 90s, and
that’s by the way not to point fingers at Jukka-Pekka in any way. He
came into a very difficult economic situation, where the Canadian
government was backing away not just from support of the TSO but
from the arts in general – and that’s what brought about the tax structure
change, by the way, more of a feeling that the private sector
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