At Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, on Tuesday
Consider, for a moment, Oscar Peterson the composer. If those four words don't roll off the tongue quite as readily as Oscar Peterson the pianist, there's good reason. For the past 40 of his 74 years, the celebrated Canadian jazz musician's writing has served his playing -- so commanding has that playing generally been. Simply put, his tunes set up his solos. The tunes didn't necessarily amount to much, but such solos. . . .
Composer and pianist were centre stage on more equal terms Tuesday night at Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall, as Peterson's quartet gave the world premiere of his Trail of Dreams Suite with a 24-piece string orchestra under the direction of the distinguished French conductor and arranger Michel Legrand. The suite, performed in the presence of Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson and Deputy Prime Minister Herb Gray, is one of 61 works commissioned from Canadian composers by Music Canada Musique 2000 in honour of the millennium.
It must be said, of this changing balance between Peterson's writing and playing, that his piano work is no longer what it once was. Reliant now almost exclusively on one hand, his right, its defining qualities have to varying degrees diminished in recent years -- that extraordinary drive, that indomitable sense of swing, that astonishing articulation and that exquisite touch. These things were apparent only in passing as Peterson led the Swedish guitarist Ulf Wakenius, the Danish bassist Niels-Henning Orsted-Pedersen and the British drummer Martin Drew through an opening set that consisted of another five of his own older and newer pieces, bracketed by the standards Falling in Love With Love and Sweet Georgia Brown.
Peterson did, however, show flashes of old in the light tracery of Tranquil and in the second, third and fourth unaccompanied choruses that he traded with Wakenius by way of setting up Sweet Georgia Brown. And, to his credit, he asked no quarter from either the guitarist or from Orsted-Pedersen, virtuosos both -- even as he sometimes scrambled to keep steady pace with them.
Peterson was at a somewhat greater advantage with the Trail of Dreams Suite, a set of 12 "musicscapes" -- his word -- depicting the places and people of Canada. He has travelled this programmatic route once before, back in the early 1960s when he wrote his first extended work, The Canadiana Suite. This time, with Legrand's careful orchestral settings and thematic developments to cushion the ride and expand the vista, he again visited various coasts and corners of the country in a pleasant, generally reflective hour of music that gave no offense save perhaps by how obvious it all proved to be in sum.
The composer was no longer merely serving the pianist here, although the pianist and his three musicians duly joined Legrand's strings in this first performance. No, the composer was on his own; the composition would stand or fall by itself. In fact, it stood tallest at the last, a moving, processional Anthem to the New Land , written for the territory of Nunavut. There were no solos to be heard in this closing piece, significantly, and none were needed.