When Classical FM convened a readers’ vote on the greatest violinists of all time in 2022, classical music lovers overwhelmingly voted Bloomington, Indiana’s Joshua Bell to the top spot.
Was it recency bias? Sure. Are there other, better violinists who probably deserved the top spot? Well, Heifitz (#9 on the list) and Kreisler (#11) tend to be critics’ favourites, though if you’re going to go with a living violinist, I’d say Itzhak Perlman (#19) is the overall superior musician.
But the fact that Bell, now 57 years old and probably most famous to the non-musicgoing public for that one time he went incognito as a Washington Metro busker, earned the top spot is absolutely, justifiably, a testament to his prodigious talent and, perhaps as importantly, his ability to appeal to mass audiences in an era of declining interest in classical music.
Thursday’s performance with the TSO at Roy Thomson Hall is case in point.
Thursday’s show got off to a confusing start, the orchestra unexpectedly launching into the opening bars of the Magic Flute’s “Priest’s March” – until I realized it was just a misguided display of patriotism, the TSO starting the evening with our national anthem. Yes, we’re all still reeling from that Blue Jays loss. No, I don’t think our arts events need to be burdened with the same fervent displays of national pride found at sporting events. Let’s hope it doesn’t become a pattern.
The piece that immediately followed, and the first item on the program proper, suggests why “O, Canada” needn’t have been there. Joined by members of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, the TSO performed Sibelius’s wonderful Finlandia (1900). The unofficial national anthem of Finland and the one Sibelius piece which every amateur orchestra must, by unwritten law, perform at least once in every five-year concert rotation, Finlandia is one of the great works of patriotic fervour. Written at a time of Russian control over Finland, its weaving of Finnish folk themes and brassy marches makes it a perennial favourite, in Scandinavia and beyond.
Bell’s contribution to the program – and the reason why everyone was there – was the Canadian premiere of the newly rediscovered (by Bell himself) 1943 Violin Concerto by little-known Ukrainian composer Thomas de Hartmann. Bell’s championing in 2025 of the Ukrainian de Hartmann, who composed his work at the height of the Nazi occupation of his native Finland, is no coincidence. Last year, Bell released the album Thomas de Hartmann Rediscovered with Ukrainian conductor Dalia Stasevska, who was also on hand for the Toronto performance.
Politics aside, the de Hartmann is a marvellous work, surprising, I think, many (your Toronto Guardian included) with its beautiful, enthralling nature. From its opening Largo – Allegro through its rousing Finale, Thursday’s performance was a strong argument for its entry into the repertoire. (Stranger things have happened.) Influences of Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams, and R. Strauss abound.
The latter part of the evening was given over to Dvořák’s extraordinary Symphony No. 7 (1885). While less popular than the “New World” Symphony (No. 9), Dvořák’s seventh is a powerful, monumental work. History tells us that Dvořák, upon hearing Brahms’s third, set out to compose a masterpiece for himself, and he certainly delivered. (If only it were that easy for the rest of us.)
We’re particularly partial to its second, poco adagio, movement, which hints at serenity even as it overwhelms with sweeping, breathtaking crescendos. The allegro finale is so propulsive it practically had audience members falling out of their seats.
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Upcoming Roy Thomson Hall performances include a live recording of Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet (Nov. 20-22, 2025), the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra with Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” Symphony (Nov. 29, 2025, in a program which also contains, you guessed it, Finlandia), and a whole host of seasonal favourites including the Swan Lake suite, Home Alone in Concert, and Handel’s Messiah.
