“It’s fundamental. It is not icing.” Or so argues Gary Hanson in support of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s imminent two-week tour of Israel and Europe.

With 28 years of experience working for the much-travelled Cleveland Orchestra behind him, the much less-travelled Canadian orchestra’s interim chief executive officer knows whereof he speaks.

“If you only play at home, you will be a less good orchestra,” he continues. “Touring is a part of an orchestra’s ecology that makes it better. When you appear on the world’s stage, it ups your game.”

It’s not that the Toronto Symphony hasn’t appeared on the world’s stage. Over the decades, it has travelled as far afield as Australia, China and Western Europe. The first time I heard it live was in London in 1965 under Seiji Ozawa, when Felix Aprahamian described its achievement in the pages of the Sunday Times as “orchestral playing of the great international class.”

The problem is that it hasn’t appeared often in the rest of the world. When, after an absence of several years, Peter Oundjian led a short summer European tour in 2014, expected invitations from the Edinburgh Festival and London Proms failed to materialize. The orchestra had effectively lost much of its international profile.

The high cost of touring provides part of the explanation. Fear of a deficit even threatened cancellation of the 2014 tour until Oundjian convinced the board to raise additional money or sacrifice the orchestra’s credibility. The board rose to the challenge then and it has risen to the challenge again. Both tours have been fully funded.

Besides being good for the orchestra, Hanson insists that international touring is good for the city: “When people ask me where I am from and I say Cleveland, a few of them will say, ‘Oh, the Cleveland Browns.’ But 19 out of 20 will say the Cleveland Orchestra.

“The only thing that Cleveland has that the city is proud of and is portable is its orchestra. And when you talk of Toronto, the National Ballet is also a source of pride, but it doesn’t have Toronto in its name. We are ambassadors for the city.”

Rachel Malach, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s vice-president of operations, agrees, pointing out that invitations for this year’s tour (May 7-22) started coming in on the heels of its 2014 predecessor.

A key invitation came from the prestigious Prague Spring International Music Festival, around which engagements have been organized in Vienna, Austria, as well as Regensburg and Essen, Germany.

Israel, which the orchestra is visiting for the first time, represents a special case. As Malach explains, it is not an area frequented by touring orchestras, but it’s one with strong ties to Toronto, a number of whose citizens will be travelling with the orchestra as part of an enhanced cultural visit.

Moving a large orchestra across thousands of miles is no easy undertaking. A budget of $2.25 million has been put together to account for air and ground transportation, accommodations, artists fees, per diems, cargo and instrument shipping, work permits, insurance, marketing, public relations and music rental. It doesn’t include musician and staff salaries, which are part of the regular season.

A total of 145 people are making the trip, including 95 musicians, two conductors (resident conductor Earl Lee in addition to music director Oundjian) and one composer (Jordan Pal), whose music will be performed in addition to that of Bartok, Dvorak and Rimsky-Korsakov. Russia’s Maxim Vengerov will be the soloist in the Brahms Violin Concerto; Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki in the Schumann Piano Concerto and Canadian soprano Carla Huhtanen in Boulez’s Le soleil des eaux.

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The performances in Prague will be dedicated to former music director Karel Ancerl, a distinguished Czech conductor who led the orchestra from 1969 to 1973.

Like the orchestra, Toronto itself has become more cosmopolitan in the years since then. In the words of Mayor John Tory, “By visiting Israel and Europe, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra will showcase the talent and spirit that makes Toronto a must-see cultural destination and an artistic hot spot. As one of Toronto’s most important cultural assets, I have no doubt they will make us proud on the world stage and will encourage more people to visit our city.”

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